Trekking and crawling thru 18 inches of mud

Trip Start Jun 13, 2008
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Trip End Aug 20, 2008


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Flag of Lao Peoples Dem Rep  ,
Thursday, July 24, 2008

We are well into the rainy season in Laos, but today, we got up early to go on a pretty long trek to a waterfall that is supposed to be really cool.  I guess we should have anticipated the day when our driver got our car stuck in the mud on the way to the trekking spot - enough so that we had to take a different route.  During the first hour, we spent our time dodging puddle after puddles of mud trying to keep ourselves somewhat clean.  By the second hour, we were literally 18-inches deep in mud that felt more like quicksand...the first steps were gross, the next were comical, but after about 2 hours of this, we were starting to get legitimately concerned.  We were tired, soaked, in the middle of nowhere and up to our knees in mud.  We were literally going up a mountain through rice fields, corn fields, and some small houses.  Every local farmer we passed definitely had their fair share of laughs at our expense.  After about five hours of trekking, we arrive at a road leading up to the waterfall....umm, are you kidding?? There was a %&*#ing road that led to this thing????  Oh well, it's all about the "experience", right?  We stop at the riverbed to rinse off legs, shoes, etc...and then rejoin civilization at the waterfall.  Even other tourists were giving us looks as we approached muddied and wet. (see pics for full effect)
 
The waterfall turned out to be very cool.  Since it is the height of the rainy season, the waterfall was very fast and spilling over all sides of the walkway to get to it...at certain points, you had to hold onto a railing and walk through running water 2-feet deep to get through.  You felt like you were in the middle of a jungle during rainy season, oh wait we were. Attempting to dry our shoes
Attempting to dry our shoes
 At the bottom, there was a calmer bay area, where you could go swimming and hang out. There were a bunch of other westerners in the water so Lauren started chatting it up.  We met two sisters from Pennsylvania who were on an extended trip like ours, and a couple other people from Australia.  On our way back from the waterfall, we stopped at an Asian Bear rescue park. Apparently, Bear's bile is very big for its purported medicinal purposes in China (not kidding).  Bears are held in small cages and just constantly drained of their bile.  After our experience at the Elephant Park in Thailand, it's nice to see people doing something about rescuing these animals... and of course, Lauren now also wants a baby bear.
 
Back at our hotel, we went through probably half the supply of soap and water trying to get ourselves clean.  After getting as close as possible, we met up with two girls (Kristina and Nicole) from Journeys Within (the travel company we are using in Asia).  They are both in mid-20s and just recently opened the office in Laos.  We had a great time sharing stories over drinks at a local pub, where we also ran into the PA sisters from earlier that day at the waterfall.  Kristina and Nicole took us to Lao Lao Garden for dinner and we invited the sisters along as well.  It's a BBQ type restaurant popular with locals, tourists and ex-pats.  The setup was great, all patio style seating with an open fire pit in the middle of each table.  You pick different types of meats and vegetables and cook them yourself (kind of like Benihana without the chef).  We got lard, meat, broth and vegetables and you put them on the surface in that order.  The lard is for non-stick and flavor, the beef takes a little longer and the boiled broth cooks the vegetables....perfect setup and fun, especially for Lauren to have some normal girls her age to hang out with.
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