Welcome to the jungle - Luang Namtha, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Luang Namtha, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Today started like many other days of our year long holiday,
waking up at 7am and staggering around stuffing everything we own into two
increasingly badly packed bags. Why we have chosen to spend our honeymoon
operating in business hours for a whole year when most people just go and relax
in luxury for a fortnight is a question that I repeatedly ask myself. It’s
becoming a mantra.
The answer to the question (which normally takes a coffee
and the sighting of one or two chickens/goats/buffalo on the roadside with a
breathtakingly beautiful backdrop to remember) is simple. We are crazy, and we
like to do things that most people think sounds awful, we eat things that most
people sound awful and we listen to music that a lot of people think sounds
awful, that is why we got married in the first place, because we love each
other and we want to run away and be weird with each other.
We left our hotel with its amazingly comfy bed, tiny noisy
dog and guinea pigs (which may have been pets or food, we dared not ask) and
headed for the “office” (garage with a desk) of Luang Namtha Travel. It wasn’t
open yet so we went to a café across the street and had a coffee and a sandwich
each, one was tofu with vegetables and the other was fresh peanut butter and
jam. The Peanut butter was still warm, it was that fresh. It was a delicious
breakfast and it ******* should be for the price of it. I forget the actual
cost of the meal now, but Hayley told me afterwards that it cost more than our
three nights stay in the hotel…. For two ******* sandwiches.
By this time the travel office was open and we rushed over
to meet our guide Chansing who was going to take us into the jungle. We bundled
our bags into the back of a tuktuk and were given two sleeping bags, which didn’t
wrap up all that small, I remember thinking “This is too much **** to be
carrying for 3 days”.
Chansing was going to take us to the local market first to
buy torches for the night and to buy some supplies and a pot to cook food in
the jungle. He offered for us to just take a look around the local market and
enjoy the sights while he got the stuff. We got two feet into the market and I
could already see a man holding a full grown, live goose upside down by its
feet while another man looked at it trying to decide if he wanted to buy it and
kill it for his dinner. The poor thing wasn’t even fighting, it was just like a
zombie.
Seeing things like that make me feel more empowered in my
decision to not eat meat because, could I **** kill a goose and have it for my
dinner when I can easily just have beans on toast. However in the same breath I
have to admit the open honesty of what’s going on, some dude says “Hey, a
raised this bird since it was a little baby and now it’s big and fat I’ll sell
it on, do you want it?” Other guy says “Yeah, I’m gonna kill the ****er and eat
it”
I know this is now becoming a rant so I’ll cut it short but
the fact is this, if everyone was forced to look their next meal in the eye
first, there would be a lot more vegetarians. That’s all just gone through my
head and I’m not even in the market properly yet.
We couldn’t find torches and I tried to ask a guy who ran a
mobile phone stall if he sold phone batteries but he blew me off in the best
display of bad customer service I’ve seen in a long time. If I knew their
address, and I thought he could read it, and I thought he would even give a
****, I would have written a complaint letter. He made me even older and more
English than I already am.
So we decided to just go back to the tuktuk and wait for
Chansing, on the way out I saw buckets with loads of huge fishes piled on top
of each other in a couple of inches of water, just flopping about, staying just
alive enough to be called fresh. Captain Birdseye was nowhere to be seen.
Back out on the road with Chansing riding in the back of the
tuktuk with us we saw the worst looking excuse of a chicken (don’t worry, it
wasn’t being mistreated), it was standing outside someone’s house and fluffing
up its feathers with its neck tucked in tightly. It looked exactly like the
poor ****ers standing at a bus stop in December at 8am waiting to go to work. If
it had hands and pockets they would have been stuffed in deep. Chansing laughed
and said “He cold”.
The cold morning air is something that you should suck
deeply into your lungs and let it drop your body temperature those few precious
degrees because by 10am you will be sweating like a pig. In fact, I saw more
than a few pigs on this trek and I was sweatier than most of them, if not all.
We stopped for a couple of minutes at a roadside hardware
store to buy two headlamps for the night time so we could go spotting animals
of a nocturnal nature. Or at least give ourselves a fighting chance of not
falling into rivers or stepping in bear traps. I’m probably exaggerating there,
I don’ really think there are any bear traps. The headlamps we bought were
really good; they look professional and were reasonably priced. We didn’t
realise until we got back to town 3 days later that they had two different
chargers and neither of them was the right one for the lamps we had bought, we
really need to sort that out before we next go in a cave.
The tuktuk pulled over at a small village to pick up a local
guide, we later found out that his name was Tong and he is more of a water and
groceries carrier than a guide. That’s a strange thing to dawn on you when you
are following someone for hours into thick jungle and you are just assuming
they know where they are leading you. What the hell though, we’ve been led by a
dog into the forest before and come back alright.
Chansing gets into the back of the tuktuk with us and
produces a water bottle and tells us it is full of Laolao whiskey, he offers us
some (at half past 8 in the morning!) and when we kindly decline the offer he
takes a swig and smiles happily. There is already that giddy pang of “we are
going to die” running through the back of my mind. But it’s best to not
vocalise it at this early stage because it would be bad for morale.
The tuktuk pulls over at the side of a dual carriageway and
we start to unload our stuff, the sun is already blazing and we both become
very happy that we have our free hats from the woman in Chiang Khong to protect
ourselves from imminent sunstroke. We then walk across the road and Tong points
to where there is no visible break in the bushes and gestures “here, this is
the way into the jungle”.
In only a few minutes we are already in much more dense
jungle than we have ever been in and climbing up an almost 45 degree hill at
the same time. Part of me thinks that there is absolutely no way that we can
possibly keep this up for 3 days, part of me wants to be man enough to prove
the other me wrong.
We walk for about an hour before the terrain starts to level
out a bit and we find a space to sit down and have a break. There’s a little
makeshift bench made from a fallen tree and we make full use of it. We drink
some of our water, and spot a flying squirrel up in the trees above us. Even
from a great distance we can see that it moves way faster than any squirrel
I’ve seen in England.
Tong brings us some nuts that he has found on the floor,
Chansing says they are called MAKO and they are like a hazelnut with a thin
shell on the outside that you must crack before you can eat them. We all eat a
few and they were really nice. Tong was so pleased we liked them that he ran
off and got a load more. I ate about another six then stuffed my pockets with
some for later (when I get separated from the group and I have to live in the
wild for six months).
After heading uphill for about another hour we began to
descend down into the darkness of the jungle, beneath the towering trees which
blocked all but thin rays of sunlight. We repeatedly leapt backwards and
forwards over a small stream which snaked its way through the forest, in an
attempt to stay on what you could only very loosely call a trail.
Later Hayley found us a massive hairy caterpillar which I’m
pretty sure had Mothra in it and a smaller version of the same thing stuck to
my shoulder while I was sliding sideways down a hill. That is all the wildlife
we saw in 4 and a half hours of trekking. I was a little disheartened at that,
but to be honest, I was so tired and hot that even if I’d seen a golden tiger
riding on a dragons back I wouldn’t have given it much of a reaction.
Finally we made it to our jungle camp, our comfortable
jungle camp they called it. It was some sticks that made a frame which they
balanced banana leaves on top of and laid banana leaves on the floor so you
weren’t just on the mud and rocks. It didn’t have any walls, I could see now
why the guy in the office gave me a funny look when I asked if it had a
mosquito net. Luckily we had brought our own and after we had added some extra
leaves to our house, to make it more cosy and secure; we managed to set it up.
If I could take comfort in one thing from the night we were
about to spend in the jungle it was that we probably wouldn’t get malaria, if
we got under the net quick enough.
Now, there was something about Tong that had troubled me
slightly during the day. I don’t want to sound like I’m being over dramatic
about it but he was giving off a bit of a rapey vibe towards Hayley. He didn’t
ever do anything to her or say anything, to anyone really. He just looked at
her, a bit too much, and in a weird way. I tried to not let it bother me but
I’m fairly sure that just reading this, from my description, it would bother
you wouldn’t it? If you saw someone just looking at your wife, with unblinking
eyes, and an expressionless face, for minutes at a time.
So my level of jungle paranoia has risen to about 25 percent
at this time. I want to be perfectly clear, I’m having fun, this is a good
experience, it’s just my overactive imagination has never had so many fun
options with which to torture me.
I tried to make this not bother me and just assume that he
hasn’t seen a girl quite like Hayley before and there is nothing to worry
about. Chansing built a fire and cooked up some fresh banana flowers that he
found in the surrounding area and we ate a delicious meal using banana leaves
for almost everything. Seats, plates, bowls, spoons and the roof over our head;
seems like this is a plant with many different uses.
I found a weird caterpillar like creature walking it’s way
along a stick on the floor so I picked it up to inspect it closer. It was a
very strange looking thing, almost like a long thin slug that walked almost
like a caterpillar, if it were waving its face around like an armless blind man
looking for a light switch. I took a few photos of it so that it could be “Bug
of the day” on facebook when we got back to town. Then Chansing came over to
see what I had and said “Oh, leech” and in one fluid motion took the stick off
me and threw it in the fire. Now I didn’t see that leech crackle and pop in the
flames, but I know it did; now you do too.
My feeling towards leeches would change over the course of
the night when I ended up with five of the ****ers attached to me. Not all at
the same time, but that’s beside the point. They filled themselves up off me,
ruined my socks with caked up blood and left me with big itchy holes in my
ankles which are still visible as I write this some three weeks later. The
truce between leeches and me is off, they are as bad as mosquitos, throw them
in the fire; throw them all in a fire. Ball them up and throw them down an
active volcano.
Chansing broke out the Laolao and peer pressure being what
it is, I had more than a few drinks with the rest of our fearless group. Laolao
is pretty strong stuff, and from what I can gather the Laos way to drink (out
of the cut up bottom of a plastic bottle) is to do shots (trebles) in quick
succession until the bottle is gone then fall asleep. This is what both of our
guides did while we sat in the dwindling light, admittedly with a pretty good
buzz going.
Moths. It’s not even dark yet and there’s thousands of moths
all over everything, they are in the air, trying to get in the mosquito net,
they were all over my bag. Hayley has since laughed at me for thinking that
they were eating my bag. I don’t know where I got this information from but
I’ve always believed that moths go in your wardrobe and eat holes in your
clothes. I’ve never seen them do it; I just accepted it as truth. Hayley
reckons they were just having a look, or maybe laying eggs, at a push.
We wait until 7pm when there is no light at all. Then we
wake up the guides and say we are heading out into the jungle to find some
filthy night creatures. We didn’t manage to track down any civets (although we
did see their scratches on some tree trunks) but we did find lots of incredibly
noisy crickets and grasshoppers. We saw lots of big spiders and we almost fell
in some really deep mud, the type that steals your shoe and you can’t get it
back.
After about an hour of walking around with our headlamps
which were like lightsabres on our heads cutting through the dark, we decided
it was best to call it a night because it was starting to get cold and we had
to be up at first light.
Back at the camp we found a jungle crab waiting for us. It
didn’t occur to me at the time but Hayley said that she thought our guides
might eat him because she found a crab claw next to the fire when we first
arrived. Also when we said that we were vegetarian and that we wanted to see
lots of animals during the trek he said “you will see many frog; you eat frog?”
I don’t know what he thinks frogs are but they aint vegetables. Don’t worry, he
didn’t eat the crab.
We made ourselves comfortable, drank the last of the Laolao
and got into our mosquito net to settle in for the night. The forest floor is
not a comfy one and the banana leaves have big thick spines that stick in your
back if you don’t position yourself well on them.
I hugged Hayley and we lay in the dark listening to the
sounds of the wild around us. The stream we had followed all day was only a few
meters from us and provided a sound which was better than any new age
relaxation cd could ever provide us with. Without even being aware of the
process I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up ******* freezing. It was so dark that I couldn’t
see anything around me except for the shimmer of the white mosquito net in
front of me. I thought, this is stupid, why are we trying to sleep just on the
floor in the jungle, why do we have blankets! Then I remembered that I was laid
on top of my sleeping bag and not actually inside it. I wriggled into that
thing like some giant bizarre butterfly trying to become a caterpillar again
and was asleep in minutes.
I awoke to the crunching of branches underfoot close by, the
sounds of something heavy being dragged, I’m trying to get my eyes to focus but
they won’t. There is nothing in front of me but something is definitely there,
the flicker of a torch, someone is definitely there. Who is it? Have jungle
people come to find us? Is it aliens? What in god’s name is happening? Then I
realise that the fire is dying and it is probably Chansing getting more wood to
keep it going. I don’t know this for sure but in a genuinely cowardly moment I
just decide I don’t care and to stick my head in the sand and hope it goes
away.
It felt like the rustling and tussling went on for a long
time. I just kept thinking, please don’t let a hand grab me, please don’t let
me hear and angry voice speaking in a language I don’t understand. Please just
go away and let me go back to sleep. I fade to black again, which I can proudly
say means I can sleep through anything, even a potential cannibal rape/UFO
abduction.
This time I woke up and found that it was actually morning
and nothing horrible was happening, breakfast was being cooked, and hot coffee
was waiting for me in the cut up water bottle that we had our Laolao out of the
night before. It was good, breakfast was great, more sticky rice with banana
flowers and green beans. We even had some deep fried bananas from the day
before to give us a little extra sugar kick to get us going.
I distinctly remember the description of the trek saying
that day one was moderate difficulty (lie) and day two would be easy to
moderate (major lie). Day two was much harder than the first; it was almost
immediately uphill and even more steep. We spent a lot of time grabbing onto
trees to stay upright and there were times when we had to try to hang onto
roots which were just slightly coming up through the mud.
We stopped at a crazy point on the side of an almost
vertical hill to take in the sights of a huge waterfall. It was a breath taking
sight, unfortunately my breath was already taken from exertion at this point,
coupled with wondering how the hell we were going to get down from where we
were. The answer to that was simple, we go up. We go up for at least another
hour.
Near the top of the mountain (I’m sure it was a mountain, I
have climbed hills before and they weren’t anything like this), we entered a
really intense thickly overgrown area. It was like a tunnel of leaves and
branches where you couldn’t see the floor beneath you or the sky above you. We
had to crouch to make it through and I had a big bag on my back so I had to
crouch even more than everyone else.
I started to feel a bit claustrophobic after we had been
pushing through for about half an hour without making it to the other side.
Then a branch that was caught on Hayley’s sleeve whipped me across my naked
eyeball and both of my eyes instantly started streaming. So I was pretty much
blind too for a while. I’m not prone to having panic attacks but I think I was
probably about five minutes away from one when we finally made it through.
We could not even believe the point that we had reached. We
were on top of an actual mountain looking at a 360 degree view of the most
beautiful forest you can imagine. There was not a cloud in the sky and it felt
like there was not another human or any worry in the world. The breeze filled
my lungs with cool air and my heart with happiness and hope.
The sun was really beaming down on us now and I decided
since we had come out into the open it was probably best if I put some sun
cream on. There was absolutely no point in trying though because I was sweating
so profusely that it was like I’d just stepped out of a shower and it all just
wiped off instead of coating me like it should.
In the bushes along the trail we were shown small traps
devised to catch sparrow sized birds. They were like a hanging mouse trap with
a wriggling wingless dragonfly as bait. Chansing showed us how a bird would try
to take the bug and a wire would wrap around its neck and incapacitate it at
the very least; lucky birds died quickly. We did our best to look at it from a
technical standpoint, I mean, no way could I build such a device so I had to
admit it was fairly impressive.
It was only a short walk along relatively easy terrain
before we saw the village in the distance. It raised our hopes even more and
gave us that last bit of energy we needed to power our way there. When Chansing
said that we were only 20 minutes away we thought he was joking. But the path
opened out and within ten minutes we came across a group of 4 young boys of
about eight or nine (all armed with machetes).
Chansing called out to the boys and they came over to show
us what they had been doing all morning. Out collecting birds from the traps
and shooting them with catapults. This wasn’t even a black widow catapult or anything
like that; I’m talking about a Dennis the Menace catapult. I couldn’t shoot a
tin can from four feet away with one of them and these kids were shooting birds
out of trees. We had spent the last two days trying to spot birds and hardly
even seen them, never mind shooting them down with a weapon from the bible.
One of the kids came over to us and after a brief hello he
showed us his haul. This is what I can only describe as the saddest collection
I’ve ever seen. About 15 tiny dead birds, all beautiful colours and different
breeds. Just stacked up on top of each other like stationary in a kids pencil
case. Hayley asked what the birds were for as there is hardly any meat on them,
Chansing said that they just put them in soups and eat them whole, the bones
are so soft you hardly notice them.
The kids grabbed the bag and headed off in front of us. This
meant that we couldn’t be far from the village, it only took another five
minutes to get to the top of a hill and there it was. My head was still in a
bit of a weird place because of the dead birds but I came to terms with that
and moved on the second I saw our final destination. The village was breath
taking; it was one long road that bobbed up and down along three steep hills.
Brightly coloured houses were dotted along the sides overlooking the mountains
and valleys below. I have never seen anything like it.
As it was still daylight the only people in the village were
the children and the older women, we later found out that as long as the sun is
shining, every able bodied villager will be out doing their part, working in
the rice fields, hunting or farming other crops. The children were over the
moon to meet us, calling out “Sa bai dee!” from their houses and running along
side us waving or motioning for high fives.
We felt completely welcome, even though we must have looked
like aliens to these little kids. We made our way right through the village to
a house at the highest point where we would be spending the night. The house
was locked up and the man of the house was out working so we had to sit in the
shade outside and wait for someone to come and let us in.
Our rapey local tour guide had to leave at this point and we
were once again reminded of how he likes British and Americans because they
always give him a good tip. We really didn’t feel like giving him a tip because
he gave us the creeps but he had walked a crazy distance carrying stuff for us
and saved Hayley from falling down a hill a few times so he earned a couple of
dollars.
What followed was about 2 hours of children, pigs, chickens,
goats and dogs coming to stand and scrutinise us with varying levels of
friendliness. We are white, dressed a bit funny (even for white people) and
covered in brand new, bright tattoos. We sort of felt like it was our duty to
show them off to the kids. Most of them will never have even seen real artwork,
never mind a rooster phoenix burned into a man’s skin.
I was really starting to flag by the time the owner of the
house came and let us in. We were staying in a small extension attached to the
house itself, it had matresses, about 10 quilts and mosquito nets. Hayley and I
dived onto our new beds and took a ten minute power nap. Or at least I did, I
can’t vouch for what Hayley did in this time. It was like I blinked and the sun
had set.
Two of the local kids came to see us with a small yellow
bird that they were just holding in their hands, it wasn’t trying to fly away,
it just sat there. No wing flapping, no squawking, I assumed that this one must
be a family pet. They handed it to Hayley and she sat stroking him and just
enjoying being so close to such a beautiful looking little wild bird.
I noticed that it had its wings clipped so it was unable to
fly away even if it wanted to, he was bright yellow and had a brightness in his
eyes that said he was aware of his situation but was too smart to struggle and
make it worse. The second boy brought in another bird which was very similar to
a british robin, this bird was much less happy. The boys threw the birds onto
our beds and shoved them to make them hop along as if they were racing. Robin
was clearly not interested in playing the game.
Hayley took the robin and because I had just woken up I was
in the state that if this had been anyone else and anywhere else in the world I
would have voiced my disdain for what I was seeing, and plainly. However I
could do was quietly watch and hope that they would go away soon. Hayley said
to me, “This bird is dying…” and showed me the robin which looked like it was
just losing consciousness. Wild birds can die due to stress very easily and
this one just gave up right in front of me.
When it stopped flopping around the kid picked it up by its
foot and twirled it like a bauble on a Christmas tree. It was as though he
didn’t even register that it was dead. Hayley sensing that I wasn’t dealing
with this well just told the kids to go because we wanted to rest. They took
the birds and went. If I could free that little yellow bird and I thought he
would last longer than an hour out in the wild on his own I would have done it.
But this isn’t my world and these aren’t my people. I had come to their village
to see how they live and to judge them based on my own morality is unfair. So I
had to just let it go, we both did.
Later when the people of the town had returned Hayley and I
went out to meet everyone and take some pictures of the sunset. It was a
beautiful sight and the people were so friendly that I had all but forgotten
the birds by the time we reached the other end of the village.
Hayley was taking photos of the children with her camera and
then showing them their pictures on the screen for her camera. A small piece of
magic happened when she turned the screen around so that the kids could see
themselves as a moving image. The moment that they realise their actions are
happening on the screen in front of them is captured on our memory card and
it’s priceless. They go from laughing and smiling to just going bat **** crazy.
After about fifteen minutes of playing with the kids and
them trying to one up each other in an attempt to get their photo taken, one of
the really small kids took his dick out and started ******* on his friend.
Everyone laughed, even the kid getting ****** on, he ran away but he still kind
of thought it was funny. The little kid just chased after him, still in mid
flow, the best things in life are free eh?
As the night drew closer we headed back to our homestay to
eat a meal of vegetables and rice with banana flowers. This was the best meal
that we had eaten so far on our jungle trek and it felt like we had really
earned it. We spent a while talking with Chansing and our host (who didn’t really
speak English) until we were offered a massage to help us relax after our tough
journey. We asked who it was that we were going to get a massage from and
Chansing said the girls who were working in the fields still. It was actually
dark outside now and I would be ******** myself just trying to find my way to
the village never mind trying to cut down and carry huge bundles of rice back
with me.
We felt really bad and said that we should be the ones
giving the massages after they had been out working all day but we were assured
that this was a normal thing for them and it would be a bit rude to say no to
their hospitality. We were still unsure but couldn’t really argue because
nobody understood our point. When the girls arrived at the homestay they were
all about 13 and looked like they had just spent all day sitting around
drinking tea and relaxing in the sun. They had probably worked harder than I
ever have or ever will do in my life that day.
They were in great spirits though and after the initial
paedo-ish vibe of being grabbed at by a girl half my age had gone away, they
did actually give us a really good massage that totally fixed my back after
carrying a backpack full of stuff that I probably didn’t even need to bring to
the jungle for two days. They were really funny too, they kept saying the Laos
word for each body part they were touching and we said the English version and
tried to repeat each other. This descended into just saying phrases and random
words that just sounded funny and us laughing at each other.
Hayley said that there was no way we were going to just
accept a massage from these girls for free and send them away so she sneakily
gave them 5 dollars and a few thousand Laos kip. She tried to do it quietly but
the girls were that surprised at being given money that they snatched it and
made a fuss about it, also we found out that they had never even seen American dollars
before so they had no idea what we had given them. Chansing was nice enough to
swap the dollars for Kip and then make sure the girls shared it out fairly.
We tried our best to get some sleep in our little mosquito
net covered bed until I spotted a massive spider crawling on the inside of our
sanctuary. I have no photo of it to back this story up because it was properly terrifying.
Its one thing to be scared of a big spider in England and make a big deal out
of it but when you are in the jungle and you can’t even begin to identify the
******* it’s much worse. You don’t know what you are dealing with. Basically we
screamed like girls for Chansing who came in and tried to grab it but my god it
was fast and it dashed across the top of the net towards me, at which point I
bailed. Chansing then snatched it up with his second attempt and just threw it
outside. We said “Not poisonous?” he just shrugged and invited us back in the
house for some Laolao to help us sleep.
When we got back inside the house the family was all
gathered around sitting on the floor and listening to the radio. They were all
doing shots of Laolao and Chansing seemed to be the driving force behind the
drinking. Even the youngest girls were doing shots, they didn’t seem to enjoy
it very much but it gave everyone a laugh when they tried to pass the drink on
to someone else. I did the same thing a couple of times but mostly the drink
just came back to me and I had to do it anyway.
The girls had been to the little store in the street and
spent the money we gave them on lots of different sweets and snacks, everyone
was enjoying them and they insisted we ate some too. There was some really good
coconut candy that I’ve not seen anywhere since. Hayley decided that we needed
to commemorate this event by getting some photos of the family and us together.
She was looking for her camera when I saw a ******* MASSIVE spider on the wall
across the room; biggest spider Ive ever seen in my life. Chansing said “Oh, that’s
a big one” and went back to drinking.
After we got some photos of us and the girls together the
dad went and got changed into his best shirt and trousers to get his picture
taken. I couldn’t understand him but from the way he spoke to his daughters he
was pretty much saying that you can’t mess around when you’re getting your
photo done. Got to look your best. He also went and got down two pictures of
himself outside the parliament buildings in Vientiane and a picture of himself
with all of his best friends, which he held proudly by his side to get his
photo taken. He was a funny guy.
Now we were a little bit ****** and confident that we would
be saved from any future spider attacks so we went back to bed. I made sure
every single inch of the mosquito net was tucked under our mattress and nothing
was getting in or out without my say so. I set an alarm to wake us up to see
the dawn and we got a good night’s sleep.
In the morning Hayley woke me up and told me I had to come
outside and see the most amazing view she had ever seen. She was not lying, the
morning mist had begun to roll in and we were so high up in the mountains that
we were above it looking down at the landscape looking like it was decorated
with cotton wool. The sun had started to rise in the distance and the sky was a
colour that there isn’t even any point trying to describe to you. All I can say
is that we felt like we were going to die a few times on this trek and I would
have gladly come even closer to death a few times more if I had known that the reward
would be so great.
Hayley spent about half an hour dressing up the youngest son
of the family in her scarves and glasses and generally throwing him about on
the stacked up blankets and cushions in our room. I think they both had the
most fun either of them has had in a long time. She took tons of photos of the
kids in the village again and made a lot of them very happy.
We walked the full length of the village; almost everyone
was already out of bed and off working in the fields at this point. We got to
go and have a delicious breakfast then set off on our way home. Hayley had hurt
her ankle a week or so before and the rough terrain had been quite ******* her
so when Chansing explained that there was an easy way and a hard way home we
opted for the easy route.
The homestay had an outdoor toilet and I had to use it
before we left, while I was in there I could hear shuffling around outside and I
thought it was the kids from the village peering in at me but it was actually a
big fat pig. I hurried up and got away from the snorting beastie.
When Hayley went to go to the toilet which I failed to
mention is just some tarpaulin wrapped around bamboo sticks, she heard someone
in there so she waited patiently for a few minutes until she heard the
snorting. She looked in to find the pig eating out of the toilet, the pig
looked shocked and ran away (thoroughly ashamed of itself I imagine). You would
think that that was a horrible enough end to this part of the story but as she
went to the toilet she heard scrabbling about on the other side of the fence
and through the thin gaps in the sheet she could see him; peering in with his
piggy eyes, thinking “mmm what am I getting next?”
Our new guide for the day would be the grandfather of the
family we had stayed with; he was about 60 or 70 years old, with one eye and
did not speak a word of English. It seems that when you go for a trek, every
day brings a brand new and hilarious twist with it.
The “easy” route home still began with an hour of climbing
up brutal hills. We were elated when we finally made it out onto level ground
and were assured that it was all easy and downhill from this point. The terrain
itself was easier but there were many points where the path was covered over by
fallen trees and we had to climb over them with an insanely big fall just feet
away from us. I have never clung so hard to a tree trunk so covered in ants in
my life, nor do I hope to again.
Lunchtime came and we were given twenty minutes to catch our
breath while the guides went to look for jungle food to harvest and cook for
us. Chansing set up a rustic barbecue using bamboo and banana leaves (The swiss
army leaf I now call it), and got to work cooking something up for us.
While the food was cooking Chansing came over to us and
said, “there is some opium over here if you would like to take a look”, we said
sure, why not. Just along the trail from where we had been sitting was our one
eyed guide, laid on his side getting high as the sky, oh my! I went a bit Dr
Seuss there.
Yeah, so One-eyed Willy is just ****** out of his mind with
a big bamboo pipe in his gob while his one semi functional eyeball rolls round
in his skull like a magic eight ball which only says “ask again later”.
Chansing said, dinner is ready so we sat down to eat. It took Winky about half
an hour to come sit with us and eat a bit of rice. He showed us how to make a
jungle spoon from (you guessed it) banana leaf and then went back to his hole
for another toot on the pipe. We just sat and listened to the sounds of the
jungle for about an hour before he was ready to go again. This wasn’t as bad as
it might sound though because aside from the rest doing us good, it was really
peaceful and we even heard the sounds of monkeys whooping in the distant trees.
You don’t need to hear the ins and outs of the next four
hours of walking through the jungle except our guide went mental with a machete
(which was terrifying) to cut us down some walking sticks (which was nice).
When we reached a road and saw signs of civilization we felt
something akin to the regenerative feeling we got when we first saw the
village. We were alive, we were happy and this had been a great experience now
that we knew we had made it to the other side.
There was a small cool stream next to the bus stop where we
soaked our feet and relaxed waiting for our truck to come and take us home. Fu
Manchu decided this was the perfect time to strip fully naked and roll about in
the cold water. I bet after a long walk and a head full of opium it felt great,
but that’s his life not mine; I’ll settle for clean feet.
I got another ******* leech! I wasn’t even in the water and
somehow a leech got me, I was so close to home too. They take ages to heal up
too after they’ve sucked all the blood out of you; little *******s.
On the way back to Luang Namtha we stopped at a village to
see how the local tribes live and there was ************e there except a group
of girls who almost died laughing at me. One fat one actually fell on the floor
she was laughing that much.
We had decided that we weren’t going to give our new guide a
tip since we had promised to print out the photos of the family we had taken
and send them back. We did cave though and buy him a beer, he seemed over the
moon with that. Simple pleasures are the best.
I may well have missed some stuff out from this journey in
fact I’m sure I have but I have to draw the line somewhere and this is that
point. I hope you feel that the time and effort you invested in this story was
worth it. That’s how I feel about this trek. **** me it was long and a bit
arduous at times, but overall, it was awesome.