In the Jungle, the mighty jungle... - Luang Namtha, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Luang Namtha, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Woke up nice and early to prepare for the next 2 days camping in the jungle. So I started off by shaving my beard off having finally given in to Kim who had been saying she wanted to fancy me again - fickle women! I capitulated and shaved most of my beard off leaving a beautifully sculpted handlebar, convinced she would then be attracted to my manly face. Unfortunately she was disgusted and I was sent back into the bathroom to lose the rest of it. The removal was emotional as only a man/woman who has cultivated a beard can understand. I came back out with a clean face and got rewarded not with a happy girlfriend but an empty room - apparently Kim was bored of waiting and too hungry so I'd been dumped in preference of breakfast. I did get a smile when I joined her for breakfast though so it wasn't all bad.
All aboard the tour bus/tuk tuk and we were joined by 3 jungle companions. Most important was our guide Tak who immediately struck me as a lovely guy who introduced himself in near perfect English. He came from a local village and had been trained in guiding by UNESCO - we later found out that his training including cooking, communication/language, 1st aid and bush craft. Our most entertaining companion was to be an Essex lad who was chatty from the off - more on his entertainment later. Our 3rd companion was Vareena, a German girl who'd been travelling with Grant for a while and mostly trying to resist his charming advances at the same time as sleeping in the same room as him. She seemed kind and quick to laugh from the start. When we pulled off we were immediately chased by the quirky hotel tour guy hefting a bag on his shoulders - apparently our guide had forgotten his bag - good omen for the trip. 5 minutes later when we all stopped at the town market for supplies it turned out I had left my iphone charging in the hotel bar so who am I to judge?! In the market there was all sorts of offal available to buy for food as well as illegal wildlife products and cheap chinese good of all sorts. Grant bought a rucksack, and the rest of us chipped in on a 2 litre bottle of rice wine (Laos Laos) to ensure we all slept later on. It was a bright green colour that looked like it could be petrol or possibly water from Fukushima nuclear plant.
30 minutes later by Tuk Tuk saw us arrive at the village in the National Park we were to start trekking and 2 main obstacles immediately presented themselves. Number 1 Grant confessed that he didn't have any shoes and that he was going to do the entire 2 days barefoot. He insisted that he had been working in a jungle in India on a building project for a few months and that he's done it all barefoot. Our guide insisted that he couldn't do it, and that not even the locals went barefoot where we were going. After 10 minutes and no options we set off with the guide in front who had to point out to Grant where there were biting ants and other hazards so Grant didn't get injured. I have to admit at this point I thought Grant was a total knob, who was going to get a cut foot or poisonous bite and bring our trip to a premature end. We were joined by two ladies from the village who were to be our porters - they didn't speak a word of English but communicated brilliantly with smiles instead. Then the next obstacle appeared - a very wobbly bamboo bridge over a decent sized river. Grant crossed it like a monkey followed by Dave and I who looked more like drunken Giraffes, however watching Vikki and Kim was the best. They basically crossed like OAP crabs amidst many yelps and words their mothers wouldn't be proud of. Cross it they did and onward we went. Pretty soon we entered the jungle and the track turned more and more overgrown and wild. Evidently in rainy season not many people do the trek and our guide was forced to start hacking his way through with a machete. It controlled the pace well though and by lunchtime it had just started to hammer down and we crested a rise where we'd stop rest and eat. At about this point we started to spot the friendly leeches. Grant with his bare feet was the primary target but he took the approach of not caring about them much and playing with them a bit before flicking them off. I saw a bit of mud on Vareena's lip and joked that there was a leech - she half panicked and brushed at it but it turned out to be true. So I turned from joker to hero by grabbing her face and ripping it off. Annoyingly the initial joke seemed to make everyone blame me for the leech and refused to recognise my hero status.
During our wimpy white antics our guide had been hard at work chopping down bamboo and banana leaves, and within 20 minutes had constructed a large dining table with a shelter for us to eat at. Admiring his speed and construction I don't think anyone was questioning his skill anymore. The porters and guide rustled up a disgusting looking slop of a lunch, including questionable green mush, weird chicken mush, sticky rice and bananas. However as soon as we tasted it it was a fight to eat as much as we could before the others all finished it. Seriously good nosh.
After lunch we tried to perfect our waterproofing and set off for the 4 hour trek to the campsite. The trail became more and more difficult as the rain continued and was up and down slippery mud slopes. Grant's positive upbeat manner started to warm to me as Kim and I followed him along the trail. One down side was that whenever he slipped (every 2 minutes or so) he created a mud slide for us following so even with walking boots it was really challenging. About 2 hours in Grant basically sledded down a hill and as I followed my feet suddenly shot out and I went sliding down to the bottom. I found it really funny despite the layer of mud, however when Kim followed suit she had come to the end of her tether and had a minor melt down. She got up and her face looked ready to explode, she looked at me with an accusatory expression and shouted "My bag is muddy!". My stupid brain made me laugh at the annoyance she was showing at being muddy on a jungle trek, which cued some very annoyed glares and mutterings. I tried to backtrack and asked the guide if she good go up front ahead of Grant, which seemed to help a bit. All the while we had been getting attacked by more and more leeches, which was getting annoying. I followed Grant's lead and just stopped looking down or inside my trousers, figuring they'd only take a bit of blood and then drop off.
The next highlight of the trek was to be wild monkeys. Unfortunately I wasn't going to get to see them for 3 reasons. Firstly I was behind Kim, secondly she was wearing a day-glo orange poncho which the monkeys were going to be shy of and thirdly when the others up ahead spotted them, Kim chose that exact moment to block the path finding more importance with a stone in her boot then going 5 more metres to where we could see the monkeys from. I wasn't going to complain though as I was already in the bad books because she had a muddy bag.
An hour or so after not seeing the monkeys we arrived at the campsite, which thankfully consisted of an amazing wooden cabin where we would sleep instead of the tents I had been expecting. We all collapsed and enjoyed a period of no rain while peeling off our waterproofs and clothes. When I got my trousers off I was expecting the odd cheeky leech, but what I found was an absolute bloodbath and some fat ************* that had got damn greedy with my red stuff. Once they had been disposed of the wounds (just like the mercedes logo) wouldn't stop bleeding - probably the anticoagulant they use to keep the nice tasty flow going until they're fat. Next was the long awaited river swim to wash off the day's grime and cool down after the long march. As soon as we reached the river it was apparent there wasn't going to be much swimming, just a lot of being careful not to get swept away into the raging rapid the downpour had been feeding all day. If there had been some locals to watch us they would have been rolling on the floor laughing with the girls in their bikinis and boys in their boxers inching into the river and squealing at the squishy mud between the toes. Then they would have glanced up and re-rolled around the floor at our paranoid holding hands and clinging on to branches to avoid floating away to certain death. I did try swimming against the current for about 10 seconds and you could just about stay in one place swimming at top speed. I did this more to scare Kim than really wanting to because I needed some revenge for the lack of monkey spotting.
After towelling off us boys joined the guide to try our hands at fishing. Actually we just watched him use the simple but effective bamboo stakes with 2ft fishing line and bait stuck in the sand. In no time he had caught a small fish and an eel that didn't look particularly appetising. He left the fishing stakes in the sand to catch more overnight for breakfast. Back at camp the village ladies already had found time to wash and had the fire going for dinner under a wooden shelter and the rain started to come down again so we all took the opportunity to relax. The rain just got stronger and stronger to the point that the fire was surrounded by a flood and we were feeling a little bit guilty at not having any work to do while the guide and ladies cooked us up another feast on their fire island. The food was really good again and consisted of more of the same plus a big banana flower salad that had been scavenged on the way earlier that day in the jungle. It was full on dark by dinner time and so it was really atmospheric eating by candlelight and drinking a few shots of the radioactive Laos Laos. Grant kept us entertained with most of the conversation talking about Essex culture, which was a little ironic in the middle of a Laotian jungle. He both condemned and admitted to various negative Essexness, mentioning games of soggy biscuit he'd played when he was a teenager and insisting it was okay as he'd never lost one. He had us in stitches at one point when he candidly described why he didn't have a girlfriend due to his high standards. Summarised his explanation went something like this: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not fussy when it comes to shagging girls - in fact after a few jars I'm pretty much anyone's. My problem is that even if I like a girl, after a few weeks I notice how chubby they are, or that they have a big nose, or their voice is annoying... I still like them but I don't really want to have sex anymore" He said all of this like he was a victim of the world, which was hilarious in itself but even funnier was watching the reactions and disappointment in the male species on the girl's faces. It had me giggling inside all the way to bed. It's not surprising that the stereotyped Essex girl seems to try for cosmetic and surgical perfection with that sort of attitude being the norm there - it's a shame it usually ends up with a nasty cross between Barbie, Pamela Anderson and Pat Butcher with candyfloss for a brain. I don't want Grant to sound like a bad guy at the end of this though, because he had a penchant for exaggerating a bit and saying things for a funny reaction that made us all take to him by the time he was using himself and Essex as the main point of entertainment. We all loved the bare foot Essex metrosexual travelling hippy who the guide had started to call Rambo.
The next morning seemed like far too soon for our trip to end as our group had bonded well, but we did have about 5 hours of trekking before us so an early wake up was followed by a quick dip in a calmer part of the river. A big breakfast of sticky rice tomatoes and various other food wasn't done justice because we had all over-eaten the night before. We did our best though and packed our bags. Grant's chinese rucksack that wasn't even 24 hours old had ripped in 4 different places and the straps had snapped and been retied twice. He had to get his hippy bag out instead, so he was going to be even more unstable than the day before. That morning's trek was really interesting as our guide pointed out all of the different plants that locals use for different medicine and food. He also stopped at a bamboo forest to construct shot glasses and cigarette holders for anyone who wanted one. At lunchtime there was another impressive table chopped down and constructed, and a deadly poisonous millipede to shoo away. Food was great again but the highlight was the guide making a bamboo bird trap and showing us how it worked with Grant pretending his big toe was a curious bird - "snap!"- "argghh buggar!" Brilliant. We'd been climbing all morning and now it was a 2-3 hour descent to the village and road and civilisation. Grant again kept me entertained at the back losing his footing, doing pirouettes, and sliding down on his ****. It was a miracle he didn't injure himself but we finally made it to the village before we all collapsed from heat and exhaustion. Kim provided us with the finale of the trip by deciding to take her waterproof trousers off on top of a nest of big red ants. No-one noticed until she started barking "OWW! .... OWW!... OWW!.... ARRGGGHHHH!!! to which we all (Kim included) laughed until there were tears in our eyes.