I'm not sure who's idea it was but we ended up on a two day hike to the Hmong and Kmao villages around the Luang Prabang area. We booked with "Tiger Trails" as they were made out to be slick operation by the lying Planet.
We turned up at their office at 8AM as directed, only to find that we weren't on their list to do the trek. At 8.30 we were still waiting for someone to arrive with the key to their office.............anyhow lets just say it took a while to get started, if only the German bloke who runs the company knew of their inefficiencies!
Our guides name was Li, he is a local who studied agriculture at university and has since given that away to work in tourism as he now has a child that he needs to feed! We got started with the hiking to find that my beautiful new, white Tiger trainers weren't really up for the job! It had rained for about 8 hours straight the previous night and the jungle trail was muddy and sticky and very slippery. I fell over in the first 30 minutes and then after that I lost count, however I did get pretty good at falling, and sliding and rolling, none of which were in the Tiger Trails brochure! We had Bonnie and John (Seattle USA) as our trekking companions, I wanted to poke their eyes out in the Tuk Tuk on the way to the start of the trek for being so annoying, however we found that in the face of adversity and hardship they weren't so bad.
Seriously though the trek was nice, we started off by walking past farm land and rice paddies and got to see a lot of rice transplanting in action. The scenery was amazing, the villages and farm land are nestled in the valleys formed between massive chunks of limestone that just seem to jut out of the earth. The inclement weather shrouded them in cloud and mist and that combined with the lush greenness of the vegetation made it look like we were in Jurassic park without the dinosaurs or Sam Neil.
After slipping and sliding for two hours we stopped off in a Hmong village for lunch to avoid a bit of a down poor and munched on our sandwiches inside their dirt floor hut. It looked like about 8 people slept there on a wooden platform, it looked like their doona covers hadn't been washed ever - what would mum say? Mum would say that when the weather is hot you should change your sheets every week! As thanks for their hospitality we bought some Hmong bracelets from them.
After that it just pretty much rained and rained, and when you thought it couldn't rain any harder - well it did. We walked through another Hmong village where pig raising was the specialty, there was a corresponding smell to this as well, use your imagination. In fact in this village it looked like their were more pigs than people, but raising pigs is a good way to make money, so good on them really. The only problem was that we walked across the pig paddock which was just mud and pig poo, and to say that we walked is actually an inaccurate description, it was really more like ice skating with terrible consequences.
Once we had cleared the pig pen it was back into the jungle where Li cut down a small tree for each of us with his pocket knife and made us a walking stick. This made things a little easier. It rained so much that the path we were walking on was like a small river, pretty soon after lunch my undies were soaked though, then my socks and then I just didn't worry about balancing across planks of wood to cross creeks and just walked straight through them. At many points the path was so slippery we stopped looking at where to put our feet and just worried about where the next strong looking bush or bit of bamboo was that you could use like a piece of rope to lower yourself down on. It was absolutely ridiculous, but no one got hurt thankfully.
So then we walked and walked and walked we counted the up-downs till we made it to the Kmao village where we were to stay the night. Brock said our trekking was like walking the Kokoda trail, I reckon if that's what the Kokoda trail is like then I'm not interested in doing it even if some dude carrys my bag for me! We walked about 15km and it took us 6 hours, 4 of which it was raining.
The Kmao people travelled to Laos about 500 years ago when the King of Laos daughter married the King of Cambodia and sent out the invite to come on down (well up really), they walked all the way to Laos, I'm tipping they probably did it in the dry season otherwise they would have had the same problems as us, and after all no one likes having wet undies.
The Kmao villages were similar to the villages in Cambodia - houses on stilts, and the Kmao people still look similar to the Cambodian people of today. The village we over nighted in had a primary school, football pitch and a town meeting place. We had a bamboo hut to sleep in with a mattress, pillow, blanket and mosquito net, pretty good really. We had a bit of a mushy wash put some not so wet clothes on and Li made us dinner, which was fabulous, oh boy we love sticky rice!
We had a bit of a wander around the village and joined in with some Korean hikers for a few rounds of "Lao Lao", Laotion whisky made from fermented rice and then distilled. It was kind of like tequila, it was not as bad as I thought it would be but it still sent a shiver down my spine. Between three people they had had 3 bottles and lets just say their eyes were looking a bit bloodshot when we saw them at 6pm.
After dinner we went to bed early as we had a feeling that we would be woken early the net day. Sure enough we had roosters underneath our hut having a crow off at 5am, not to mention the generator next door. We had a lovely Lao breakfast of meat and sticky rice, oh boy we love sticky rice! We then hit the trail to the waterfall and elephant park. We only walked for an hour and a half and the path was pretty good comparatively as its the same one the daily tractor that takes people/things into town uses. We had a bit of a gander at the elephants and a very refreshing swim in the waterfall, the waterfall is like terraces as the limestone gets deposited around trees, logs etc and forms separate pools and levels, very spectacular really.
From there it was a short but hairy boat ride to the Tuk Tuk that was waiting to take us back to civilization at last!
2 comments:
Hi Shell, there was this one time and i was walking to the car in the carpark at work, it was raining and had been pouring all day and there were lots of puddles around. I tried to jump over a puddle but wasn't quite skilled enough to get all the way across and i got my shoe wet and the bottom of my pants and i had to drive home with a soggy foot. Which isn't really the same as hiking through a monsoon but... life at home is heaps exciting as you can see.
Has the mud come out of your shoes yet or is it like the mud in Uganda where once it attaches it self to you it's there for life?
Lainee said. Wow Brock and Shell it sounds just like PNG and I can still smell the pigs, people and coffee, 31 years later! There was a bonus in PNG because the women suckle the pigs because they are worth more than their babies but lets no go there!
Sounds like all is fun and I like the beard Brock. Shell how do you manage to look like a vogue person even when you are covered in mud. There is no justice ion the world. Hugs and kisses form us all.
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