Zuela Guesthouse Luang Namtha

... the food in Laos is much blander than Chinese food, but it was great to finally eat something different. We had a meal of fried fish, chayote, eggplant and sticky rice. The way they eat in Laos is they take some sticky rice roll it into a ball with their hands then scoop up the other food. It is much more fun than using Chopsticks. Sadly I’m the only one in the family to use this method, everyone else is hooked on chopsticks ...

... What a place - it is absolutely stunning with forested hills, beautiful rice fields dotted with dozens of bamboo huts and tiny villages where various ethnic groups live. Unfortunately, only 2 hours in to our journey my bike broke down. We wheeled it to the nearest village of bamboo huts where the locals sat and looked at it for 20 minutes before unscrewing every nut and bolt on the machine to try and fix it! Whilst it was being fixed, half ...

... the day just splashing about then had a lovely lunch by the river and got te boat back up stream. The boat trip was cool as you could see how all the villagers have their wee plots of land by the river, head out to fish and have a few animals too. The jungle backdrop was pretty sweet too. Timed our boat tripback up stream to perfection as the locals were taking the elephants for their bath in the river. Cool watching them and then they walked ...

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Bonjour a tous !<br><br>30 aout<br>Sitot entree au Laos, je regarde encore vers le haut. Je prends donc un bus vers Luang Namtha, situe pas tres loin de la frontiere chinoise. En route, des montagnes partout. Des forets denses, des jungles. Du vert plus vert que vert (celui des rizieres), des villages des hilltribes (les ethnies minoritaires qui peuplent le nord) qui vivent dans des maisons sur pillotis en bambou tresse et chapeautees par des toits de paille. AU ...

I decided to take a 2 hour bus ride to Muang Sing which was absolutely gorgeous. My travel book explains it as "a utopia for trigger happy photographers". The main town itself was a little less to be desired, but I met a really nice Columbian guy who has been traveling for a few months. We had lunch together and then met up later on. After lunch, I went for a walk to some villages. I had bought some Laos children's books in Luang Nam Tha from the ...

... mistake. Since I moved and sat in the aisle seat I had full view of what the driver saw. It was rain, rain and more rain but without working windshield wipers. He had nothing. The rain came down for a good three hours, heavy and did not get any lighter. The real kicker was we were driving on a one lane road with two way traffic. Motorbikes, cars, SUV&#8217;s, trucks, and contraction vehicles passed us in both directions. This ...

... as the guide refused to even discuss it the night before because he knew that we found the first day quite hard. This was probably a wise move. <br><br>We did get it out of him that it would be 4 hours walk until lunch, then up a "very big hill" as part of the second 4 hour session. <br><br>"How big is the hill ?" we asked. <br>"HAHAHAHAHA" was the response. <br>Hmmm.... <br ...

... that we are :) <br><br>We walked back through town to the tourist information centre, where we met the guide &amp; our 2 fellow trekkers (Daniel &amp; Anna from Sydney); we all then jumped in a tuk-tuk to get to the base camp, which was a small village on the edge of the protected area. <br><br> <br><br>We loaded up with drinking water (3 ...

... is not a particularly easy conversion, but at least we know that the 20,000 Kip note is roughly a quid, and we have LOADS of them... <br><br>We also had a 1,000 Kip note, which is about 5p (10 cents); nice waste of paper! Ok, I think you get the message, the currency here is nuts. <br><br>When it was time to catch our bus, we got to the travel agents and ...