Loikaw - Should You Go or Not?

“Loikaw is a kind of destination that you want to grab the next travelers you meet and tell them about it but decide not to...” My travel experience in Loikaw partially felt that way. I wish it was all that sweet and romantic. But I had mixed feelings about the place. Well, I had STRONG mixed feelings about it.

Why Loikaw?

Loikaw is the capital of Kayah State located on the east of Myanmar and is bordered by Shan State to the north, Kayin State to the south, and Thailand to the east. The town itself is a backwater with few worth-visit sights though the Taung Kwe grouped pagodas mounted atop rocky hills rising high above the ground has impressive townscape views during sunsets. Loikaw's real attractions, at least nine ethnic minority people and their colorful culture, lie in the mountains and the highlands that surround it. Spending time with distinct ethnic tribal people and observing their ways of lives in the villages which feel hundred of years behind the modernity we live in is a hard-to-beat experience. By far, three tribes have been spotlighted; the Kayan aka the long-neck, the Kayah and the Kayaw, all look splendid and photogenic in their daily-wear traditional costumes.

A Place for Budget Travellers?
As attractive as it sounds, Loikaw remains neither a non-backpacker nor a cheap destination. You can't roam freely to the villages, hang out, and expect to spend less than 30$ a day like you may do in other parts of Myanmar. Here is why:Kayah State was opened for foreign visitors in 2014. To preserve its innocence and to safeguard foreigners from an overdue insurgency in the area, the government has issued two important rules: 1) foreign visitors need permits to visit all villages around Loikaw with a guide and no overnights are allowed; 2) no motorbikes by means of transportation.A guide or a travel agency can fix a permit for you with merely a copy of your passport. Allow 3 to 4 working days to process it. Processing fees are reasonable. But you have to hire a car and pay for a guide. A car fee inclusive of petrol starts at 50,000 kyat (37$) and guide fee at 35$ a day. This is where you will frown if you are a budget traveler.

But if you're a bit sneaky, ready to jump hoops and accept mild risks, there is always a way out. I was alone, budgeted, and didn't have that much time. But I managed to visit 2 out of the 3 tribes without permits and on guides' personal motorbikes which was way cheaper than hiring a car. There are guides who insist you have to take permits and a car. But lucky us, there are ones willing to earn extra money taking you on their personal motorbikes with a risk of losing their profession licenses too. (Inbox me for their contacts.)

Did I get in trouble for breaking the rules? Yes, I did. Upon returning from a village to my guesthouse one day, the guys from government tourism office were waiting for me. The guesthouse owner had turned me in to them as he saw me leaving on a motorbike with the guide in the morning. Anyway, 'the foreigner was innocent,' and I got away with it. The hard was on the guide who got yelled at and had to bribe the officers enough to keep their mouths shut.
Lessons learned? The next morning I had my guide pick me up away from my guesthouse, out of guesthouse owner's surveillance eyes.

Fees and Logistics

Back to the tribes and the villages. The itinerary has sort of been laid out for any visitors: 3 days, 3 villages, 3 different tribes. Choose any of them or visit all.

Pan Pet Village (Kayan tribe): 1.5 hr drive one-way from Loikaw. My guesthouse organizes a full-day car trip to the village for 50,000 kyat. Technically you need a permit, obtained with an entry to Dawta Ma Gyi, 5,000 kyat. But no one seems to bother that I don't have one, even my guesthouse owner who got me busted going to another village didn't.

Dawta Ma Gyi Village (Kayah tribe): 2.5 hr motorbike drive one-way. A guide took me on his motorbike and charged 100,000 kyat. There is another Kayah village called Hta Nee La Len where a car taxi will take you for 30,000 kyat. But due to its proximity to Loikaw, there are very few women in traditional costumes.

Hte Ko Village (Kayaw tribe): 3 hr drive on motorbike one-way. I negotiated from 140,000 to 100,000 kyat. Permit costs 15$.

It wasn't clear to me wether foreigners were allowed to visit villages deeper into the jungles. I guess you can if you try harder and are willing to jump through more hoops. My guides said though, that none of the villagers from villages accessible by roads kept their traditions so well as the people in the villages above. And at the time, none of the guides would lead a trek.

The Villages and the People

Pan Pet

Perhaps the most well-known of all 3 is the Kayan or the long-necked. There are a few Kayan villages in the north of Thailand notorious for being human zoos due to the villagers' confined state as refugees. Knowing that they originally came from Myanmar, I always wanted to visit their homelands hoping to meet happier villagers. And because it was the closest to Loikaw, I made Pan Pet my first village visit.

First, the hotel owner brought me to what he called the new Pan Pet village which was merely a small souvenir market of several stalls and fooled me it was Pan Pet. It was there that I met a stall owner who spoke perfect Thai. (I'm Thai by the way.) He, a Kayan, and his wife, had lived in Thailand for 24 years. I asked him to take me to the real Pan Pet which is 30 minutes by foot and 10 minutes on bumpy dirt road by car, and be my guide for the day.

Pan Pet is actually the name of the area consisting of 5 Kayan villages. 3 are adjacent, the other 2 are aloof but all in walkable distance. Electricity arrived less than 3 years ago. Dirt paths link wooden and bamboo homes while chickens, cows, and pigs roam freely. Stalls selling handbags and scarfs line the roads and the women are at the looms. Weaving seems to be the only thing the women here do when they are not farming which only happens in the rainy reason. I always wondered why photographed long-necks are always weaving.

Pan Pet Village

A woman and her mother who is one of the oldest woman in the village

Baby girl starting to wear coils since 2 years old

Do the villagers look happier? No, when I took their photos, interviewed them, gave them a few kyat (I did everything a tourist would do.) But YES, when I put my camera away, showing them that my visiting purpose was only to hang out, and that I wasn't hunting for their portraits or expecting them to play traditional guitar and sing. I tried to make conservations, speaking in Thai to people who knew it. Many villagers had once lived and worked in Thailand. One lady who lived in Thailand for 7 years fed me lunch with the best ingredients in the kitchen and kept apologizing that she couldn't give me a better meal. Ashamed that I didn't bring any gifts, I offered her 2000 kyat but she said, “Mai pen rai (it's OK), you're my sister.” 

As sweet as the villagers and the Kayan guide who ended up charging me nothing were to me, I felt really sad seeing the women and the village exploited by tourism. There will never be a win for the women wearing neck coils. The Kayan traditionally perceive the coils as beauty. But this perception has been challenged as soon as they made contacts to the outside world. They know that to outsiders, the neck coils are 'exotic' or 'strange' rather than beautiful. Young generations have lost interest in wearing coils, especially ones willing to leave the villages to work in towns or cities. Then, modern medication has threatens the tradition as a hazard to the women's health.

The villagers have no fair gain from tourism business despite that they themselves are the resources or the attractions. They earn nothing from tourist visits apart from a few kyats selling souvenirs and having their photos taken, while tour operators and guides make tons of profit from charging us visitors. So the vicious circle begins: guide fees are expensive; money doesn't go to villagers; villagers try to make money from having their portraits taken and turning their homes into souvenir stalls; visitors don't like that the village has turned commercial. Tourism has also changed the villagers' way of life. Some no longer farm and rely on income from their souvenir stalls. I also feel the rule that visitors cannot overnight at villages only makes it worse because visitors cannot create more meaningful relationships with villagers then we have to leave. 

Dawtama Gyi

On the next day we went to Dawtama Gyi and another nearby village uphill. The ride to the village was beautiful. The Kayah women have this interesting tradition of wearing lacquered threads around their knees which is believed to be inspired by a legend where a half human half bird princess is tied by her prince husband during the day so she doesn't escape or fly back to her parents. The Kayah are Buddhists who strictly practice animalism. Once a year, they organize a ritual where a statue of a straw man riding a wooden horse is possessed by a powerful spirit. Once possessed, the statue is asked to make judge cases, cure ailments, and predict future.

Phudigree - a statue believed to be possessed by spirits
which can tell fortunes and cure ailments

The guide I was with on the day did his job as soon as we arrived at the village: going around houses, asking if there were old women in the house, and if we could photograph them. Nobody wanted their photos taken. But I managed to photograph 2 women, one of who cooked lunch for us, and compensated them with small money and detergent we brought for villagers as gifts in return to allowing us to photograph them. I was eventually got tired of this portrait hunting game. I imagined having strangers at my doorstep wanting to photograph me every day. I made me feel sick.

Brewing alcohol made out of millets

Tei Kho

Of all three, this is my favorite. Hteko is hidden on a high mountain and the ride on mountain ridges to get to the village had breath-taking views. Upon arriving, you're required to visit the village's small showroom of musical instruments and contribute some money which I hope is spared among the villagers. Somehow the villagers here seem happier and more smiley. There was an engagement party the day I was there. I and the guide were fed raw buffalo meat which I had to take as a refusal was rude. They grow tons of millets here so the millet wine was abundant. We went from one home to another, hanged out, ate, and drank. We had to leave at 3pm to get back to Loikaw before it was dark. My visit was short but of all the 3 villages, I felt the most welcomed here.

Phongsaly, the Last Untouched Jungle of Laos

“We could have just gotten a trekking guide from the agency,” my friend whined, after plunging her left foot into the mud. The right one was already soaked in the sloppy soil a few seconds earlier. Kampoon, our friend, somewhere ahead, shouted back to us, “I think we took the wrong trail. The plants are getting too savage here. We definitely can’t pass.” Up until now we had been lucky enough to frequently run into people from the surrounding villages from whom we could ask directions, but our luck had run out. According to the trek itinerary, we should have arrived at Changtern village at least 3 hours earlier. But it was now 4pm and we didn’t know where we were. We headed back to the last crossed trails we passed, which hopefully, would be the correct turn. My thoughts ran wild with all sorts of possible dangers in this forest after sunset. We were definitely being punished for ignoring the trekking agency’s warning that a self guided trek in Phongsaly’s jungle could easily get us lost. 

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We stopped at the main town in Phongsaly province, the northernmost part of Laos bordering to China’s Yunnan, a few days before, and spent the whole time trying to arrange a rural trek with a local agency. Instead we decided to save our money for the rest of the trip. We copied a 4-day trekking itinerary for a tour of the Ahka hill tribe villages (the agency was kind enough to supply this for free). We planned to hire a local who knew the forest well. 

With the help of a man teaching English at the town’s non-profit language center, we were introduced to a local named Kampoon, who agreed to lead us. Kampoon didn’t know the forest nor did he speak any hill tribe’s languages, but he was able to ask for directions in Laotian, which was also understood by hill tribess, so we settled to the deal and left Phongsaly town at 7 in the morning.

The sea of mist on the way to the first village

Drying corn seeds

This morning’s trek was fairly easy, just a mild hike up and down mountains. We passed some deforested areas and farms, merrily greeting the locals all the way. We followed a trail, pioneered by the French during the Vietnam War, according to the itinerary. We arrived to the low-water-level Nam Long river by lunch, across which we waded our way through. An abrupt change started on this side of the river when the trail turned steep, narrowed, and nearly blocked by plants most of the time. Apparently even villagers themselves didn’t use this trail much, and this was the point we started to get lost.  

It wasn’t until close to 6pm when we saw farms and fields with burned tree stems again. This was a good sign that a village was nearby. We caught up to an Ahka woman with a basket filled with wood. Kampoon asked her for directions. We all were so relieved to hear Changtern was just right around the corner.

Entrance to Changtern village

3 bamboo poles set up in a teepee shape marked the entrance to what looked like a 30-house village. Kampoon explained they would put a swing on this structure during Ahka’s New Year rituals. That was the only thing we noticed in the dim sunlight. Kampoon informed us that we wouldn’t get electricity here. He led us to the village’s chief’s house where we could ask for food and beds. 

At the house, more like a big room built on the soil ground, dinner was being slowly cooked above a bonfire. On one side near the wall, there was a long elevated platform lined up with blankets and pillows. Chatting noises from surrounding houses was easily heard. The houses were so close that the roofs rubbed together. Flashes from torch lights came through the walls of plaited bamboo strips. Needless to say, privacy wasn’t a strongly valued concept here.

The houses in the village had no toilets and when I asked Kampoon what we were supposed to do, he pointed into bushes. He explained that that’s the way the villagers themselves did it. I was surprised as I did not see any disposals left even in the bush when I went myself, but then I left the bush and headed towards the home, and two big boars rushed into that bush. It all made sense now. I swore to myself I would never touch a dish cooked with boars.

In the chief’s house we sat on the soil ground at a low bamboo table lit by candles. There were various vegetable dishes placed on the table. We each had a shot glass in front of us in which the chief poured a light green liquor. He urged us to bottom up. Kampoon said guests were supposed to drink at least 2 shots of rice whisky before meals. After feeling the alcohol burning our insides, we ate with the chief and his sons. His wife and their daughters waited to clean up after us before they started eating themselves. 

Rice whiskey, more powerful with a centipede

The village head's wife preparing dinner

A simple meal of rice, bamboo shoots, potatoes, and some green peas

Later we slept in bedding provided, next to the family’s five young children. The wife and their two other daughters started pounding rice in the kitchen area late into the night. We asked Kampoon why they didn’t do that during the day, to which he answered their days were always too busy farming and nights were the only time left for them to finish up with less tiring work. We were exhausted from the 11-hour trek and the 20 degree cold air, so the rhythmic pounding sounds that could now be heard from all over the village actually lulled us into sleep.    

The next morning was heavy with mist. While waiting for breakfast to be ready, we explored the village. 
Domesticated boars and chickens scuffled across our path. The shy villagers, who certainly didn’t expect foreign visitors avoided eye contact. They hid behind doors, some even walked away when we got close. Babies cried as we approached them. They could probably tell by our clothes that we were from an alien land. As we tried to take pictures of women in their black tunics with colorful embroidery and impressive silver headdresses, but most of them ran away. Kampoon told us not to take their picture, because they thought their soul would be stolen by the cameras. Still, we stole a few shots of the women, who leave one breasts bare. He said it’s a tradition for married women to do so and sometimes they greeted each other by touching each other’s breasts.

Preparing a squirrel for a meal 

Pounding rice

The village's only school, with 30 kids

We stopped at Sop Ngam village for lunch. The village of Lao Sung sits in a green valley with a river cutting through, providing the locals plenty of fish. We asked some girls playing near the river to take us across the river on a bamboo raft, in exchange for a small payment. We continued on the trail passing thick and tall wild yellow Cassie flower bushes. The path curved behind mountain, into an area that was not exposed much to sunlight. Humidity felt stronger here and now the trail was wet from dewy leaves continuously dripping onto it. 

Sop Ngam village, nestling in a valley

Lao Sung villagers

 Cassie flower bushes

Then we discovered the muddy and slippery trail wasn’t the only challenge of trekking in Phongsaly’s forest in November, a month after the rainy season. At one point I fell a soft but sharp poke on my foot. And when I looked down to see what it was, I was shocked to see probably more than 10 leeches happily burrowing up and into my sneakers.

“Leechesss!,” I screamed with fright and disgust. I hurried to take off my shoes, socks. I rolled my pants up to the knees, trying to balance myself with one leg while pulling leeches out of the other leg off the ground. I looked at the ground where I threw the leeches, only to see I was surrounded by leeches, crawling and  stretching their long slimy black bodies straight up, searching for somewhere to land. They were everywhere on the trail, near and far. I looked over my shoulder, my friend was more or less in the same situation.

Kampoon, ran back to inspect the cause of the noise. He started giggling once he saw two girls jumping around scared of the leeches. He pulled out a lighter, picked up our shoes and burned one leech after another. I noticed there were some on his pants and shoes too, but he didn’t seem to care. Once we girls calmed down a bit, we started walking again, now faster, with the fear that leeches could hook onto our shoes if we paced slow. We paused several times to get leeches of our legs. At the end of the day, we felt it was no use since they would always find a way to get onto us. We eventually got used to the tingling feeling on our feet. We stopped pulling them out and just wished them to enjoy the feast.         

We arrived at New Pei Yesang village about 3pm. This village was bigger and had some of the houses equipped with solar power generators. The locals were curious about us foreign visitors but much less than the people in Changtern. The first thing we asked upon arrival for was a shower. The villagers pointed down a mountain slope. We climbed down a slippery trail to an open area below. A tiny fountain of water poured from a cliff and through a bamboo stem that the villagers had rigged. 

New Pei Yesang village

Not prepared for an open-air and super natural bathroom, we striped to our underwear, and wet ourselves as quick as possible before other people arrived. To my surprise, I felt a thumb-size lump on my thigh. It was a round and fat leech. This one d%# leech had made its way up this far! I pulled it out and smashed it with a sharp stone, feeling satisfied seeing my own blood splash.  

Our (clean?) source of water 

Exciting kids seeing their portraits in the camera 

We toured the village a bit and then joined the chief’s family for dinner. The news about us visitors had spread over the village. Several people, mostly teenage boys, dropped by to peak at us. The chief started serving local whisky to everyone. A small party was launched. We retreated by 9pm, and went outside to brush our teeth in the mountain’s cold and fresh air. It was very dark, but still we were treated to a beautiful view: a supremely clear, moonless sky dotted with millions of stars.

Sucking on a bong, a routine activity of the village's head

The next day we were given dried tobacco leaves, which we were told to soak in water and apply on our feet and legs, to prevent leeches. The leaves did the job very well. We passed Old Pei Yesang village at about lunchtime and arrived at Chakkhampa village, our last overnight stop, a few hours after that. While hanging out in the village, we met two lovely school teachers of the Phunoi tribe who were relocated to Chakkhampa. They invited us for dinner.

On the way to Old Pei Yesang village

Old Pei Yesang village

An Ahka lady heading out to work on a farm. While walking, she span thread
that would later be used to weave their tunics

Chakkhampa village

Our source of clean water. yes, this one is pretty clean...

After the meal, we circled around the bonfire and chatted. The conversation ranged from our lives in Bangkok to their daily routines in the village. They told us about the Akha people’s favorite meals during festivals, which is uncooked animal parts and fresh blood. They explained how they buried dead bodies of their relatives in the bushes just behind their houses. It wasn’t nice to imagine there could be spirits peeking over our shoulders and listening to our conversation, and knowing about that tradition, it left us no choices as where we would go toilet-ing: the bushes in the front.

The next morning, it took us 4 hours walking down the mountain before we eventually saw Nam Ou river snaking at the base. At first I felt a rush of happiness and comfort knowing the hard beds, cold weather, and leeches were going to end, but I also realized how grateful I was, and how privileged I had been to get to experience pristine forest, fresh air, and the generosity of the villagers during our trek. It made me feel a bit sad, not knowing when I would be able to experience an adventure like that again.  

At the trail’s end, there was a sandy beach where passing boats picked up passengers. We got on a long-tail boat heading downstream to Hat Sa, where we could catch a public pick-up truck back to Phongsaly town. At one part of the river, men were building a dam. A huge sign in Chinese advertised the construction company. Kampoon said in the next 3 years the villages around the area would all have electricity. He said they would spend much less time traveling to Hat Sa, on a smooth concrete road. While enjoying the scenery on both sides of the river, I started to picture these Ahka ladies back in the villages wearing T-shirts and sin (sarongs) just like flat land Laotian women did, and had their traditional black tunics folded away.

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