Where's the trail?

Leave it to Becca to leave me with the manual labor. Isn't that how it always works?

Three days of hiking with the folks on the left made up the trekking portion of this little adventure. The first two days gave us definite flashbacks to our hikes in Norway (aka The Billy Goat Files) as we hiked up some seriously steep hills while the final day had us trudging back and forth through streams about the last half of the trek. Thankfully not many of them were deep and for the most part, we all made it through fairly dry.

Some highlights from each of the days:

Day 1:
A three hour hike to the top of Sam Yord (Three Peak) Mountain was a quick but hot and grueling start to the trip. Pretty much just three hours straight up, mucho sun and not a lot of scenery for us heading to the Hmong village. No super highlights except a lung burning reminder that we'd spent too much time hibernating in Denmark before heading to Asia.

Day 2:
Six hours going from the Hmong to Khmu village, complete with four ascents and descents (no hors categories for you Tour de France fans but potential a few category ones and some nice views). A long day of hiking, compete with a few adventurous bridges and just basic climbing over stuff, much like a lot of the "trails" we encountered in Poland. My overriding thought for most of the hike was in regards to going off trail. You're warned not to in Laos and Cambodia due to the number of still live landmines floating around. My brain instead was focusing on "Is this really the trail?" Not the worst, but not a whole lot of room for error in places. Plus I think we had one branch in the road all day. I also highly recommend not trying to walk between rice paddies and a town's sole hydroelectric source after 7 shots (granted falang shots I think) of Lao Lao. Happy Birthday to me.

Day 3:
Final day. Most tours that would mean a meandering easy hike complete with leisurely lunch and then a mid afternoon arrival back in town. Not here baby. Despite a slow start (our guide was a little er... hungover from the Lao Lao) we had three more peaks to climb and a bunch of streams to climb over/around/through. Beautiful start to things though the clear skies meant warms temps. Thankfully most of the time we were in the jungle. Even if it doesn't give you a true sense of how you're on just one of endless string of hills. A long day of hiking but with filling meals and plenty of breaks, we made it through all in one piece. All in all an adventurous journey and beautiful landscape, both in the infrequent views of the horizon and in the constantly changing detail of the jungle.

A bonus for reading about our three days of hard hiking? Water buffalo sighting!

I aim to please.

Brian

Lunching Lao-style

Now we really weren't sure what to expect when it came to the food on this trek. Others we had talked to who had done treks before hadn't always had nice things to say. Mostly I was just hoping that it would be safe and not incur the wrath of my stomach gods...I didn't bother worrying about things like tasting good.

When we took off the first day they handed us each 3 bottles of drinking water to carry. This seemed like a good start. At least they were going to keep us hydrated. Wait, unless that was supposed to last for all three days and be just a bottle a day. Yikes! Properly paranoid we started off...

After a couple of hours of climbing and sweating we stopped at a little rest area with a thatched roof over a raised bamboo platform. One of our guides disappeared and then reappeared a couple of minutes later with an armful of large banana leaves. These were layed down upside down and overlapping across the platform, effectively creating our table and plates in one fell swoop. As we watched, they then took little plastic bags full of yet-to-be-identified, goopy food, and poured them out directly onto the banana leaves in little piles along the middle. Then we were each handed a smaller, dense, banana leaf-wrapped package of sticky rice and voila: a Lao picnic smorgasborg. Day one featured a pork and cabbage, a mixed vegetable dish, and a bamboo shoot-based dish, and of course some homemade chilli sauce (and a banana for dessert) and it was all delicious! The technique was simple, you just took a small chunk of sticky rice in your hand, squished it together to make a Lao version of a scoopable nacho chip and reached in and used your fingers to push some food up against the rice. Presto, eat. Day's two and three lunches featured similar meals, with only the content of the dishes (they added my favorite: a spicy green bean dish) and the village who prepared it changing. We really grew to like eating this way, though by the end we couldn't eat another grain of sticky rice if our life depended on it.

Dinner and breakfasts were eaten at the Hmong and Khmu villages and prepared by the villagers and our guides from village produce and meat. We had some fanstastic squash soup, some chicken soup, and really good eggs in the morning. So we quickly learned that our fears had been completely misfounded.

However on Day Two, we had the kind of cultural and culinary experience we had been simultaneously looking for and dreading. We were almost all the way to the Khmu village after a long up and down hike from the Hmong village on Day 1, when we passed a Lantaen village. One of our guides had a friend there and arranged for us to be able to stop by. Like the Hmong, the Lantaen were celebrating their New Year, but unlike the more decorous attitude up in the mountains, the party had clearly been going full swing here since morning. (more on that in the village section).

We were led up through the village and into a large house at the end of the path. Ducking in through the door and squinting in the dusky light inside, we saw an energetic, attractive Lantaen woman telling the lump on the bed platform that appeared to be her passed-out husband what we could best translate as: get up, get up, the falang (foreigners) are here!

We all sat down in a semi-circle on the dirt floor perched on little wooden benches and waited to see what would happen next. After some discussion with our guides (in Lao) the woman grabbed a banana leaf to use as a counter, a cutting block, a knife, and something round and brown hanging from a string. I was closest and my first (wishful) thought was some sort of fruit or something but as she sliced it it became quite clear to me that it was actually liver, a large one of unidentified species, and she was slicing ALL of it. Besides for the fact that random organ meat is something I'm a little wary about, liver happens to be one of the few foods that I absolutely can't eat...it makes me retch. So this was not looking good for the home team and a couple of us were shooting worried looks at each other.

After she finished slicing the liver, she walked to the back of the room and came back with what looked like a raggedly, chopped up piece of pork with bits stuck on. A second look and the scent while she sliced it made us realize that actually it was meat that apparently had been tenderized someway and marinated in something tasty smelling. So that was at least more promising, but we were starting to feel daunted by the size of the pile of meat in front of her. The worried looks continued. She was obviously using quite a lot of meat to make us a meal to honor our visit and the last thing we wanted to do was insult her by not eating it but 1) we were afraid it was too much and 2) we were just plain afraid of it and what it might do to our stomachs.

THEN she got up and walked over to a large, tall wooven basket (think large laundry hamper). When she took off the large banana leaf that served as a lid we realize that the ENTIRE thing was full of cuts of meat. She picked up several pieces (including hooves and a tail) but put them back down as they were clearly not what she was looking for. Finally she stuck her arm up to her elbow down into the pieces of pork and came out triumphantly with another large cut which she brought back to the cutting board.

At this point i think the semi-hysterical, semi-panicked giggles were about to come bursting out of the group. This felt like hot summer to us (even though it is the Laos winter) and that was a giant laundry hamper of meat just sitting there. Oh. my. god.

Of course, as such stories usually do, this one ends with the city folks getting an education from the country folks. The meat came from the three pigs which had been butchered that morning for the New Years festivities and so was fresh. The three dishes, which our guide had helped our hostess prepare, were tasty and full of flavor. (Well, except for the liver...that is pretty much gross no matter how you package it). They had even made eggs for Sophie, who couldn't eat pork. All of us, who had planned on making a few token tastes, ended up piling more and more of the meat onto our bowls of rice and there were a lot of smiles and "mmmms" to be heard.

(Of course, like any good thriller just when you think it's safe something happens to make you jump out of your seat. In this case it was the hostess walking around the group of us with a chipped tea cup and a bottle of Lao Lao (Lao whiskey). I think she made the circuit 7 times with shots before our guide was able to extract us so that we could stumble the kilometer or so in the dusk to the Khmu village where we were spending the night (and supposedly eating dinner).

The adventure continues...

Becca

One Traveler's Eating Rules...

...brought to the forefront after having the worst fried rice EVER today. In Asia. It's like some small god wanted me to get sick again. And that includes 8+ years of midwestern asian cuisine::

1) If there locals are eating there, it must be good. Or at the very least authentic. Goes from everything from Lao cuisine to the truck stop slingin' biscuits and gravy.
2) No more than one continent per restaurant. Please. Special dispensation for fusion places as long as there is a strong immigrant contingent (northwest/asian being a perfect example).
3) If there are supposed to be sides to a traditional dish, they better be out on the table. I call this the "Malt Vinegar damn well better be at the table for my Fish n' Chips & Guinness" rule.
4) If you're in a foreign country, start with the markets/food stands/family run shops first then work your way up the expense food chain.

With some careful looking, there's bound to be a tasty treat at a cheap price. Our biggest disappointments in Asia have been the more expensive places. Tailored WAY too much for tourist taste and nowhere near the real thing.

That's all. End of public service announcement. Time to go stalk some locals for some tasty food. Any additions/comments are welcome.

Brian

PS Random piece of humor for those ro-sham-bo fans out there...

Send Chicken Soup!!!

Sorry for the delay in posting pics or details of our trek. I'd like to say it was because we were so busy living the high life in Luang Prabang, but that would be an untruth. Instead we have been staying close to our beds and our toilet as the fevers and unhappy tummies make their will be known. We seem to be coming out from the other side now though, so hopefully we'll be able to see more of Luang Prabang than a two block radius around our hotel and also be able to post some new material.

Becca

ps from brian: easily the lowest moment on the trip occurred Sunday night. Becca was in full fever sick mode and I was headed quickly in the same direction. Knowing we needed to eat something but with no energy to go exploring for food, we bought food from the place across the street from our guest house. Food in question? Spaghetti Carbonara and a Cheeseburger and fries. (This was only the second time we had ordered western food in a month of meals in Asia) Not local, expensive (about $10 total, quite spendy for here) and even the owner of our guesthouse gave us the disapproving 'silly tourists' face when we told him how much we paid. If there has been one time we felt like the dirty American tourist in this trip, that was it. Just wish the food had actually been good; would have at least justified our behaviour a little bit. Instead our desire for comfort food left us feeling even worse than whatever the bugs inside us were producing.

Happy Birthday Elaine!

Just a quick note to let everybody know that we made it back from our trek in the jungle with nothing worse than colorful stories. The trek was UNBELIEVABLE. It was like nothing we had ever experienced and definitely rewarded our decision to skip trekking in Thailand and instead do it here in Laos. We look forward to sharing stories and pictures with you soon.

 

Off to either Luang Prabang or Nong Khiew tomorrow. We need to decided between now and when the buses leave EARLY tomorrow morning.

 

B&B

 

HAPPY BDAY ELAINE!

Road Warriors

The next morning (see previous entry) it was time to face the music. We took a sawng-theaw the 2+ km south of town to the bus station to start our trip to Luang Nam Tha. We had been warned over and over that this was one of the (if not the) worst road in Laos. Evidently the route is sometimes done by bus, but when we got there all they had were trucks. (Effectively sawng-thaews, except even smaller than the one we had taken to the bus station.) It's just a small sized toyota pickup with benches and roof built in (and just open railings on the side). At least the bench was kinda padded....

We gulped a bit and then climbed in as our bags were strapped to the roof. We were okay with the 6 adults and one baby in the back, but then they added two more adults and two more children. (There was one other farang along with us; the rest of the 11 people in the back and 6 people in the cab were Lao). Along with the spare tire and a couple of sacks of rice it got a LITTLE bit cozy, if you know what I mean. Actually, it would have been fine except for our knees on down, which were bent in very uncomfortable positions with no place to move them.

The journey was a trip. We had two flat tires (right rear and left rear (notice the color of the road!) within the first hour, got to commune with the other roadside inhabitants while the tires went to get fixed, and we also stopped at one point to help fix another truck. With those stops and a lunch break, it was a 9 hour trip. We were good for about 6 hours of it, then the pain in our knees, calves and feet started to really bother us. The road was only paved in two parts (maybe for a couple of miles total), but a lot of the 195 km (117 miles) had been graded and flattened (we think in preparation for sealing/paving it), so there were only a couple of stretches where we were all quite literally bouncing off the roof and each other. If the whole road had been like the bad patches (which I think in the past it was) I don't know if we would have made it. We certainly would have been more bruised than we ended up being.

We had been warned how dusty it would be (since most of the road is just red clay/dirt/dust) so we had come prepared with masks. I wish I had gotten a pic of us with our masks and sunglasses...it actually worked pretty well to keep us comfortable. Since our heads were higher than the cab of the pickup, so we got the full brunt of the dust clouds. It certainly showed in our faces and hair.

Despite the length and leg discomfort, it was a great ride. We passed through more than 20 small villages along the way, with pigs and chickens running across the road and villagers peering out of their thatched houses. (Brian and I so wished that we had a video camera in our eyes so that we could share these villages with you (and with us later), but pulling out the camera in the bouncy, jostling, dusty back of the truck just seemed like a bad idea, as well as potentially rude. So we'll just have to remember it and you'll just have to trust us that it was educational, eye opening and quite scenic).

The drive was also a great way to get a feel for the jungle landscape and to see how little of northern Laos is developed. I don't think we'd be jumping at the chance to do it again tomorrow, but we're happy we chose to come up here this way instead of flying to Luang Prabang and then taking the better road north. (Besides, we'll get to drive that road on Saturday when we leave Luang Nam Tha for Luang Prabang).

An added bonus (and 3 extra wise traveller points) was the reaction we got from all the Lao people when we mentioned how we arrived. They all would get wide eyes and say "oh, that's a TERRIBLE road". No wussy tourist routes for us!

Heading off tomorrow for 3 days of trekking in the mountains and jungles and staying with hill tribes. We purposely didn't do any trekking in Thailand as we had heard over and over about how destructive and exploitive it had been to the native hill tribe people there and how touristy the whole thing is.

Laos is a recent arrival to this sort of tourism and it appears to be learning from Thailand's mistakes. So all of the organizations talk about eco-tourism and detail the steps they take to minimize the impact on the minority villagers and the environment. We feel much more comfortable about it.

So we're off, and Brian gets to celebrate his 31st birthday trekking through the jungle....not a bad way to kick off another year.

Becca

PS any of you think you are drinking bigshots for eating the worm in the tequila? Let's see you try this.

Crossing the Border in Style

Sawbaidee from Laos, the second country on our Southeast Asian tour.

The whole "how to get to northern Laos" question consumed a lot of our time in Chiang Mai, as we bounced strategies off friends and family and asked any other traveler we could find who had been through Laos.

The quandary was that the most direct way from Chiang Mai was to go up through Chiang Rai to Chiang Kong on the border, cross the Mekong, and then take a bus from Huay Xai up to Luang Nam Tha. The downside was that it was supposed to be 120 miles of the (or at least one of the) worst road in Laos, taking 8-10 hours. (You could also take a boat from Huay Xai, but a) those took 2 long days instead of one, b) they were much more expensive, c) they were open to the sun and relatively uncomfortable and d) slow boat rides of more than 1 day just make me nervous and stir crazy.) As we were a little intimidated by this trip, Brian also looked into an easier option: flying from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang and then taking the bus 8 hours back up to Luang Nam Tha on a slightly better road.

After much back and forth, we decided to go for the full backpacker experience and headed north early on new years' day.

We started out on a nice Thai bus (complete with air con, snacks and drinks, and a Thai movie (a tense psychological drama about a player of traditional wooden xylophones)) from Chiang Mai 6 hours to Chiang Kong on the Mekong. You get dropped off at a bus stop 3 km away from the border so you have to take a tuk tuk the rest of the way.

Unfortunately, the tuk tuk drivers here were very organized and coordinated so you couldn't negotiate price or play one off another. They also would only take one passenger per vehicle. While they did seem a little smaller than the tuk tuks in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, I still think that was a minor scam. Plus they dropped the three sets of tourist couples off at a tourist agency trying to sell visas and boat/bus tickets for the other side instead of at the border, which was another 300 meters down the road.

We earned a negative experienced traveller point by letting the tuk tuk drivers go with their money (they said the tourist agency would drive us the rest of the way) instead of insisting that they took us to the border as we were paying for. However, we earned back a point by quickly figuring out the score and not buying any tickets from the agency. It appeared that they were trying to sell us a ticket that Lonely Planet said should be around $7 for $11. While that might not seem like a big difference to you all at home, it's a 50+% surcharge ripoff here and not what you want to fall for. So we just said thanks, but no thanks and trudged the last 300 meters to the border in the sweltering sun.

Thai immigration was easy, and then we headed down to the bank of the Mekong to be ferried over to Laos. Ironic that our first 'overland' border crossing in Asia was actually over water! It was a cool feeling to be out on this tiny boat piloted by a wizened old man so close to the river level and watch Laos approaching. Once there it was cake to get through immigration (as we had already gotten our visas in Bangkok) and find a guesthouse room.

Before we knew it we had found a place with a riverside cafe and spent the late afternoon and evening drinking (we're in Beer Lao country now!) and eating and playing cards and journal writing and watching the sun set, twilight arrive and stars come out over the Mekong. It was amazing how abrupt the transition to a slower pace was as soon as we crossed the border into Laos (see photo at the top of the entry).

I think we're going to like it here.

Becca

btw...on flickr I've also added some pictures from new year's eve in Chiang Mai and some market pics (which should also be under the Cuisine tab) for those of you who like to see those sorts of things. They'll be after the Laos photos that are up so far.