Trekking

The morning of June 16, we met up with our guide, Tho, at the trekking company (Green Discovery) office. It was just the 3 of us for the next 2 days on the trek. We piled into the back of a pickup truck (a standard mode of transport in Laos) and were dropped off 40 minutes up the road.



We hiked to a small village in which two tribes live together, the Lantan and the Khmu. While there we saw our first opium smoker.



Opium is apparently a huge problem in Laos and many of the elderly are severely addicted. After leaving the first village we truly began the trek. The scenery was breathtaking:



We hiked for about 3 hours in the blazing heat and humidity of the jungle before we came to our lunch spot, a small clearing in the jungle. Our guide had picked some huge banana leaves to be our table cloth and laid out our lunch: bananas, peanuts, stir fry noodles, sticky rice, and pork. A feast!

As we were sitting and eating, Don felt something creeping up his leg...turned out to be a leech, a common problem during the rainy season. He was lucky enough to have caught it before it latched on, but was disconcerted nonetheless. A few minutes later, Tho noticed a bloody patch on Kate's upper thigh...she was not as lucky and a leech had latched on. After eschewing modesty and stripping her pants, it was determined that only one leech had made it. This was an omen of things to come...

After lunch we came to another tribal village of Khmu people. Here we saw a woman pounding rice to remove the shell, pigs scratching themselves, and children picking mangos. Watch the video!

We had 2 more hours to hike before we got to the village where we were going to spend the night. The rest of the hike was through the forest and rice fields:



Unfornately, both of these areas are infested with leeches. Tho had us roll our pants up to our knees because it is easier to see if you've been had by a leech than if your pants are rolled down. As we discovered earlier, the leeches can get up the pant legs without you knowing. They can also suck through clothing. Don finally discovered what made Kate hike fast! After narrowing avoiding leeches for 2 hours, we arrived in the Lanten village of Ban Nam Goi, where we spent the night in this lodge:



There was also a patio overlooking the river:



The children loved seeing their pictures on the digital camera screen, so we have plenty of photos:





We bathed in the river, like the locals, and ate village food that a family prepared for us. That evening we slept in the lodge in mosquito nets. The next morning we ate another local breakfast before heading off for the second day of trekking. This day we had 3 uphills to contend with and 2 river crossings. Unfortunately the first 2 hours were in leech infested areas. So back to the legs of our pants rolled up and constant vigilance to avoid being sucked. Kate got bitten again though, this time through her socks. It was a stressful, sweaty, disgusting experience to fight off leeches. Here is a video of the terrible creatures.

We came to a river, which we crossed by bamboo raft. After crossing the river the leeches were supposedly better, but there were still some to be fought off. The jungle on the other side of the river was much thicker. The humidity was amazing. We both had sweat dripping off us constantly. Here are some more photos of the trek:





We finished the trek in another Khmu village, but this one was connected to civilization by a dirt road, so the children knew some english phrases such as "What is your name?" and "I love you". The latter of which they scrawled on the beach for our arrival from across the river. This river crossing was done in a small canoe. The 2 fat americans made the canoe sit very low in the water -- we both thought we were going for a swim!

In this village we saw the village boys playing a typical Lao sport, Kataw. It is similar to volleyball, but the rattan (or plastic) ball is only touched with the feet and the head. See for yourself!

In all the villages were were struck by the close proximity the people lived with their variety of animals and by the fertility of all! In every village we saw pregnant women as well as young babies of all varieties: human, water buffalo, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, dogs, cats, and goats. We have tons of photos of children running around but because most of them were naked or semi-naked we don't want to post them for fear of being labeled child pornographers!

The final leg of our trek was a 1.5 hour pick up truck ride on a muddy dirt road. Some of the mud holes were enormous and quite nerve racking to get through, especially since the road was 4 feet from the edge of a 300 foot cliff!



We made it back to Luang Nam Tha and finished the evening off with some rice whiskey, homemade by our guide.





After 5 shots we had to excuse ourselves! We bought some rice wine, which was handed to us in a plastic baggie. Apparently it is BYO container...we decanted the baggie of whiskey into an empty water bottle. Now we have fortification for the next 7 hour bus ride.