Luang Prabang - Sasa Lao Workaway

Workaway (https://www.workaway.info/) is a platform where travelers can find hosts around the world and arrange deals where they devote some of their time in exchange for food and/or accommodation. We stumbled upon this platform some time ago and absolutely wanted to try it out on our trip. And we did so pretty much at the beginning of our trip with a 2 week workaway at Sasa Lao (https://www.sasalao.com/) in Luang Prabang. Sasa Lao consists of a guesthouse with several little houses and a dormitory, a restaurant, a big boat on which they offer cooking classes and sunset cruises, and many more smaller activities and projects.

On the first day after arrival in Luang Prabang, we sat together with Denis, the owner of the place, and Alycia, his right hand (who is also a volunteer there for three months) to define our workaway deal, our first projects, and potential projects for later. Our deal was that we help them for 21 hours per week per person in exchange for accommodation in the dormitory, breakfast, and 25% off of food at their restaurant.

Matthias’ main project was to build a simple type of solar collector on one of the houses’ roofs to provide pre-heated water to the boilers of three houses in order to save on electrical energy. Marina’s main project was to design flyers and posters for a buffet on their boat, which they wanted to start as a new offer, and promote it at Luang Prabang’s night market.

Marina’s flyer designing started with a classic trap of delegated responsibility without authority. She was given barely any constraints but had to go through several iterations after her design was checked by up to two people, resulting in many (sometimes conflicting) change requests that could have been avoided, which also resulted in a lot of frustration for Marina. But promoting the designed flyer at the night market to other tourists was certainly an interesting experience including a lot of rejection and revealing the different characters of people through their reactions. But within the two weeks, her work helped spread the word about this new buffet and successfully attracted at least a few people to join every day.

Matthias’ project started with interesting challenges of figuring out how a solar collector could be built, what materials are available, and where to get them. After proposing a simple design of an oval spiral of pipe held together with steel cable on the roof and doing some basic calculations, work could get started to create this structure in a tight space between the houses. With some occasional help from Marina or local workers, it took a few days to get all the materials and assemble the structure before mounting it on the roof. A few local workers then helped to lift the structure onto the roof and Matthias spent several more days attaching it on the roof and making all the necessary connections. By the end of our two weeks, the solar collector was connected to three boilers and successfully provided warm water to them.

Some thoughts by Matthias:
I’m always interested in watching craftsmen and construction workers, which is especially true in such a part of the world that is very different from Switzerland. I soon realized that some of the fun compilations about labor in some parts of Asia I watched on Youtube are reality here. There seem to be no safety standards, workers weld with dark sunglasses and sandals, metal is cut on the floor without shoes, googles, or ear protection. The tools they use are often quite old and have seen much better days on top of being stored out in the open with little organization. I also get the impression that workers mainly learn by doing and that they never had much (if any) formal training for the jobs they are doing. This manifests in many things that are improvised and if you look at the details (or also non-details) of e.g. their buildings, you see deficits and flaws everywhere you look. But funny enough, it also seems to be perfectly sufficient for the simple lives most people have in Laos, so I can understand why they do not want to put effort into perfection. This also makes me ask myself if it is time to question the high standards we have in Switzerland in e.g. construction just to build houses that cost a fortune and last for measly three decades, after which they are torn down because we don’t like them any longer, creating tons of special waste, just to then build something new again.

But it also feels very inspiring to see these simpler ways of how things like construction are done. Materials are relatively cheap and there seems to be very little regulation so basically every problem that is holding us normal people back in Switzerland is eliminated here.

It also fascinated me how the workers there seem motivated for their work. From my understanding they are provided with housing for their families next to the guest houses, food, and some money in exchange for their work. I also witnessed very short planning horizons of maximally one day and rather little appreciation for their work but conversely they seem to have a lot of freedom on how they do their job. While their relatively low wage and bad management would make every employee quit instantly in Switzerland, they do work hard, efficiently, and still have fun while working. This should really make a Swiss fellow wonder… (I’m open for discussions ;))Læs mere