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Day 11 - Luang Namtha trek (day 1)
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We were up early today ready for the first day of our 2 day trek up in the mountains.
Neither of us slept brilliantly, mainly due to the bloody noisy insects outside the guest house which sounded like a security alarm going off ?!?! It was the weirdest noise, and SO loud, I had my pillow on my head and it was still unbearable.
It also rained most of the night, so we knew that we had our work cut out on the trek because 2 x 8hr treks on steep terain are bad enough in good conditions, let alone during a mud-fest !
Yesterday we had decided to do one of the very eco-friendly treks organised in association with UNESCO, responsible little tree-huggers that we are :)
We walked through town to the (very good) tourist information centre, where we met the guide & our 2 fellow trekkers (Daniel & Anna from Sydney) and jumped in a tuk-tuk to get to the base camp, which was a small village on the edge of the protected area.
We loaded up with drinking water (3 litres each), put on our small backpacks, and off we set on a 5hr trek to a local hill tribe's village, where we would spend this first night.
The first hill was a killer, as our bodies tried to work out what on earth we were trying to do !
Our guide practically sprinted up in his Dunlops while the slow westerners behind followed him, slowly... it was quite slippery after the rain, and none of us fancied twisting our ankles within the first hour.
He let us catch our breath at the top of the first climb, and kindly hacked down some thick bamboo for us to use as walking/treking sticks. And off we went again...
At this point our guide warned us about leaches, little blood-sucking slugs which crawl up your boots, through your socks & trousers, and then bore into your flesh. Nice.
We were not at all delighted with this prospect, but it certainly made us walk faster !
We walked for about 2 hours in the blazing sun, up through the heavily forested hills, and to our lunch spot.
We had to take our boots off to get into the hut (shoes always have to come off before stepping inside anywhere in Laos), so it was a good chance to have a leach check.
And LUCKY ME, I had one little bastard burrowing into my left ankle, as you can see below !
They start off really small but expand noticeably when they fill up with your blood. It looked like a little worm, appearing quite harmless, but it wasn't very nice to see it wiggling around with half its body boring into my skin !!
You have to be quite careful removing them, as the very last thing you want is to rip one in half, because it will then go completely under your skin and be very difficult to remove. Yuck.
I burned my little sucker off with a lighter, and prayed that he was on a solo mission rather than having a sock party with his friends !
Lunch was sticky rice, beans with pork, tomato sauce and green pumpkin, served on a huge banana leaf.
The local eating technique (no cutlery !) was to squash the sticky rice into a ball and then use that as your fork, pushing the beans etc onto the rice and then into your mouth.
Despite looking quite basic the food was really good, Katie in particular was raving about it. At the end of the meal everyone was equally impressed with Katie's wet wipes which helped clean us up in no time !
The view from the lunch hut was fantastic, out over the jungle in front of us, and down over the valley, pretty cool...
After this half hour stop it was off again, for a solid 3 hours, with some nice photo ops on the way...
It was hard work, but really good exercise, and it was great to be high up in the mountains, with no humans, no noise, no polution, just us and Mother Nature.
Well, it was great until it started to rain anyway ! In rainy season, when it rains, it really RAINS. As the large raindrops thundered down around us, on went the waterproofs, off went the smiles, and up went the difficulty levels, as we started slipping and sliding all over the trails, especially going up or down the hills !
At least if our spirits dropped it was easy to cheer yourself up; all you had to do was to look around at the state of your fellow trekers ! Check out this motley crew...
The last hour was quite tricky as the rain really chucked it down, but eventually we made it to the bottom of the hill, and before us appeared the Ban Nalan Nuea village, home of the Khmu tribe, who were to be our hosts for our first night in the Laos jungle.
We couldn't wait to get our boots off and sit down, so we were guided to our own hut on the edge of the village near the river, and next to the worst toilets this side of the Glastonbury festival ! They were absolutely horendous.
The girls kicked off a bit so our guide went to have a look himself. He was embarrassed at how filthy they were so he also made a fuss to the tribe, something along the lines of "if you want tourists to visit your village then you need to keep their toilet clean".
We felt awful when a poor village girl came over and started to clean them, but to be fair they were a disgrace and could have ruined a really enjoyable day. Hats off to our guide for sorting it out.
After that were invited to take a relaxing swim in the nice brown river (errrr... no thanks), or to wash under the village tap. No prizes for guessing which option most of us went for ! Daniel was brave enough to try the river and swore it was lovely, but I'm not sure any of us believed him ;)
A few minutes later we decided to go for a quick walk around the village, when this souvenir shack sprang up from nowhere, offering a good selection of random handmade tack and some Beer Lao !!
We bought a couple of rather overpriced Beer Lao, to celebrate being dry, and then sat and enjoyed our very warm beers down by the river and relaxed, as later we were due to have dinner with the chief.
It was quite interesting to sit and watch various cute animals being carried to the kitchen hut, and knowing that we were watching the last living moments of our dinner ! Not sure if Katie felt the same about the vegetables ?! ;)
Dinner was pretty good, chicken soup, pork broth, sticky rice and more pumpkin. The village chief didn't touch his food (he probably had steak and chips with his wife beforehand !), but invited us to drink some famous "Laos whisky" in his honour.
(This was quite interesting considering that before we started our trek we saw signs in the tourist office saying "DON'T DRINK LAOS WHISKY !!!")
Naturally this stuff tasted like lighter fuel, it was unbelievable, but we all had to drink it and smile and say "NYOK" which was "cheers" in Laotian !
We all practically downed our cups of tea to get rid of the taste of the foul whisky, and were obviously DELIGHTED when it was brought out again a few minutes later !
The chief beamed with delight when we smiled politely and didn't run away, and we couldn't hurt this little guy's feelings so we had another shot.
However, he must have thought we liked it by now because out it came again, but the 3rd time round we politely refused, and he left shortly afterwards after a very short question & answer session.
I could hardly remember my name after the whisky let alone think of an intelligent question, so it was quite a short Q&A session as you can imagine ! We were terrified that if we kept him talking we'd have to drink more of it !!
We then went to bed in our mosquito nets (after trying to cover up any big holes) and were wished a good sleep because we would be woken up at 7:30 for an early start, with an 8 hour trek ahead of us tomorrow.
lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
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