To Laos and Long Cheng with the Thai Lao Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB)

[Lone Rider]

To Laos and Long Cheng with the Thai Lao Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB)

The TLCB had another trip planned to Laos and although transport was available this time, I offered to join with my car as it is often handy to have an extra car to accomodate people who join to visit the school projects supported by the TLCB. So after my trip to the north-east of Thailand I headed over to Vientiane to join the TLCB to check on progress of their projects as well as "handing over" completed projects to the villages and the schools. The itinerary this time was to start in Vientiane and drive to Long Cheng for an overnight stop there and then the next day check progress on the dormitory project at the Long Cheng school and then continue offroad via Xam Thong to Phonsavan where we would stay 2 days before heading back to Vientiane and home. We had planned an early start from the Friendship bridge but unfortunately on Monday morning there were a lot of "visa runners" needing a "visa-on-arrival" for Laos so the early start was delayed quite a bit and we only managed to leave from the bridge around 10 o'clock

Lots of vans waiting for the "visa runners" to bring them to the Thai Consular Office

Once everything had been arranged we set of for Long Cheng taking Rd 13 South to Thabok from where we headed north to the Phu Bia Mine and from there on to our destination of the day. Now, with the rains, the brown hills get more and more green while our cars got more and more brown

The Phu Bia mine with the big trucks using the haul road to and from the mine

The Nam Ngone market where we stopped to buy supplies

The main junction in Ban Nam Ngone - north (up) goes to Long Cheng

The road to Long Cheng is being upgraded now Long Cheng has become a District at the same time Xaysomboun was upgraded from District to Province

Along the way we had quite a bit of rain which made the road quite slippery but in the end we made it to Long Cheng without problems.

View of Long Cheng at the left with the 2 karst mountains also known as the "vertical speed brake" sticking out at the end of the runway and the basecamp of the Nam Ngum 3 hydropower project contractor in the center-right of the picture

The only Guesthouse in town

Long Cheng has seen a lot of changes over time from basically just an empty valley which was large enough to fit an 1260 meter long runway to a booming town with some 30,000 people living there during the late sixtees/early seventees. From that time till about 2004/2005 Long Cheng was a more or less deserted place with only a Lao army and some civilian presence but now the "one-road town" is again growing steadily

Long Cheng as seen from the air in the lates sixtees - early seventees (left) and as seen from the plane in 2004 en route from Vientiane to Phonsavan (right)

Long Cheng during late 2013 / early 2014 with the picture taken from the karsts at the end of the runway

More to follow

 

[Lone Rider]

Quite a few people have asked me about Long Cheng so I have decided to make a short movie showing my "rides-through" the village. Unfortunately, the quality of the movie will not be good as I used a hand-held camera while driving the car so the movie is a bit "shaky" but at least you will have an idea about the village. I am still working on it but hopefully in a day or two I will upload it to YouTube and will post the URL here.

For starters, here is the link to a compilation of still images of Long Cheng which I uploaded last year to my Facebook page so some people may have seen this before.

Please note that Long Cheng is at the moment still a restricted area although it looks like that it is opening up a bit as during our last trip about 2 weeks ago both gates were open. Next year (2015) will be "Visit Xaysomboun Year" so I hope that by that time the restrictions have been lifted and that you will be able to have a look yourself.

 

[The Bigfella]

Thanks Auke. I'd love to have a look in that area

 

[Lone Rider]

It has taken quite a bit of time to make the short "movie" about a drive through Long Cheng but I finally managed to upload it. It is far from a "piece of art" as it is basically my first attempt to use movie clips but I hope you will get an idea about how Long Cheng, which is basically a "one road" village with houses, some shops and a few buildings with a history along the road, looks like. The buildings with a "history" are at the moment mainly used as offices for the newly established Long Cheng District Administration and it remains to be see what will happen with these buildings in the near future.

The ride-through starts in the center of the village and from there we drive to the west in the direction of Xam Thong and visit the school a few hundred meters from the western end of Long Cheng where the Thai-Lao-Cambodia Brotherhood is providing support to upgrade the dormitory buildings. From here we head back to the center of the village with the restaurant and then head further east passing by the Buddhist temple, the Guesthouse and the basecamp of the Nam Ngum 3 Hydropower project to go back to Ban Nam Ngone near the Phu Bia Mine.

[video=youtube_share;whxy4YoA5dg]http://youtu.be/whxy4YoA5dg[/video]

 

[bsacbob]

Nice work Auke, gives a great insight to the place for those of us who are eager to explore and nice music too..

 

[Lone Rider]

Part 2 - The next day it was "work" as usual but the weather did not look good and we had a lot of rain that day on our way to Phonsavan via Xam Thong, Tha Tham Bleung and the Phaxay district

Some pictures from the Guesthouse (N19.10507 E102.92505) known locally as the Sayphasert GH.

The royal palace on one of the hills overlooking Long Cheng (the palace is off-limit to visitors)

Breakfast at the restaurant in town and the rain started coming down by the bucket-full so even the chickens looked for a dry place to hide

While waiting at the Long Cheng district offices I noticed that they had a map of the new Xaysomboun Province complete with the borders of the new districts. I wanted to take a picture of that map but the guys in the office looked decidedly unhappy about that so in the end I took a picture of a picture of Long Cheng which had been nailed to the wall. The American compound is in the lower-right corner while a little bit higher on the right Vang Pao's house is clearly visible

Still heavy rain so our trip offroad to Phonsavan was an interesting trip with quite a of bit slip-sliding up and down the mountains

The vertical profile of the track from Long Cheng to Phaxay District

Mac handing out some pictures which he took on a previous trip and which he had printed out to people in Tha Tham Bleung

We made a quick stop to have a look at the remnants of a Russian tank and Mike indicated that according to him it was a PT-76 (light amphibious tank) and not a T-72 tank.

The next day the work started in earnest - handing over some completed projects and this requires speeches, paperwork, signatures, rubber stamps, picture taking and celebrations and I can tell you that the Lao people know how to celebrate

The celebrations involve always food, sometimes a "Baci" ceremony and lots of drinks - the horrible white stuf Lau-Lau or Lau Kau in Thai which you feel burning all the way from your thoat to your stomach and copious amounts of Beer Lao

Baci ceremony at the school in Ban Sy Vieng Kham with lots of prayers and the tying of the white thread on the right hand wrist of the person who is being wished well - for background information of the ceremony see Baci - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The three M's (Mac, Mike and Me) after the Baci ceremony with a few of the local ladies serving beer at the party. It is quite common that during and after the meal one of the ladies gets up with one glass in which she serves the beer for the guests and starts asking everyone to drink a glass of Beer. But she is followed by Lady No. 2 and later by Lady 3 and so on and belief me, the ladies can be very persistent that you drink another glass of beer.

But then again, who can resist drinking a beer served by a lady with such a smile

The older guys normally prefer Lau Lau and these two guys made sure that not even the last drip was wasted by serving it in the bottle cap

 

[marcusb]

great report... thanks.

 

[KTMphil]

A really special trip, fantastic.

 

[bigntall]

Auke...absolutely impressive. Thanks ever so much for putting together a video inside the Lima site. It allows those of us that have only read and heard stories about the place to get a sense of it. The location looks gorgeous nestled inside the ring mountains surrounding the area.

When is the windshield getting replaced?? (inside joke)

 

[Lone Rider]

Auke...absolutely impressive. Thanks ever so much for putting together a video inside the Lima site. It allows those of us that have only read and heard stories about the place to get a sense of it. The location looks gorgeous nestled inside the ring mountains surrounding the area.

When is the windshield getting replaced?? (inside joke)

555555 the windshield has been replaced (after more than a year driving with the crack). A few days ago I also replaced the fan for the air-conditioner which decided to make strange noises while in Laos but otherwise the truck is still going strong after 380,000 trouble free kilometers.

 

[King of Jars]

Thanks Auke, very useful 8-)