# A new machine in town



## The_Traveler (Mar 28, 2015)

Lao woman in Muong Khua, a small river town in northern Laos, fascinated by the new ATM.


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## JustJazzie (Mar 28, 2015)

She does look quite fascinated! Nice catch. 

I wonder who the puppy is with?


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## snowbear (Mar 28, 2015)

I LOVE the puppy!  I hope those receipts on the ground, and not bills.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 28, 2015)

Lao is an odd place, a bit of 21st century sprinkled on top of  the 1700's.
Foreigners are objects of intense interest and unabashed scrutiny.

I fantasize about living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, but that probably will never happen.


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## Ron Evers (Mar 28, 2015)

The background - - building up or tearing down?


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## The_Traveler (Mar 28, 2015)

Building up.
All forms are  wood that's around and scaffolding is available wood but generally bamboo.
I've seen bamboo scaffolding up to 3 or 4 stories.
In the north I only saw one building that was more than 3 stories.
Rebar is bent, tied and welded by hand. 
Concrete is mixed by hand and passed up in buckets.
Lucky this isn't earthquake country.
If you are interested I'll look for a couple of construction pictures I took.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 28, 2015)

two different examples
up north, things are built mostly by hand.
human labor is cheap and there doesn't seem to be any code.


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## Rick50 (Mar 28, 2015)

Love this kind of construction. Figure it out as needed. Awesome ladder and the blue tarp I suppose for shade and keeping stuff off the guys below. I think life is the best teacher....


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## Ron Evers (Mar 29, 2015)

Thanks Lew.
A construction inspector that once worked for me took a job with a consultant for an assignment supervising the construction of a bridge in (if I remember correctly) Indonesia.  The stories he told of his experience was over there were incredible to us here.  Falsework for the bridge constructed from bamboo, all wiped out in a monsoon & had to be rebuilt.  Aggregates for the concrete hand made - men broke up large rocks to smaller fractions & the women & children broke them down smaller.  So many stories that astonished us.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

Human labor is cheap, machines are expensive
Bamboo replenishes itself for nothing and is light and strong

Laying down a road





Carrying big stones to the crusher





Moving a very large boulder


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## Designer (Mar 29, 2015)

The first construction photo is about what I expected, given your previous comments.  I don't see any spiral wraps on the column steel.

The second photograph looks the same as is done in Mexico.  All those form supports are the same length, and they use them over and over, taking them up to the next floor above.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

In Myanmar, on the Irrawaddy River, one sees large rafts of bamboo being floated down from the higher elevations to Yangon to be used in construction.
These people live on the raft for the time to float the river. The river police inspect the rafts to see if teak logs are being smuggled slung under the bamboo.
Different world, different rules


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## Ron Evers (Mar 29, 2015)

Nice to see photos supporting the story.
So they had a mechanical stone crusher?


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## Designer (Mar 29, 2015)

Ron Evers said:


> So they had a mechanical stone crusher?


Good question, Ron.

Any pics, Lew?


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

I saw two, one larger one in the picture below that ran off an external engine and a much smaller one at a site much further in the far-out that I didn't get a picture of. These both were in Myanmar. In Laos the roads were much less sturdy and seemed to be a single layer of pea sized gravel with tar dripped on it.

I took this from a train and didn't get any chance at a second shot.


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## Ron Evers (Mar 29, 2015)

Looks like the product from the primary crusher on the left & final product on the right.  Still much human labour involved.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

Ron Evers said:


> Looks like the product from the primary crusher on the left & final product on the right.  Still much human labour involved.



Several places we saw people, usually women, laying out the gravel by hand, not even with rakes.
Heavy equipment is expensive and both difficult and expensive to move across a terrible road network.
When time and human labor is cheap and the alternatives are very expensive, it's clear what teh choice will be.

Up until a very few years ago, all traffic across this river that divides the town went over a frighteningly flexible suspension bridge.
The roadway was one plank thin and lots of the planks were broken and repaired.
At best it was very bouncy and unnerving.
Traffic too heavy went the long way around or got down to the river and drove across when it was shallow.
Then the concrete bridge was built and the town expanded as traffic increased.


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## Ron Evers (Mar 29, 2015)

What an experience you have had visiting these places.  

The new bridge looks to have been built using modern equipment.  For instance the piers look to have been formed with steel forms & the concrete placed in mass rather than by the bucketful.


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## snowbear (Mar 29, 2015)

Fascinating.  I notice the women at lower right apparently washing clothes.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

Water is free- and cold in the morning



 

Quite near car and motorcycle wash


 

And just upstream from boat landing
many villages are built along and mainly accessible by boat.

Boats are quite shallow draft as there are many places along these rivers where it is shallow and rocky.
The next day we rented a boat and boatman to take us down river about 4 hours. The boat was exceptional because it had actual seats (old auto/truck seats) as opposed to a narrow butt-busting plank.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

Yes, it was a great trip - for several reasons: I wasn't lugging really heavy camera stuff; we went to places that didn't attract casual tourists and so the other travelers we met were generally interesting well traveled and fun; the people and the country were terrific; not too hot and muggy; my traveling partner was laid back, interested in damn near everything I was and wasn't tight with money. (he also uses Sony A series so I didn't get concerned about backup bodies, etc.) 

All in all a spectacular trip topped off by a final two days in a nice Bangkok hotel that was overbooked so they put us in truly lovely rooms on the club floor.


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## baturn (Mar 29, 2015)

Wow! Great thread. Cool photos and interesting narrative. Thanks to Lew and those who asked the questions.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 29, 2015)

Every day, from morning until night, I would see new things that highlight just how different their life is from mine.

Somehow this beer company got the idea that 'drinking store' is an appropriate translation for cafe or bar so all across Laos I would see signs that say 'drinking store'.
And Beer Lao is just terrific. This is an ordinary village street; a small truck every day or so, motorbiles or bicycles or pedestrains routinely.





Drug bring sadness and pain.
Heroin, methamphetamines get transported across the northern tip of Laos from the Golden Triangle and some inevitably leeches into the local population, opium gets grown in the hills. Government anti-drug forces are spread thin and its hard to guess how sincere it is.





Tourists usually hit only Luang Prabang and Vientiane; everywhere else is much harder to get to. More serious travelers usually enter the country in the North-West by bus and generally travel a clockwise route so we tended to run into people several times over the three weeks.     We had run into a couple of bikers who were riding the small trails of northern Laos. (The narrow, rutted trails of Laos are great for riding a dirt bike (Tour Maps Forum Trip Reports S.E. Asia GT-Rider Maps and a couple of days later came across this menu in a restaurant where they'd left their mark.

Prices are in kip, about 8012 to the dollar; the period is used where we in US would use comma.


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