Eclectic photos expositions, projections and workshops…The Luang Prabang Biennale Image Festival brings together photographers from several different cultural traditions.

Among lots of very intersting works – I’ll have to do more posts about these – we really liked the work from French photographer Boris Zuliani, another Polaroid-maniac.

Zuliani travelled in the Ha Giang Region, North Vietnam, and captured faces of the locals he met along the road on 4×5 Polaroids prints, giving those back to the people through the magic process Polaroid instant film offers, sharing a part of his work along his path.

Sounds familiar?

More info on Zuliani’s work here: www.polanoir.com

Lao kids went just crazy with the ‘magic camera’… Check out the full story of the Polaroid project in Laos here and here.

It was our last day in Luang Prabang and we decided to spend the last of the dying light here by the Mekong River.

We went down the banks in the low setting sun washing the river with a streak of golden light cutting through the choco-coloured waters of the river.

Perfect time to say said good bye to the mighty Mekong.

The sun was going down on Luang Prabang. In the middle of the Mekong river, on a dusty and dry bank of sand, Lao kids were playing soccer.

We were watching them when I was invited to join the game…

“A piece of cake” I told myself, after all Laos’ Fifa world ranking is 178th, just between Somalia and Cayman Islands.

After 2 months of backpacker diet (banana pancakes and beer, anyone?), I was really struggling to catch up… The result? Well, another bitter defeat for the French team.

During our two day trip to Phouluang Tai, we visited the local school, a shack with two blackboards and some battered wood boards acting as school benches, packed with no less than fifty school kids, all ages in one classroom, with one very young teacher desperately trying to keep them quiet.

When they saw us they were totally overexcited – news of the “magic” Polaroid camera had spread very quickly, and they all wanted to see the magic trick with their very own eyes. Many of these kids have probably not left the village yet; they have no TV or internet, and can only rely on two hours per day of Hmong radio to connect them to the outside world. So when Guillaume took a couple of Polaroid pictures of the class, fifty kids ran totally out of control, following him, shouting and laughing, all very eager to have their picture taken.

We were soon almost running out of instant film. So I tried to explain to the disappointed kids the vast superiority of the digital camera: with it, you could take hundreds of pictures, and see yourself in the LCD screen etc. What did I just do! As I was still explaining the beauty of the digital SLR, the kids took the camera from my hands and started taking pictures of themselves, even more excited!

At that point the teacher gave us an exasperated look and simply shook her head.

And this is what happens when kids get ahold of your digital camera:

As we rose in elevation, we came across the remote Hmong village of Phou Luang Tai. The only way to get here is on foot, and it’s a seven-hour walk from Luang Prabang that ends with a steep climb, the kind that leaves you with sore thigh muscles and a pain in both knees. Add to this the hot weather – It was over 30°C when we did it, which didn’t help. But as we rose above the treeline, the last stretch was beautiful, with hills covered in virgin vegetation.

We arrived at the village – thirty wooden huts were scattered across the slope below us – before sunset, just in time to play with the curious kids and take a “bath” with the locals at the small spring flowing one hundred meter from here.

Phou Luang Tai is the definition of remote: it has no electricity, no running water, so when our little five-person group – 2 guides and 3 tourists – came equipped with digital cameras and cell-phone, all this high tech sophistication imediately captivated the kids and their shy parents’ attention.

But again, what garnered the most interest though, was the Polaroid camera. All what they wanted was a picture from what they called the “magic camera.” With it we were able to instantly hand out prints to people, many of whom lacking household accouterments like mirrors, had never seen themselves before. All without USB cables, electrical plugs, printers or computers. Magic.

After two relaxing days in Luang Prabang, we embarked on a two day community-based trekking through Lao wilderness and small villages with the chance to experience the ‘real Laos’ with a village homestay.

After a 2 hour walk, we stopped at a small village, and we made our first Khmu hill tribe encounter. The kids seemed to be at the same time terrified and fascinated by the Westerners in the party…they followed us around to watch, but if any of the whitefolks moved or looked in their direction, they would hide…on the other hand, we couldn’t wander around without more than a curious glance or two. We took a couple of photos and gave them some polaroid shots. After this, the kids had no more fear of us.

Meet the cute kids in the below gallery. Lots of cute kids. About 50% of the population of Laos is under 15.

Our Lao detox started at 5.30am when we dressed and hurried down to the marketplace to assist to the traditional almsgiving ceremony. Well, maybe I should say when I woke up and hurried down to the marketplace…Guillaume being the exact opposite of a morning person, he didn’t manage to get out of bed so early…

It started with a dozen monks lining up, heads bowed, shuffling out of the temple moving toward the line of devoted locals who had been patiently sitting crossed-legged, awaiting their turn to give the monks their offerings of sticky rice in return for a blessing and hopefully another day of happiness and good fortune.

Soon similar groups of monks were working their way from every direction. Tall monks, short monks, wrinkled monks and fresh-faced monks…Days dawning, skins crawling, Pure morning.

Resplendent gold Buddha statues, Bougainvillaea trees peppered with fushia and pastel pink flowers, the safran robes of hundreds of monks and their multicoloured sun umberellas swaying in their wake, burnt ocres of the crumbling walls of French colonial houses and gleaming silver wats roofs…

Colour and a sense of calm antiquity is everywhere in Laos’ foremost tourist showpiece, Luang Prabang.

We couldn’t have found a better place (not to mention a more beautiful) place to detox after all these Cambodian beers…