The village of Ban Na, also known as "Elephant Village" is home to just over 100 families. The villagers experienced a mishap a few years ago when their sugar cane crops were demolished by sweet-toothed elephants wandering in the region. They could not control the elephants, but instead came up with a way to subsidize the income they lost in the sugar canes through sustainable tourism. Ban Na is also located at the base of a large conservation area called Phu Khau Khuay, so treks in the region are also usually launched from there.
For these reasons, I expected transportation to the area to be frequent and easy. Was I ever wrong. I walked early in the morning to the station where Lonely Planet said buses left from, and realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. This was local territory. No one spoke more than one word of English, and I had considerable difficulty telling many people, mostly in sign language, that I wanted to go to a village with elephants. I pieced together that the bus I wanted was not there, but at another station 9 km away. So I took an hour-long journey on a minibus there, cramped in a seat with Lao old and young alike, teenagers and market vendors toting all their trinkets.
Upon arrival at the 'actual' station, I find out, naturally, that there are no buses to my destination. I had to take a 'tuk-tuk', basically a trailer with some seats attached to a smoking motorcycle. These are probably the third surest way to death after land mines and speed boats in South East Asia, and three jaw-clenching hours later, during which I managed to brave headaches and pot-holes to read 400 pages of 'East of Eden', I finally arrived in Ban Na.
This is when it started to pour. At the entrance to the village there was a small house with a storefront where I found refuge from the rain. No one spoke English, but I managed to tell the fifty year old owner of the house that I needed to sit under his roof for a while until it stopped raining. I was getting more and more dejected at this point because it was already three in the afternoon and considering the three hour journey home it was already about time I got back.
But in a way the rain was a blessing. Although the village was not its lively self in the gloomy weather, I sat in the midst of one villager's bustling family life, enjoying a silent sort of interaction with them all. There were no less than three generations sitting on that porch,underneath a covered tarp, the most prominent the group of children, seven or eight of them, chasing each other through the yard and shrieking with delight at each splattering of raindrops on their cheeks. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of them, and they found the photos on my camera absolutely delicious.
When the rain did not let up, I cut my losses and braved the rain and mud into the deserted village. It was such a peaceful walk, past rice fields, durian trees, lush vegetation, a couple of water buffalos, and then a hut on a hill with six little children underneath. They hollered at me from their place of hiding, "What's your name!" Children in Laos speak the best English because their parents instill that it is the surest way to employment. I yelled back and forth with them for a while, answering their questions and asking them questions they did not understand, making them giggle uncontrollably as a result.
Then I asked if I could join them, and they nodded, showing me the hidden route to their place of solace. They were weaving bamboo baskets, a specialty craft in this village. These bamboo baskets were sold around the country as containers for the Lao staple sticky rice. I asked their names, they were Bop,Pop,Kop,Jop,... swear to god. Aged between 9 and 13. One showed me how to weave the bamboo pieces interchangeably to create a firm round ring, and another one how to cut the fray bamboo off with a butcher knife and effortless grace. I showed them my camera and gave them a packet of coconut cookies I had in my bag. Lame exchange, I know.
As much as I would have loved to escape to this wondrous world of basket weaving with these charming kids, I was brought down to earth by the fact that I was dripping wet, smelled like water buffalo, and was getting closer minute by minute to nightfall. I had to leave them, sitting under the hut, joking and chattering, to go back to the village. As I turned the bend in the mud road, I heard them sing in unison a long "Thank youuuuuu!" and their giggles fading into the rain.
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