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Welcome: Laos Essential Artistry Blog
Sunday, August 23, 2009
 We love Sam Neua and Huaphan Province and it will be an important part of our tour next June. But you can see in the article below published August 23, 2009 that getting to Sam Neua is not easy, but if one plans well it's more than worth the time! Above is an aerial photo we took of Sam Neua as the Lao Air Grand Caravan Cessna plane we fly to Sam Neua is coming into land. Access difficulties delay tourism development in Huaphan province Difficulty of access is the main problem hampering development of the tourism industry in Huaphan province. Huaphan Governor, Dr Phankham Viphavanh said without the government's assistance the tourism sector in Huaphan would remain underdeveloped. Dr Phankham called on the government to support four projects associated with tourism and socio-economic development in his province at a meeting held in Vientiane this week between cabinet members and provincial governors. The first project relates to the construction of a new provincial airport to accommodate larger aircraft, enabling Lao Airlines ATR aeroplanes to land. The governor said the government has agreed to provide the province with the means to conduct a feasibility study, and then the government would consider and try to seek funding for the project. The second project regards reconstruction of two roads linking Huaphan province and Vietnam over a length of about 100km, and between Huaphan and Xieng Khuang province at a length of 250km. The current roads are too narrow, with steep gradients and a number of bends. The third scheme is installation of high voltage transmission wires from Xieng Khuang province to Huaphan. The final proposal regards approval of a master plan to develop tourism in Viengxay district . “We would like the government to help us with these four projects, as for the remainder our province will assume responsibilities including encouraging the business sector to participate in developing tourism-related initiatives,” the governor said. “Actually, we have several interesting tourism sites, but tourists still face trouble in visiting our province because of difficulty of access.” “Tourists do not want to spend more time in transit than they do at tourism sites themselves.” Huaphan is 650km north of Vientiane . It's about a 13-hour drive (non-stop) or just over one hour by air from the capital. Tourist arrivals in the province totalled less than 1,000 people in 2005. The figure had increased to 19,000 people in 2008, of whom 7,000 were foreign tourists. The increase was due to more development and better facilities for tourists including hotels and restaurants. In June this year, the province, in cooperation with the National Tourism Administration, held a convoy of vehicles, entitled “Caravan back to Viengxay”. The aim was to rekindle public interest in the importance of this revolutionary base to the emergence of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Viengxay is a tranquil and peaceful town in Xieng Khuang province with 485 limestone caves. These caves include the offices of revolutionary leaders and other caves used for production purposes, hospitals and schools during the revolution. “We have seen tourism development can help alleviate poverty faster while boosting economic growth,” Dr Phankham said. “People in our province have a spirit of hospitality to welcome guests.” “We also have a plan to link our tourism sector with other northern provinces including Luang Prabang, Xayaboury and Xieng Khuang provinces, but our main challenge is still difficulty of access.” by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments 
 We're in the midst of rethinking our Laos Essential Artistry blog and while we'll definitely keep this blog since it's integrated within our Yahoo Store, we're probably going to "go back" to our Typepad blog which provides a lot more features than this stripped down Blogger blog. Plus, there have been big issues in uploading images for over a week. If you rely on technology, temporary glitches are to be accepted, but Google seems not to care and with no technical support, we've learned a Blogger blog can not be depended on. People will be able read either blog and they'll be closely linked, but as are going to be putting a lot of effort into our blog(s) in the future so it makes more sense to go with TypePad where we'll be able to offer a more features. We'll let our readers know when we "switch" over... But we thought we during this process we might share some of our favorite photos from our trip to Laos in June. The texture and colors of these mushrooms drying in the sun in Luang Prabang have a kind of textual quality to them we think and I can see we'll use the photo in creative ways in the future. by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
Friday, August 21, 2009
 Do you think you would have seen this mythical animal if we hadn't outlined it? We were lucky to purchase four gorgeous silk textiles, probably best used for display and decorative purposes. All naturally-dyed of course and handwoven in Sam Tai. See the displayed textile in the photo below. 
by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
Thursday, August 20, 2009
 This post is serving two purposes. First, for the last week or so it's been very difficult to upload photos to a post, something about the ftp process. What normally should take a second or two, now takes a minute, maybe more, or not even at all. And when everything goes well (transparently) you don't think about what happens if there is a problem, but what boggles the mind with Google, is that there is no one you can contact for help or support. There is a forum where many people have registered their problems with uploading photos to a blogger blog on their own sites, but no response from Google. Makes one feel helpless and don't you think Google should have the resoures to both respond, and fix the problem??? So, anyways, this image took about a minute to upload and what it represents is an idea we're working on at Laos Essential Artistry to start a "Sinhs Across America" movement, or at least recognize Lao women who wear sinhs in public. Not just to temple, but going to work, or to a restaurant or shopping. And we will be actively soliciting photos from women across the United States showing them wearing sinhs out in public. People can remain anonymous, but we want at a minimum the location of where the photo was taken and then we'll place it on a Flickr map that will be accessible to anyone. And then you can click on one of the dots you see and you'll see a photo of sinhs being warn and then if descriptions are given we'll include those. We're doing this because we've found there are a lot of Lao women interested in buying sinhs, especially for wedding/formal events and in communicating with our customers we've found that in some cities Lao women are proud to wear sinhs in public, whereas in a city like Sacramento where we live, Lao women never wear sinhs out in public besides going to one of the two wats we have here in Sacramento. We've talked to many Lao women here in Sacramento and they feel the sinh makes them look "old fashioned," or like a newcomer to America. But you have to wonder why that is because for other ethnic groups like Indians, the women seem so proud to wear their sarees, but for many Lao women it makes them feel self-conscious to wear sinh. We would like to help change that. So the photo of the map you see, is just a static example that we haven't yet linked to our Flickr map (that looks just the same) because we want to get at least a few photos sent to us first by some of our customers to hopefully serve as a catalyst for other women to want to join our new "Sinhs Across America" movement. by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
 For those of you who are avid photogrphers you know what it's like when you see something that you think is a classic shot, a "golden opportunity." This is what I felt when I saw this loom in Muang Vaen in the late afternoon as we were getting ready to drive back to Sam Neua. The weaver at this loom had finished for the day and had set her bowl of bobbins of naturally-dyed silk she was using to weave in the discontinuous supplementary weft threads on top of the warp. And I loved seeing the uncovered partially woven textiles with the multi-colored silk threads being woven in the weft left draped across the warp. The composition is "clean" and the empty bench in my mind invites the imagination to imagine who the weaver of this loom might be... Anyone else like this shot? by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
Friday, August 14, 2009
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on young girls learning to weave in Muang Vaen, one of the premier weaving villages in Laos. I embedded two videos we took in Muang Vaen in June and in this post I wanted to feature two more experienced weavers. When I say "experienced" you may think of a woman, maybe in her thirties or older, but often experienced weavers, since they begin learning to weave so young, are often young women still in their teens. In Muang Vaen several of the women have a number of looms where they employ these young women to weave for them. Most of the weaving still happens in homes and within familial groups, but here the young women can earn a decent wage for weaving the exquisite silk textiles you can see here at Laos Essential Artistry.
Muang Vaen Weaver1 from Laos Essential Artistry on Vimeo. Muang Vaen Weaver2 from Laos Essential Artistry on Vimeo. by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
Sunday, August 9, 2009
We sometimes get calls, like we did this morning, asking if we have a store where people can come and look at our textiles. No we don't, we operate out of our home.
But, anyone is welcome to come visit and look at any or all of the textiles we have available on our website. Ideally textiles should be seen in person, touched and felt and "tried on." But having just a store really limits one's market and having both a store and ecommerce site would not be cost effective. So, if you live somewhat close to Sacramento, please give us a call and we can make arrangements for you to come and look at our textile selection. We love to talk to people about our textiles and anything Lao related! And if you do want to buy something and want to charge it, we can do it through our iPhone Credit Card application we use when we exhibit at different events. It's really cool and another reason we love our iPhone. by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
Saturday, August 8, 2009
If anyone follows our blog and has browsed through our website it has to be clear our interests in Laos are wide-ranging from gallery-quality silk textiles to Lao coffee to Hmong storycloths. We've been surprised at the number of orders for our Hmong story cloths and wrote a post about the meaning of all the traditional activities taking place in one of the Hmong storycloths we sold for a customer and in a follow-up post included photos we've taken in Laos that illustrate some of the same traditional activities found in the Hmong storycloths we sell.
We've collected some masterpiece Hmong storycloths that feature different ethnic groups that are quite large that we think would be great for schools or businesses to purchase to show their commitment to all the Lao refugees we often find in our communities in schools, Hmong, Mien, Lao, Khmu, but realize for individuals these storycloths would be too large for most homes. And so what we did last December was take a design idea we had to the Vientiane Hmong Women's Cooperative and ordered 12 storycloths in our most popular size, 34 x 46 inches, vertical. They're in a wide assortment of colors and there is no where else you can purchase storycloths like these, period. A photo of one of the clothes is below and we will put them up for sale on our website in the next month. Just keep looking under our Hmong Storycloth section. If you want to jump the gun, give us a call at 916-996-4553 or email us at peterlaos@hotmail.com and we'll create a Flickr photo gallery for you to check out. The storycloths will cost $70, a bargain... We love these storycloths! There is so much depicted in these storycloths, from Lao plowing their rice paddies with water buffalo and the transplanting of rice seedlings, to Hmong harvesting rice on the mountainsides, to Khmu pounding rice, and Mien engaged in various traditional activities. And one certainly can't miss That Luang, the national symbol of Laos with people giving alms to the monks, and the growing importance of education in Laos is shown with students going to school. A microcosm of life in Laos, they are true works of art...  ____________________________________________________ And for fun we're including a video we took of three young Hmong girls in a remote village in Xieng Khuang singing Kwv Txhiaj, traditional Hmong sung poetry. Kwv Txhiaj (sung poetry) has been a way for the young Hmong to learn the knowledge passed down from the parents and grandparents, and some songs (especially the ritual songs) help identify which lineage group one belongs to. These songs are also a way for young people to "talk sweet" to each other without being too direct. Young girls can demonstrate their mental abilities with their courtship songs, and there are songs that are teaching songs—that tell the listener about the proper customs and ways of behaving. We've had this video posted on YouTube for over two years and it's been viewed over 40,000 times and seems to be a big hit. We shot this video about six years ago in early December in a remote Hmong village in Xieng Khuang. These three girls were/are amazing and we videoed an interview with them we will post in the future so people can see what life in a rural Hmong village is like. It's not easy, as it's not easy in any rural Lao village, whatever ethnicity the people will be. At least 70% of the Lao are subsistence farmers, just getting by. Change is coming, but slowly, step by step... Some of the comments we've received on YouTube are: • Wow. They are good! Round of applause for them! • amazing little girls... I wished I could sing like them to make my mother proud! • amazing.. very talented.. only gifted people are gifted the power to sing these anti-phonetic songs.. i find it very difficult to sing. • wow....i know im so useless when its comes to this...its so Nice they are so Talented! i give them lots of KUDOS! great Jobs my sister! • darn these girls at such a young age good at Kwv Txhiaj!!! i wish i could say what their saying!! very good, very good. wish they keep going. i like to listen to this stuff. Now that we're using Vimeo the quality is much better and those of you who have followed us on YouTube will now want to bookmark our Vimeo site. We also use Vimeo so we can embed videos into our blogs, so you won't miss out on much if you just follow our blog... Enjoy! Hmong Girls Singing Kwv Txhiaj from Laos Essential Artistry on Vimeo. by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments
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