Mr Kammuan with his daughter and grandchild.

Thursday morning early we left Luang Prabang in a rented pick-up truck (The road is too bad for anything else) for the 7-8 hr drive to Luang Namtha. Got there in time to get to the wedding village around 3.30 in the afternoon. Met with three different people to try and get a timetable for next day's wedding.

My usual main contact, Mr LaoLee, the senior Tao priest in the village, was away in MuangLong. I had been there before with him, he's got a daughter married to a local man there. It was full moon, maybe he was attending some other ceremony. In his absence, his place was taken by his stepbrother Khammuan, whom I knew from an expedition last year around NY to record an ordination in another village.

He gave us an estimated timeline about the next day. Seven people would set off early morning from the groom's village, three women and four men, representing the groom, his family and his village. The groom himself would not come. On arrival, estimated sometime late morning, they would be received, some rituals would be performed, followed by a meal, some more minor rituals, and lots of singing (and drinking?) between the parties and between the women and men. Next morning, after breakfast and some more ritual, they would depart with the bride to the village of the groom, where the remainder of the wedding would take place.

Next, we interviewed the father of the bride. ('We' means Keuay, a research assistant at TAEC, of Khmu descent, and Leela, a young Lanten man who had earlier spent a month's internship at TAEC to be trained in his role as cultural contact person for TAEC in Ban Nam Lue, and myself as photographer).

Apart from keeping the organisation informed of any events in the village that may be of interest to TAEC, Leela also acted as language interpreter in the interviews. Keuay being Khmu, speaks Khmu, Lao and pretty good English. Lanten people usually have little or no English at all, some Lao, but sometimes only little, and of course live in their own Lanten language. Leela translated some of the interview from Lanten into Lao for Keuay and me, then sometiems Keuay would check with me and fill in the gaps I'd missed in the Lao. During this brief trip I ended up speaking and hearing very little English, and I think it benefitted my Lao.

Father of the bride gave a slightly different timeline and sequence of events from Khammuan, which also differed slightly from Leela's version. You get used to that, reality will even be more different.

Based on that info, we decided to forego the ceremony at the grooms village, in the middle of that same night, prior to the departure of the grooms party. The actual time of this ceremony was defined as 'before the chicken barks" which was Keuay's version of "before the cock crows". But when I asked what hour that would be, I found that, like in the Bible, the cock crows three times, once around 1.00 AM, once around 3-3 AM, once just before dawn. Our three informants differed in opinion which cock crowing would define the ritual time. To make sure we covered it, we'd have to arrive before midnight at that village (at our estimate an hour by car away, in reality almost two hours), and wait all night. Keuay had been very carsick during our trip from LP to Ln, and was hesitant. The 'middle of the night ceremony' had been described by all informants as 'minor' I envisaged a scene of one or two men doing some praying, over a table with an oil lamp, some offerings, and some ritual texts, maybe burning a few papers with script, a scene I have photographed numerous times.

On the balance, we decided to conserve our strength, and wait until morning.

I wasn't entirely sure how far the other village was, and what the arrival time of the grooms part would be. I suggested getting back to Ban Nam Lue at 11.00 AM. We slept in LuangNamtha town.