A Laosy Time in Laos - (15th September - 18th September 2006)

Friday morning was an early flight so it was out to Chiang Mai airport and a chance to pray that this Laos Airlines flight would land safely on the tarmac in Luang Prabang airport. There are a couple of land crossings that we could have taken to get us into Laos but this would have meant either some very uncomfortable bus journeys on roads from hell or some very long journeys going back over the roads we'd already come along. So for the sake of our bottoms and our sanity we went for the tiny airline, with probably a very sketchy safety record. Laos is a really small country and is still very much a developing country. The official title is Laos PDR. The PDR stands for Peoples Democratic Republic although within minutes of getting here you realise that it should stand for Please Don't Rush. It's actually pronounced Lao, the French when they took it over added a silent "s". The only other interesting fact that I have about the place is that there were probably more bombs dropped in the East and North East of the country than on Vietnam during the Vietnam war!! So much so that there are still tons of unexploded bombs around in some areas, so you have to be careful not to stray too far from the paths!!! So all in a great place to holiday!! Actually it is, when I was here before the people were some of the most friendly that I'd ever met and the scenery was amazing.

Anyway - the plane landed safely in LP and we took a cab to the centre of town where we found a guest house and then went out to explore a bit. Best bit of the afternoon was changing some money. I think that we only took out about 100 pounds but got a massive brick of notes!! The largest note that they have is 50,000 kip, although we never saw one, so the largest that you normally see is 20,000 kip, which is about $2 and we had 2.4 million kip!!. It was great being multi millionaires. In the evening we went along to the really good night market, some nice looking food and a lot of locally produced handicrafts. Way better looking stuff than we'd seen in Thailand, a lot of the stuff that was being sold, you could actually take home with you and use it without feeling embarrassed. We didn't buy any though, just in case. We did treat ourselves to a few bits and pieces though (a shirt, a couple of shoulder bags, ear rings and a shawl or two). Luckily nothing too heavy and all stuff that we'll be using on the trip.

Early the next morning we were on our way to Luang Nam Tha a town just over 200 kms away to the North West. We didn't really see many of the LP attractions but we have to come back this way later so we'll leave them until then. The journey out to the bus station was with a contraption that was a bit like a slightly larger tuk-tuk. It was another vehicle with a noisy 2 stroke bike at the front, but with bench seats in the back that would fit about 6 people at a push. Even with just the two of us, the thing hardly moved!!! The actual bus wasn't too bad, it was a proper bus with forward facing seats, windows and hardly anyone on it. From what I remembered of Laos it was a lot of unsealed dusty roads where you rode in the back of pick-ups with bench seats, all looking into the middle of the truck, and a roof but no windows. There were a few of these at the bus station but luckily they weren't travelling on our route. First stop for us though was breakfast from one of the many food and soap and pharmaceutical vendors at the bus station. A great carry over from the old French colonial days (apart from the architecture) is baguettes and good coffee, so we were all set for breakfast at the bus station. The bus left bang on time, which was amazing and then 2 minutes later stopped for 5 minutes to fill up with diesel!!! No idea why they don't do this before we all get on. Then it's the normal drive out of town stopping every few minutes to let someone else on. Best of all was 30 minutes into the trip when we stopped outside of a small factory and waited for about 40 minutes while the driver and the "conductor" chatted to some people and eventually put a load of wooden doors onto the roof of the bus!!! After that it was pretty much plain sailing all of the way to LNT. There were a couple of stops along the way for food and a chance for people to visit the bushes. Well the ladies visited the bushes, the men just went on the side of the road, not even trying to conceal what they were doing. The roads were loads better than I was expecting, there was only about an hour at the end where the roads were bad, before that they were just winding and steep, so that it took us about 9 hours to cover the distance. On the bus was a guy from the Ukraine, Andris, who'd just finished a stint in Pakistan working with Save The Children. A very interesting guy who we ended up having a candle lit dinner with in LNT (there was a power cut) and he even gave us a couple of Lonely Planet books for Vietnam and Cambodia.

Our main purpose for being in LNT was to try to take one of the Eco trreks that we'd read about. So in the morning we went to the local office to find out about them. The difference between these trips compared to a lot of the others that are on offer in other areas is that the villages that are visited are approached by the local tourist office and asked if they'd like visitors and then there is a constant dialogue between them on ways that they could improve the trips or if they are finding it too invasive etc. They also only use local guides and about 30% of the money that you pay actually goes straight to the village to pay for schools, running water, solar panels etc. So hopefully we wouldn't have too much of a negative effect on the area. There are also very tight restrictions on how many groups can go to each village and the size of the groups. When we got to the tourism office we realised that with it being the wet season there was no one else that wanted to hike in the area, so if we did anything it would be just the two of us and our guide. This made it a bit more expensive, but hopefully it would mean that we'd get more from it. We told the lady at the office that we were more interested in just the hiking, the scenery and didn't really want to be passing through lots of villages and treating them all like they were part of a circus. So she recommended a 2 day trip that did involve a stay in a local village but should be what we wanted. So it was back to the hotel to pack our things as we'd have to leave within the next hour.

We met our guide Gel, nice enough guy, with fairly good English but not very talkative. We started the tour at a village next to the main road (well there was about 3 cars that went past every 5 minutes, so not sure if that classifies it as a main road). We were joined by a guy from the village and he walked with us until lunch time. We went through his village without seeing anyone and he told us about the different ceremonies that were held at different times of the year, when people were sick, what they did to get rid of bad spirits and what sorts of things they collected from the forest to sell/use themselves like different types of nuts. So far so good. But then the walking started getting really steep and slippery. Lunch was nice though we reached a clearing at the top of a hill and finally got a break from the rain forest. Lunch was sticky rice and various other dishes. In Laos the main staple is sticky (glutinous) rice and the way that they eat it is to take a small piece of rice and roll it into a ball, then pick out a piece of meat, or vegetable or whatever and eat them together. Wouldn't be too bad if there was cuttlery or if people had washed their hands, but they don't. I could see how dirty our fingers were and that was going into the food - double dipping of rice balls was the least of our worries. But this is the way we had to eat and neither of us got sick from it, so shouldn't complain, well not too much. Then it was down hill until we reached the village some time around 3.00, after about 5 hours of walking. As we walked through the village we felt a lot more like we were visiting a zoo than we were expecting. We really didn't belong there. Luckily they've built a couple of huts to house the tourists so you don't interfere too much with the villagers lives. Gel was keen for us to get out and explore the village though - we were more keen to stay in our hut and leave them alone. All of the buildings were built on stilts (ground floor is for animals and fire wood etc, and is obviously very basic) but are all built using natural items from the forest - hardly a nail in sight. Eventually a group of kids came over to play with us and they enjoyed looking at our photos and being in a couple. Next up was a very awkward bath in the river. You obviously can't strip off completely because you're in full view of the village, but you want to make sure that you wash everything. All very awkward!! Obviously there were cockroaches to contend with in the house we were sleeping in, but they were no match for my shoe!!! We did go to sleep worrying about the huge holes that were in the mosquito nets though there was no way that they'd keep out a bear, let alone a mosquito.

In the morning we had breakfast and another very awkward silence with Gel. The meals were actually getting quite funny. When we'd finished eating, and making polite conversation we'd all sit there in silence waiting for the time for us to leave. Occasionally we'd say things like, "So where do we go from here" expecting him to get the message that we were ready to go. But no, he'd answer us and then go back to his silent thoughts. We had to be a lot more direct to get our message across. After breakfast we stopped in at the school and met a very friendly teacher, I think that it was manily a chance for us to see where our money was going. There were 5 classes in 2 rooms with 2 teachers 1 taught the first 3 years and the other the last 2 years. All of the kids have to be in school 5 mornings a week. It seemed like a crazy way to work it, but with only 50 or so children in the village this is the only way to do it and it seems to work. We didn't start walking again until 9.00 in the morning which was a bit annoying as we'd been woken up by the village noises around 5.00 and of course as soon as we started to walk, it rained!! And it rained for the next 2 hours. For most of the morning we followed the river through all kinds of mud. At first we tried to avoid the worst of it but eventually we realised it was futile and just tried to avoid the largest mud pools. With all of the water there were of course leeches galore. Kamay got a couple of bites, I got one and Gel got loads (the guy was only wearing sandals though). We passed through a couple more villages including one where they'd caught a monkey from the forest and had tied him up with about 15cm's of rope so that he could barely move - it was horrible. Stopped for lunch in another village where the women brought out some of their "handicrafts". They grow the cotton themselves and make all of the material, which is great, but as far as the actual designs that they'd sewn onto the bags and tassels etc that they were selling - I could have done better. It really was rubbish!! But we did feel bad about not buying any. Even though we'd told them we didn't want any and smiled lots it all felt a bit awkward while we were sat around waiting for lunch.

After lunch it rained again, this time for about 3 hours as we climbed up through the hills and across the streams. It was horrible conditions, everything was slippery and either muddy as hell or incredibly rocky. When it had stopped raining we started going down hill and this was even worse. We were literally at a crawling pace for most of the afternoon in case we slipped in the mud and cracked our heads on the rocks. Gel was just off ahead and would wait every now and then for us to catch up and then start going again. It was sooooo miserable, and it was amazing that we only fell over once each. In total we walked for about 9 hours that day and only just made it back before it got dark. Got to admit that both of us wish that we hadn't done the trip. Neither of us wanted to visit the tribes, we wanted to just leave them alone and would have been happier making a donation to the school rather than paying to go and see it. As for the conditions - that's our fault for not thinking it would be really muddy in rainy season. We did meet other people though who trekked with the other company in town who said that the conditions weren't too bad. So maybe we're just wimps or we were unlucky with the route that we took. Ah well, lesson learnt. Gel was quite sweet in the end though as he'd got us each a little bag made by the last village that we got to.

Back at the hotel we did a really bad thing. All of our clothes and shoes that were caked in mud, we washed them in the shower, just so that we could get the mud off before we put it all in our bags and gave to a proper laundrette. Sorry!!!

Better to end this post now and make the second post in Laos a bit more positive.

Thanks for reading this much whinging

Moaning Martin signing off