After an exhilarating 6 hour minibus ride up and down the winding mountain roads of Northern Laos, we arrive in the historic town of Luang Prabang, listed by UNESCO as a world heritage site due to its vast array of ancient wats (temples) and French colonial architecture. Situated at the confluence of the Mekong and Nham Khan rivers, it skirts around the edge of Phousi mountain (no really!) which lies at its' centre. It is a beautiful town, though feels strangely 'un lao'. The local airport draws in an ever increasing stream of tourists, creating a western friendly zone of restaurants, craft markets and guest houses. Few locals can afford to live in the centre of the historic town, the colonialism of the past replaced by an invasion of tourist cash.
We look into the possibility of going on a trek in the surrounding countryside, and are lucky enough to find one leaving the next morning, with four people already subscribed (bringing the cost down considerably per person). We're in the tour office at 8am to set off on our two day excursion and it's raining heavily. Undaunted, we leave our large luggage and head off in the minibus with our local guide. From an inauspicious starting point at the side of a road 2hours drive away, we head off up a steep muddy track. Helen purchased some new hiking shoes (Goretex and everything) before we left London. I, being the more experienced hiker, am sporting a pair of hilariously inappropriate skateboarding plimsolls, with an almost negative amount of grip. This has its advantages at first as the thick sandy mud clings to the thick soles of everyone else's shoes, adding weight with each step. The path is bordered at first with un-terraced sticky rice fields, which cling to the edge of the mountainous slopes, our guide points out piles of burnt hay, apparently a device for flushing out rats.
A series of steep climbs puts us into a proper hike mode, plodding purpousefuly up the sticky track, it's hard going and the dense cloud we now find ourselves in drenches everything. during breaks in the mist, we see spots of cloud and mist hovering over the dense jungle around us:
The lower, flatter ground has more terraced, irrigated rice fields.
We stop for lunch at a local village, Laap (minced chicken with mint and spices), the ubiquitous sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf, and buffallo curry. The side of our hut featured illustrations of how to avoid unexploded ordinance from the Vietnam war - Laos is the most bombed country in history, it was hit by 260 million bombs, 80 million of which failed to explode, or where dropped by returning planes to conserve fuel. The huts are mounted on stilts, raising them above the mud & snakes. The Hmong people who live hear have ancestral routes in Mongolia, and live high in the mountains as the climate is far cooler. Their people where used by the CIA in the Vietnam war in northern Laos, in what became known as the secret war (I had the book 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down' recommended to me as a tear jerking account of Hmong immigrants to the US). They were very friendly as we stumbled through their home.
On the other side of the hill is a village populated by Khmu, indigenous people to northern Laos. Separating the two villages is a shared school, and Helen had the idea of bringing some pencils to give to the kids - we were soon surrounded by a throng of eager faces. They had been running amok, unsupervised, during a break, would never have happened in my day!
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The stopover was a comfortable nights sleep in another village, following some Lao Lao (a rice spirit local moonshine) we slept very well. The following morning and continued rain means we take an easier route for fear of snapping ankles - the disadvantage is several river crossings.
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