1. Cos it was gonna be my birthday
2. cos it was a really cool arty town
3. Cos I was promised you could get really good french food and wine and I wanted some so bad !
We begin our boat journey down the Nam Tha River, a Mekong tributary, through a remote, forested and sparsely populated corner of Laos. We were all crammed onto small, narrow, deep river baots with no room to move and no where to pee. We were sardines packed in a tin... and it was freezing. We were going to be homestaying with our boat drivers in their fascinating villages, I was looking forward to that. After 10 long hours crammed into this thing they called a boat, dehydrated cos I was too scared to drink as I had no where to pee, we reached a small villiage on the side of the river bank. I was weak and tired. I tried to climb out the boat but just faceplanted the muddy bank before attempting to walk up the steep hill in flip flops and sliding back down again. All the kids laughed before helping me. I had made friends.
We trapsed through mud for a few minutes before being greated by our boat mans wife and sisters, all smoking heroin. They were as high as a kite and this was our new home for 2 days. Yipee.
We were lead into a wooden shack, downstairs was empty, or there wasnt even a downstairs. It was a house on stilts, everything was upstairs, downstairs was just an empty area beneath the house. Upstairs was pretty empty too, there was a lovely warm open fire burning away though which was really apreciated as we were all freezing. Soon enough all the villiage women and children bundled into the small house and wanted to touch us, look at our clothes, hold our hands and chat with us. We didnt understand a word they were saying but they were so happy to have these strange westerners in their village they wanted to be near us. The nearest shop was 3 days away. They were tribe people, they didnt really mix with the outside world. They smoked heroin all day long and bathed in the river, they ate vegetables they grew and killed their chickens and cows for dinner. So us being there in their villiage was magical for them, it was as facinating and eye opening to us as it was to them.
We were served dinner in a big pot. No plates or cutlery, of course. Im still unsure what dinner was. I cant say it was nice. I can honestly say I starved those few days and I was so happy when a young villiage boy came round selling us knock off cola later in the evening I almost asked him to marry me. We all sat around this big pot and ate some food, it was warm, we used bread as our cutlery. No one liked it. We were polite.
After dinner it was shower time. No, there were no showers. Our new shower was the river so off we walked through the villiage with our bars of soap and headed down to the river and had a wash as the sun set. Do you remember me telling you how cold it was ? Yeah that was the only wash I had for a few days, bugger that.
That evening we played with the children inside our house. We played ring of roses and pat a cake and taught them to sing traditional english songs. It was such a fun night. The children all wanted their photos taken and were facinated by our cameras. Th children and their parents helped us set up our beds for the night. We were staying in one house that housed 4 families then there were 8 of us strange white people, so it was one busy house. We had no luxuries of pillows or mattresses. We laid down thin yoga mats on the bamboo floor, put on our long johns and wolly hats, thermal socks and warm fleeces then wrapped our selfs up in fluffy blankets and that was our bed for the next two nights. It was surprisingly comfortable and I actually slept really well.
The next day we spent wandering the villiage and taking in villiage life. Everyone wanted us to go in their houses, they even offered us a smoke of heroin from their crack pipes. I found the young lad selling crap coca cola again and bought a few cans.
On the third day we travel a few more hours down the Mekong in our little boat things, back to being squashed in before we transfer boats to travel further down the Mekong River, with plenty of space to lay back and enjoy the riverscapes – jungle hills, people fishing, kids playing on the riverbanks. After 7 hours on a larger boat with space to relax, a toilet, a real toilet, We we reach the small village of Pak Beng. We have another steep hill to walk up, this one a concrete hill. It must be something to do with me back packs and hills but again I totally failed and had to get luke to carry my stuff as well as his. We stayed in a tiny little guest house. A very strange guest house. The man who checked us in was high on heroin and was very weird. After checking us all in he approached luke and I on the balcony.We were enjoying a cold much needed beer. The strange man asked us if we would leave him a review on trip advisor he would give us a bag of heroin for free !
That evening we were free to explore the tiny, un touristic villiage. This villiage very rarely has tourists, which was a nice thing. Nothing was written in english, which was fab ! That night a few of us found a small restaurant that served local food which was delicious, one of our best meals on the trip, and it was so cheap.
Our last day on the river takes us past the Pak Ou Caves, believed the most spiritually significant site in Laos and containing hundreds of Buddha images, before continuing to Luang Prabang.
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