True In Laos

Hong Kong International School sends its students on a week-long trip each year. There is a list of about 40 trips that kids can choose from. Sky chose to go mostly to Thailand and Malaysia, usually to scuba dive. True has roamed around more - to China, Taiwan, India, South Africa and, this year, to Laos.

The trips have different themes. This was a 'service' trip where the kids helped a local community in north central Laos. They spent most of their time in the mountain village pictured above. It was the first time a group of foreigners had visited the village, so they made quite a stir.

True said the kids in the village were very wary at first but soon warmed up. Here is a boy walking on stilts made from stalks of bamboo.

Pretty soon they were playing a ball game with the kids - True said he and his friends lost every time.

The point of the visit was to help finish building this school. Previously, the village used reed mats as walls, which had to be replaced after heavy storms.

So the kids got to work.

True seems to have enjoyed himself.

Though he says the work was hard, particularly carting supplies up the mountainside.

But everyone was enthusiastic.

The girls worked as hard as the boys - if not harder.

The kids were split into small groups and each group stayed with a family in the village. True said he became very close with the boys in his group - as well as with the family. The food was very simple, mostly rice and vegetables.

This is Jordan, one of the boys in True's group.

The villagers didn't speak anything but Lao and so the kids communicated primarily through sign language. They did learn a few Lao words and phrases, though.

True and Jordan working on a wall.

This is what the school looked like when they had finished ...

... complete with a poured concrete floor.

When the school was completed, the village held a traditional baci ceremony in the school during which they tied white strings on the kids' wrists as a blessing and to ward off evil. True still had his on his wrist when he got home.

The kids did other things after the school was finished. They took a trip down the Mekong River - though True says he slept most of the way.

This is the Mekong. They visited caves along the river where broken and discarded statues of the Buddha are housed.

They went to a beautiful waterfall and swam. They visited Luang Prabang, the former royal seat of a Lao kingdom, and knelt by the road to give sticky rice alms to saffron-robed monks at dawn.

And they visited a refuge for Asian black bears, popularly called 'moon bears' because of the marking on their chests.

The refuge rehabilitates bears who have been trapped or injured by poachers. The kids got to feed them by putting peanut butter and nuts and leaves inside bamboo, which forces the bears to work for their food and keeps their natural instincts alive.

Each group gives a presentation to parents about their trip after they have returned to Hong Kong. This is True's group talking to us and showing slides.