From there we started moving North to Phongsali. Being in Luang Prabang now while writing this, we realize that in the last two weeks so many things have happened. We went here with the expectation to be drawn into the Lao culture, to be overwhelmed by friendly, open and warm locals, to being invited to parties just by moving towards the sound of music, to stay in little villages seeing how the locals live, etc. All things other travelers had told us.
And all of this did happen but we had such mixed feelings during these weeks. The second day in Laos we were invited to a wedding where we fed drunk with I don’t know how much Beerlao. We learned that you share one glass with your group so you have to drink it entirely and give it to the next one. So yes, you get very drunk in a short time. And when you’re drunk they start teaching you the Lao dance that’s supposed to look very charming and is actually very easy, but seeing us do it, it must have looked like two cows trying to stand on their back legs and swinging their front legs around. But of course none of the boys said a thing; they just smiled and kept showing us what we had to do.
After that we went by motorbike to Muang Sing thru the jungle, something like the way from Chiang Mai to Pai but even more beautiful. We walked into a path and were IN the jungle within 5 minutes and at the end we found a beautiful waterfall. Muang Sing was a bit weird. We walked around in the area. There were lots of villages. But when we walked in they did seem to want us there at all, so we gave up walking around quickly because we felt so unwelcome and uncomfortable. So we stayed at our lovely guesthouse with the sweet family that runs it.
Going up to Phongsali it was getting colder and colder and we weren’t prepared for that. We did buy extra jackets in Chiang Mai because there it wasn’t that warm either, but the North of Laos was even colder. We got into busses driving thru the mountains on a dirt road with a little kid next to me that almost threw up on top of my feet. Actually half of the bus was throwing up in plastic bags ánd throwing those bags out of the window... We passed many little villages with small and simple bamboo houses where kids as old as one year played by themselves on the side of the road with nobody watching them. Once in a while the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere to pick people up, we wondering for how long they had been waiting there to catch the bus. We stopped at a village full of women wearing traditional clothing.
And for lunch we also stopped in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of the road. The driver got his picnic blanket and sat down in front of the bus. I do love this crazy way of traveling. Everything is possible!
In Phongsali we wanted to do a trekking but there was nobody at the tourist office. Nobody there seemed to neither speak English nor want to help us find somebody. Renting a motorbike was a challenge and very expensive. It became clear that in the whole town were just 2 motorbikes for rent and 5 times the normal price. Even finding a hotel almost didn’t work the first night because we arrived on the night that a president visited the town and there was a big party. We explored the surroundings and at some point got stuck on a one way dirt road while coming back from a tea village. They decided to work on the road and that was the only one. No one could tell us how long it would take so we just waited. After a while we could pass thru and arrived home before dark.
Phongsali was a strange town where we had good and bad experiences. After 3 days we decided it was time to move on. We went on a 5 hour lasting boat trip on the Nam Ou in a little wooden boat with a very noisy engine and arrived in Muang Khua.
In one of the towns besides the river we were having dinner when a man approached us and asked if we wanted to do a trekking in the mountains. After drawing a beautiful map for us we decided he was very adorable and his plan sounded exactly like the trekking we had in mind! It would take us 3 days and we decided to leave the next day.
Day 1
We started the trip with a tuktuk and a bus ride of 1,5 hour. Then we took a little wooden boat to cross the river. We couldn’t move in the boat because otherwise it would capsize.
At the other side we started a 9 hour trekking. After half an hour we arrived in a village where we stopped for a few minutes. We were surprised about how poor the people in these villages are. These villagers live from rice they grow, plants from the forest, fruit and hunting. We asked our guide if they have enough food and he told us it depends, sometimes yes, sometimes no. In this village a woman was washing herself at the communal water pump covered in a sarong with a baby on her back and a little naked boy standing next to her. Kids with dirty faces and clothes surrounded us looking at us with big eyes. A couple came to talk to the guide, asked him questions about why we were there and where we were from. When we continued our way they walked with us for a while and the man helped us thru the steep muddy path for almost an hour! The couple went hunting for a week in the forest while their 7 children, the youngest around 3 years old, were at home taking care of each other.
After a few hours we split ways and Boenma, our guide, made lunch for us in the forest. Sitting on some big leaves we ate sticky rice, chicken and vegetables from the market. Sticky rice is what they eat here every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
After lunch we soon entered the harder part of the trekking. We had to go thru a part of the jungle that the tribes only use for hunting. So there is a path but it’s very small and overgrown, so Boenma cut everything away with his knife to make it big enough to go thru while walking, me of course bending over because Boenma cut it until his height.
This lasted for about 2 hours before we started the last part to reach the small mountain village where we were going to spend the first night. The last part we had to go horizontal over the steep mountain while we couldn’t really see the path anymore. We had to sweep away grass that was 2 meters high, so sometimes we couldn’t see each other anymore. But finally we could see the little village in the distance on the top of the mountain and we were so surprised about how small it really was!
At first we weren’t sure if we were welcome or not, because Boenma seemed a little insecure. Later we learned that he responded like that in every village. Probably because he has done this trekking only once before and he told us that for him this was also very special and new. The first time he did the trekking was a year ago and he took a Korean couple and he said that they don’t look and act as different as we do. In the village he asked if we wanted to stay or go to the next village half an hour away, so we asked him if they didn’t want us to stay. But he said they we were very happy that we were there and hoped we were staying there. So we were happy as well and we stayed. It was getting dark already so we quickly washed ourselves at a water point a little further, they build a pipe with bamboo and used the water coming from the mountain. Then we had dinner with Boenma, the chief and the chiefs son. When visitors are in the village, first the men and visitors eat and after that the women and daughters. Of course that made me a bit angry, but I also didn’t want to be rude.
The whole time they asked a lot of questions. It started like this:
Where do they come from and how did they come here? They are from Holland.
Is that far? Around 12000 kilometers.
Did you come here walking? No, we came by plane. Boenma explained what a plane was and then the people realized that this was the thing they had been seeing high in the sky since one year.
So who made the airplane for you? Well, uhm… yes... who made the plane? Different countries make different parts of the plain and then they put it all together. And… well we don’t know the people.
Later we got more questions like: Is your country similar to ours? Do you grow rice? And they didn’t mean in general but if WE grow rice. They asked if we don’t miss our home, because they miss home when they’re away one day. They thought it was so strange that we came this far to visit them but they were very happy that we were there. When we were taking photo’s the chief watched interested and when we made a photo of him and his son he wanted a photo of him and his family. But later he changed his mind because he believed that the photo might steal their soul, so they needed to keep the photo in the house. So we agreed to print and send them to Boenma so he could bring it to them the next time he would go there. At night the chief smoked opium with his self-made pipe, on the bed where we would sleep, a bed for 2 persons but where he sleeps with his wife and children. He laid down on his bed and smoked a black sticky substance. There was a whole preparation needed before he could smoke it. We smoked with him but didn’t feel much. Then he farted very loud and everybody laughed. Two other men were also there and they took turns on the bed. The wife and children left after dinner, they slept in a different house that night because we had to sleep with the chief. I didn't really fit on the bed with my 1.80 meters. Janske and Boenma had to sleep a little to cosy together next to the chief who went on preparing opium until very late. Because we shared one blanket we had to turn all at the same time. It was smoky, the light was on and it was pretty cold so we hardly slept. Well actually maybe we didn’t sleep because of the excitement of being there, on top of a mountain in Laos, sleeping in this tiny house of the chief of this little village. It seems like a dream now....
Day 2
The next day we ‘woke up’ and went outside watching everybody doing their things, seeing the animals walking in and out of the house, hearing the children shouting. We got breakfast from Boenma, toasted bread with egg, something the chief had never tried before and he was looking at it with big eyes. So we offered him a slice and he tried to eat it the way they usually eat, rolling the bread in a ball (like it was sticky rice) and combining it with a bit of scrambled egg. But we could see it was very weird for him, because he ate it very slow, while at dinner the day before we were amazed about the size of sticky rice balls that went into his mouth. The guide translated that he liked it but that he thought it was strange. Then we had to take care of Janske’s wounds from her boots, so we were busy with bandage and plasters. The village people were very interested. Soon we had to leave because we had to walk a few hours to the next village and we would make a few stops in villages on the way. The first would be the village that was half an hour away, there we were welcomed by the people, who had already heard that we were coming. Because they were so happy they slaughtered a chicken for us. We watched the whole preparation which I had never seen before.
Walking from village to village we got a lot of comments and questions from the locals, like:
Are you lao people?
Are you men or women?
Your skin is beautiful but Anne is very big and Janske has a very strange hair color.
You are supposed to be married and have 5 children.
They were very surprised about the scratches we had and the big tear Janske had in her pants.
Everybody thought it was very strange that we came this far into the mountains and they all wanted us to visit or sleep in their villages. Some were very disappointed that we stayed somewhere else and not with them. A boy who went hunting invited us to come and eat a big animal if he would catch one. They hunt with big pistols. And they have all kinds of traps they put in the jungle and go there every day to see if there is something in it.
In the second village we arrived at three in the afternoon and they immediately offered us Laolao. Apparently they only drink in even numbers so we had to drink 4 glasses in the chiefs house before going to the spirit house to drink more. We were welcomed by a boy with white skin, so we thought he was a tourist, but he was born there, nobody knew why his skin was white. He was very happy that we were there. He told Boenma that it was the first time he saw people with the same skin color as him and that he was very happy. He also wanted us to drink a lot. In the spirit house they did a newyear ritual slicing a cock and then pushing it’s beak against peoples’ knees. Then they drank from a bucket with rice (and who knows what other ingredients were inside) to what they were adding water the whole time. We had to drink as well, and because we were already a little drunk of the beers, we didn't protest.
Then we drank another 4 bottles of beer with a group of boys who wanted us to sing songs, so we ended up singing Lang zal ze leven and Slaap kindje slaap. They were very happy we were there and thought we brought good luck to the village by arriving during their days of new year celebrations. Mountain people are not Buddhists so they celebrate new year like us. When we went ‘to the toilet’ we didn’t need toilet paper because the pigs cleaned after us. The evening ended with throwing up and Mr. Guide holding our hair as a true gentlemen. The next day he made us the usual breakfast. And I took care of Janske wounds, which were even worse because we used normal plasters and she is allergic to them. So she needed to continue on flipflops. It didn’t matter anymore because this trekking was so amazing, so many experiences!
This was point where I stopped writing. We said goodbye to Boenma, promised that we would send pictures to him and we did. We celebrated new year’s eve in a small beautiful but empty village with Lao boys and girls and a French guy. We met Ait and he introduced us to friends and we got to know his girlfriend a bit better. After a while we were happy to leave Laos and leave the crazy intense country behind.
