Kayaking Asia: Padding the Hin Boun and Mekong Rivers (2-5)

Friday, October 5, 2012

Kayaking Asia: Padding the Hin Boun and Mekong Rivers (2-5) Video Clips. Duration : 14.98 Mins.


Laos 2004 (Part 2 of 5) We visit the village of Ban Konglor where we find some local men building a coffin in which to store a body until a formal cremation ceremony is held. When an adult dies, the body is kept for 1 or 2 nights before it is cremated; on the day of the cremation, a pig or a cow is slaughtered and offered to the spirit of the dead. The sacrificial food shared during a funeral ceremony is called "moo khao khum." A rigorous day-hike through dense jungle terrain and over a jagged, limestone schist peaks along a portion of the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail leads to the village of Ban Na Taan. The following day, we tour the local school and prepare to put in along the Nam Hin Boun River and begin a scenic paddle toward the Konglor Cave. Sadly, multi-national tobacco companies have co-opted enormous tracts of the lush Lao farmland to cultivate Virginia tobacco and have radically disrupted traditional faming methods and a way of life. Food crops are replaced by tobacco ending centuries of self-sufficiency and forcing rural farmers into the competitive cash-based market-based economies of the cities. Traditional farming methods are replaced with a modern reliance on fertilizers and pesticides -- and irrigation delivered by gasoline-powered pumps -- all products provided and subsidized by the tobacco companies. Run-off from the fields poison the river; fish populations have dwindled and incidences of birth defects and serious illness are evident in each village we ...

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