White water rafting on the Nam Ngum river
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2002
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Trip End
Sep 22, 2003
Vientiane,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Sunday, May 4, 2003
1st and 2nd May - Our trip started with a 2.5 hour sawngthaew ride most of the way back to Vang Vieng to a village where we wouldmeet the other people on the raftingtrip. Pip, another guest Fiona who was a teacher in Laos, andour Ozzie guide Mick joined the party of 8 youngsters (no olderthan 22) for the dirt road trip to the put-in point. This partof the journey took nearly 2 hours and I was desperate for the loo so I felt every bump and stone in the road but passing the littlevillages helped keep my mind off it. Aviding inhaling any of the dust from the road, or the marijuana smoke from the young people's group also made me forget my bladder! This road is hardly used by tourists, partly as it is a special zone as it used to have the CIA base here, so there were looks of astonishment on the faces of the locals as we passed by and the littlenaked people were shrieking with excitement andwaving but then realising they had no clothes on and trying tocover their bits.
At the put in point we had a sarnie and the locals gathered to see us off. These trips have only been running since January so it still the highlight of their week to watch the falang go off in their infatableboat dressed in padded vests and pink helmets. Can you imagine what they must have thought when this first happened??!! They don'tgo anywhere near the rapids as they are too dangerous so the thought of us having fun by taking a boat over them is completely mad to them. Apparently they used to follow behind and then watch fromthe bank asthey didn'tbelieve it was possible to cross the rapids. Over the two days we crossed 11 rapids (much more exciting ones on the second day) and paddled over 40 kilometres. As it is the end of the dry season there wasn'tmuch flow but we were stillable to movealong without too much effort. There are 31 rapids in the wet season so we will just have to come back!
Our campfor the evening was a pileof rocks by the river bank with a little bamboo shelter as the sleeping area and a small hole dug in the sand for the toilet. The "kitchen" was a pile of stones with a fire going and an ingenious little BBQ of fish, beef (tough as old boot leather) and free range chewy chicken but all very tasty. As the light faded, the youngsters went off to smoke more dope and Pip and I sat around the fire with the guides andhelpers (passing fishermen) drinking the fantastic beerlao andsome local rice whiskey concoction (called lao-lao) that my dad would use for paint stripper. This particular potent brew had bits of wood in the bottom for extra medicinal purposes and as the only falang guests left we were forced to keep drinking it. Apparently it's a bit like viagra (one of the few English words the fishermen knew!) We shared some fish caught about an hour before and then moved on to tiger whiskey which is more likenormal. It's amazing how fluent in Lao we became by the end of the drunken evening and we had the inevitable questions about why we had no children. The elder of the fishermen is a bit of testosterone king but can't actually have children himself and so he pointed to himself and to Phil andsaid something that we could only translate as "you jaffa, mejaffa". It's just so unnatural for married couples not have children by choice in South East Asia. With allof our other oddities (in their eyes) we really must seem like the most bizarre people! We all sang songs (us jingle belles which apparently they really love, and Mick the guide sang songs in broken Laos about the various sexual fates of the guides. I suddenly thought how innapropriate it was for me to be sitting drinking with a load of men which is reallynot the done thing in SE Asia where I would be assumed to be a prostitute, howeverMick said this was one fo the great thigns about Laos in that the men and women coulddrink together no problem. After a really enjoyable night with some friendly real Laos rural folk, we had adjusted our opinions of the people here and wished that more of the peoplewe encountered couldbe as cheerful and friendly as our fisherman friends. Isna't that a throat lozenge?
As old marrieds, we had the only tent but there are not many places to pitch one on a river bank of rocks so we were on a bit of a slope. Also the tents are made for Laos people andnot tall falang so we didn't have a very comfortable night. We were up at 6am admiring the misty views of the forests and mountains and watching a young guy with his new catch or fish. He must have had about 60 in his fish trap and he was taking about 3minutes to clean and gut each one in the river ready for smoking on their little bamboo smoke house. We saw the old testosterone guy from the night before and I pointed to my head and groaned which made him laugh. He then made somehand gestures that I could only translate as something to do with the power of the viagra like lao-lao!
So after breakfast we were off to face the trickier rapids and we all managed to stay in the boats all the way except when the splash wars started and people were physically wrestled out of the boats. We won as we managed to take two hostages (including their captain which was a bit of a worry) and several of their paddles rendering them immobile.
Around midday we were finished and we had lunch on a long boat that took us across the huge lake back to the village near Vang Vieng. The lake was a forest years ago before they dammed the river and so some of the taller hills and mountains are now little islands where the communists used to exile thieves and prostitutes. The teak trees under the water are being cut down by special saws but it makes navigation andswimming pretty hairy! At the village we were swarmed by children clambeirng all over the strange boats and being chased by some of the young lads until they were shrieking so much that their dad came and told them all off. Then it was another cramped sawnthaew ride all the way back to Vientiane for a well deserved shower and a steak at the little French bistro. Definitely the highlight of our Laos trip!
