After sending my last update I got bed ridden for 24 hours with a
fairly bad case of hummm.. having eaten something funny, which meant
my trip was delayed again for a day. This actually worked to my
advantage as I'd found myself wedged into a group of people whom at
first I was glad to meet but after a couple of days had started to
find really annoying. They were a strange mix of brits and aussies.
Its funny traveling alone - You meet people all the time and get quite
good at figuring out quite quickly whether you want to hang out with
them or not! If not - there are various ways of tactfully ditching,
one is to fake a fever last minute and let them get on a bus without
you.. well this is what happened except I didn't need to fake it..
Instead I took a bus the following morning, 4 hours to Nong Khiaw, and
then an hour’s boat ride to a beautiful town called Muang Ngoi. On my
bus I met a lovely australian couple (they do travel a lot the
aussies) called Bec and Stu who are on their one year honeymoon
traveling the world. We got on very well and spent the next week
together picking up a few other friends along our way...
Muang Ngoi was absolutely stunning - I finally found what I consider
to be the real Laos - rural village life. As we got off the boat we
were welcomed by lots of "Sabaai Di"s (hello, good day) from women and
children who lined the dirt street that went through the village. I
rented a little hut for $5 a night that looked out onto the Nam Ou
river below and mountains the other side. It had a little bathroom
(cold water only - no accommodation had anything but) with a hammock
outside. On the street chickens, dogs, ducks and pigs outnumbered the
people; just as the locals outnumbered the tourists (finally!).
The next day we hiked to another village two hours away through paddy
fields and mountains. There I met 3 more travelers who were staying
the night there, and the atmosphere there was so devine that I decided
to do the same (Bec and Stu went back to Muang Ngoi that afternoon).
A family rented me a hut for $1 a night, and I spent that afternoon
hanging out with the village people, and sucking in their culture.
One of the other travellers was an anthropologist who spoke Lao, which
made communicating with the people FAR easier than it would have been
otherwise (although I must say I am getting rather good at the old
sign language). We sat around a fire on the ground that night and
spoke to the locals. The family who put us up had a son who had just
returned from a trip to Vientiane where he'd found and married his
wife. He was 20, she was 15. He'd paid her family a million kip in
order to marry her, and had brought her back to his village where
they'll spend the rest of their lives. He asked Chris (the
anthropologist) how much he'd have to pay for a wife where he came
from(Austria) - he didn't know what to say, and ended up telling him
he'd be paying for the rest of his life! The boy didn't really
understand this concept.
Most of the poeple there had never seen a
car.. it was pretty remote. I was woken at 6am by the cockle doodle
doo of several roosters, and the hustle and bustle of the village
getting up to go about their daily chores. The men went off into the
forest to hunt, the women fed their ducks and chickens and pigs and
children played everywhere. The village houses in Laos are in the
form of bamboo huts on stilts, one per family. This village did have
a loo (a hole in the ground inside a lone little hut). They eat
whatever they can catch: fish, monkey, snake, dog..
I wondered around the village's paddy field and marvelled at little girls digging in the
banks for beetles. They dug into the dirt with sticks, extracted the
little creatures, and put them in a little basket they carry over
there shoulders. They later put them on a scewer and fried them for
dinner as if they were marsh mellows!
Pretty dirty and in need of a tooth brush, I walked back to Muang Ngoi
the following day on my own. I felt very alone in the world, but not
lonely.. it was quite wonderful being so in the middle of nowhere -
and I'd taken a big stick from the village just in case I came across
any stray dogs along the way!
I spent another couple of days in Muang Ngoi, and tried to find some
troops to accompany me to Phongsali, to no avail. The word was out
that it was bitterly cold up there and too foggy to see any of the
views anyway. I did tell a few of you that I would 'be careful,' and
made the decision that venturing off on a two day journey to get up
north, on my own, would be perhaps a little unwise, so I decided to
follow Bec and Stu to Luang Nam Tha, a beautiful province in the north
west, instead. It took us a day and a half travelling on three
different buses to get to the town of Muang Sing which we made our
base from which to go on a three day trek.
So, we found two other eager beavers, a very sweet, if painfully shy
welsh guy called Glen, and a french woman called Marine to accompany
us on our adventure. The five of us and two guides hiked for 4 hours
the first day to a village in the middle of the mountains, right next
the Mekong river. As we entered the village, about 20 children came
running up to have a look at us. We literally had a stare off for
about 10 minutes. We were enchanted by them, they were fascinated by
us. This village had only been visited three times before by
tourists. Here we found a little bit of heaven on earth... a pristine
white sand beach lining the Mekong, where we bathed our very sweaty
bodies as the sun went down behind the mountains. We were put up by a
family in the village, all sleeping on the floor of the main room
inside their bamboo hut. A fire blazed in the middle as they cooked
us our dinner. They don't really take the meat off a chicken in the
same way we do.. rather they seem to just chop it up willy nilly,
bones and all, and dump it in a saucepan to boil, so you're left to
tear whatever meat you can find off the various lumps of bony, grissly
bits of the animal. This combined with sticky rice and boiled beans
was our food for every meal of our trek.. pretty disgusting actually,
but it didn't taste too bad at the time, we were all so exhausted and
hungry!
The next day we trekked for 4 hours up hill the whole way under midday
sun - it was absolutely the most exhausting experience of my life - i
was carrying warm clothes for the evening (cold at night) and all my
camera equipment (including an extra zoom lens) which weighed my bag
down considerably. I hated my bag, hated it.. actually considered
just chucking it half way up.. and screwing the photography.. but
towards the end my things were saved..
I was also carrying a pair of extra trainers with me (a really ugly
pair I found in the market which were a size too big) as I was worried
my old favourites might not last the trip.. as we reached the bottom
of the last very steep hill that we had to climb, we were joined by
two fishermen returning to their village (the one we were going to)
after a days fishing. Well I traded the trainers for one of them to
carry my bag.. both sides were very happy indeed.
The second village we stayed in was inhabited by 'Acka' tribe people..
they're the ones who wear the amazing silver head dresses.
They were even more infatuated by us than the first. Their source of water came
from a pipe that stuck out over a square bit of cement - this was the
village's bathroom. So, me and girls, in big need of a shower, went
to wash ourselves... well what a spectacle we were. It warns in the
guide book always to keep a sarong on when bathing so as not to offend
the locals, so we went about the rather complicated procedure of
undressing but keeping our bodies hidden at the same time.. as we
washed, 10, 15, about 20 children all gathered round to have a look at
these three western women trying to wash the Laos way.. they gawped
and giggled, and when we went behind a hut to change back into our
clothes they poked their little heads round the walls to spy on us!
As we came out finally back in our clothes, three Acka women were
showering away, showing us how it is done, baring all apart from their
bottoms.. they held out breasts and jingle jangled them at us and
laughed hysterically - we and our modesty were well and truly taken
the piss out of.. the whole episode was very funny.
In each village, at first is was impossible to take photos. Every
time I even put my camera round my neck the locals would run away and
hide as if i'd pulled out a gun. I figured out a way round the issue.
I'd take a picture of myself, and then beckon the bravest of the
bunch to come forward and have a look at the image on the back of the
camera. When they saw it they gasped in surprise, and then using sign
language, I showed them that I could do the same of them.. Once one child let me take
their photo, I'd show them themselves on the back, which they LOVED,
and then found that several more would gather to be part of the
experiment. Soon I had loads of little faces eager to see themselves
staring back at them from the screen on the back of my camera.. The
women were more tricky - most of them too suspicious and too proud to
give in to the game, but I managed to get a few.. the men were quite
easy but not quite so interesting!
There were no loos in either of these villages - we were pointed in
the general direction of where to go and do our deeds.. dodging other
excrements along the way to an appropiate bush became quite tricky in
the dark - thank god for the head torch. Neither village had
electricity either.
Bec and Stu crossed the border to Thailand after the trek, and I
needed to come back to Vientiane, where I am now, to meet my wonderful
friend Alex Llewellyn who has come to join me for 2.5 weeks of my
travels. It took two and a half days, including one 15 hour bus ride
over night. I was the only tourist on the bus, and one of only 4
women. The bus would stop quite regularly, and the men would all jump
off to pee on the side of the rode - not quite so easy, or fast, for a
girl.. so terrified that the bus would leave without me if I dared to
run off to try and find a hiding place, I hardly drank any water the
whole way (!) and as a result have been feeling dehydrated and a bit
sick since I got back here to Vientiane!
Anyhow, Alex and I are off to explore Southern Laos this evening - a
10 hour bus ride over night.. I'm meant to be on my way to Vietnam
already but I can't get enough of this country - its amazing.. the
people are so gentle and relaxed.. I mean, SO chilled out! Coming here
direct from New York would be a head fuck - most of the time the food
you order is something quite different to what arrives.. buses leave
when they are full, schedules don't mean much, and they don't seem to
understand the meaning, or point, of a raised voice - ever.. I've
leaned to just go with the flow, and its great.
I've loved receiving you're e-mails.. please keep them coming.. thank
you so much..
Miss you all and sending loads of love,
Jax xxxx
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