Kayaking Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang

We arrived in Luang Prabang yesterday after three days kayaking from Nong Khiaw, first down the Nam Ou and then along the mighty Mekong, staying with ethnic Khmu families along the way...and drinking more than a little lao-lao.  In our defense, it was literally forced upon us. Tiny Laotian ladies just won't take no for an answer. 

 

We left Nong Khiaw on Christmas Eve while the fog was still hanging low over the river. Our co-kayakers were a Swiss couple and our guide, Tong. After all the heavy rainfall the river was higher than usual and we didn't really need to paddle too hard to cover the morning stretch to our first stop, a Khmu village which was bang in the middle of their annual new year festivities. Of course, the arrival of four falang (which originally meant French but now covers any western foreigner) was cause for much excitement. A crowd of children stood at a safe distance watching us eat our lunch and then trailed behind as we made our way over to the bamboo and banana-leaf party tent. It was clear from the state of the MC and most of the adults that the party had been going for some time. We were offered multiple shots of lao-lao and then...it was time to dance!!

 

After showing the villagers our moves and downing a few more shots of lao-lao, Tong decided we better get moving before we were too legless to paddle.

This is the face Lao people make when watching falang dance

Our next stop was a small village where we visited the local school and I got invited in to give the english students a taste of aussie english. Then it was time to paddle across the river to our homestay. 

 

The next morning (Christmas!!) we woke early to the sound of seven thousand roosters crowing, wood being chopped for the cooking fires and many Lao villagers hawking, hacking and spitting. Nice. 

Since we didn't have far to paddle that day, we took it easy, watching the villagers going about their daily routines and playing a bit of frisbee. Several ladies nearby were cooking rats over their fires and we squeamishly wondered if this was going to be a Christmas feast we'd never forget. Thankfully, we were served a bowl of innocent noodle soup. Phew. 

We had about four hours of paddling on day two which was mainly mellow and uneventful, until we hit a rock on some (rather tame) rapids and flipped the kayak. Luckily the sun was shining and our dry bags kept everything important dry so we weren't too fussed. 

Arriving into our second homestay village we could hear the music pumping and knew that we had a lot more lao-lao in store. We weren't wrong. If anything, these guys were even more tanked than at the first village and had a serious lounge room disco going. After an hour or so of shaking our asses and downing countless shots of lao-lao, Tong came and saved us by suggesting a walk around the village. This walk took us straight to the next party where we partied with the local teenagers...and then it was time for dinner, accompanied by a few more shots of lao-lao. Yikes.

 

The next morning we were all feeling rather tender. Then we flipped the kayak on some less-tame rapids and suddenly the hangover was gone, to be replaced by a healthy fear of the river and a bone-chilling cold. When the sun finally burned through the fog it was a cause for celebration and we stopped to thaw out on the banks of the river and eat the food we were all too hungover to eat for breakfast.

 

The highlight of our third day was leaving the Nam Ou and entering the Mekong River. It felt pretty cool to paddle along one of the world's great rivers, even if we only covered a fraction of it's 4350km.

We were picked up on the banks of the Mekong and driven into Luang Prabang where we plan to spend the next week indulging in countless steam baths...and avoiding lao-lao at all costs.  If there's a better way to finish three days of exercise than with a traditional Lao massage and an unbelievably awesome herbal sauna...I look forward to finding it. 

Love Laos; Fear Lao-Lao

Once the rain finally stopped here in northern Laos we realised it was freaking gorgeous!! We left Luang Namtha in the hope of finding drier, warmer weather and found it just 300km away in Nong Khiaw, on the banks of the Nam Ou. 

 

We spent a lazy few days here, enjoying blue skies, sunshine and the beautiful scenery of the surrounding countryside, before taking a boat upriver to Muang Ngoi Neua, a tiny village which made sleepy Nong Khiaw seem like bright-lights-big-city. 

After China, Laos seems overwhelmingly rural. The capital city, Vientiane, wouldn't even cop a mention on Chinese-scale maps, with a population of just a quarter of a million. Muang Ngoi was only accessible by boat until very recently, and so far as we could tell, the addition of a rough dirt road hasn't done much to increase the flow of human traffic. 

Muang Ngoi is the kind of place you could easily find yourself spending weeks in. Unfortunately we forget to stock up on cash before we left and with no way to access money in the village, we had to limit our time, and our expenditure somewhat. 

This curtailing of our spending somehow translated into a bottle of 15,000 kip (AUD$2) lao-lao (Laos rice whiskey). It made sense at the time; cheaper than beer and certainly, at 40%, more effective. 

The next morning we woke up with severe lao-lao induced hangovers. They were so severe that we didn't get out of bed until midday, thus helping our budget immensely by skipping breakfast. More money was saved throughout the day as we lay prostrate on the lawn, recovering. 

Thankfully after a lao-lao free night, we were good to go. We took a stroll through rice paddy fields and forest to the nearby villages of Ban Na and Huay Bo where (like us) the locals were recovering from some kind of village fiesta from the day before.

 

We stayed for lunch, enjoyed the tranquility and watched the teeming population of puppies and small children playing and fighting in the dirt. Laos is a young country- 60% of it's population is under 25 and the animal population seems to echo this demographic. It's like one giant baby-animal petting zoo with hundreds of puppies, kittens, chicks and piglets competing for our adoring love and attention. Just one more reason to love Laos.

Now we're back in Nong Khiew, dry bags packed and ready to head off on a three day kayaking trip down to Luang Prabang. We'll be spending Christmas in an ethnic Khmu Lao village, eating spicy food and enjoying our Santa-sponsored trip downriver. Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Meanwhile, in Laos...

I'm writing this from the comfort of our cozy room in Luang Namtha, listening with a certain satisfaction to the rain which has been pounding down relentlessly for the last 18 hours or so. We are supposed to be hiking through the Namtha Protected Area even as I write this, but we cut our trek short and came back to town yesterday, having been all but washed away by torrential rain.

The Namtha Protected Area is a swath of jungle in northwestern Laos, up against the Thai border and home to elephants, tigers and monkeys (amongst myriad other, lesser exciting species such as leeches and malarial mosquitos). We had booked a 3 day trek which was supposed to involve a night camping in the jungle and a night at a local homestay in a remote ethnic village. Having poured with rain for the entire night before we were supposed to leave, we were somewhat hopeful when we awoke to grey clouds, but no rain. As it turns out, our optimism was completely misguided. The rain started as we were driving to our trailhead and didn’t stop for the next three hours as we slid and slipped down the muddy trail.

 

Of course, being in the rainforest, you expect a certain amount of rain. I even enjoy it from under the canopy; the sound of the drops making their way through dense foliage to the forest floor is quite soothing. It was only once we arrived to our camp that we realised the rain might be more of a problem than we’d anticipated.

Our camp consisted of a flooded banana-leaf structure surrounded by sucking mud. It did not inspire confidence. Even after Sing, our guide, had chopped down more banana trees (ahhh, eco-tourism indeed) and covered the old, soggy leaves with new ones we were skeptical and rightly so.

  

At around 4pm, the rain started up again. We ate a delicious dinner of pork and pumpkin curry and settled into our still-dry sleeping bags early. The rain fell continuously. By 2am it became apparent that our banana leaf floor was leaking water. By 4am the floor, the sleeping bags and sleeping bag occupants were soaked. We waited in earnest for daylight and by the time it finally came there was sedition in camp. The small stream we were camped beside had become a fully-fledged river; the trail was a nightmare of boggy mud. With everything already saturated and no break in the rain we decided to turn back.

At the time I felt a bit lame for quitting but now I just feel warm. And smug. In fact, as I think of myself trudging knee deep in mud in the pouring rain, I’m feeling rather self-congratulatory. I might have a nap to celebrate. 

Thanks, but no thanks.

There is a Chinese saying that dictates: 'Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible'. Of course, edible doesn't necessary mean desirable. 

Much as I love Chinese cuisine, there are a few aspects of the Chinese kitchen that I find extremely hard to stomach. Here's a few local specialties that won't be finding their way past my lips. 

1. Dog

Admittedly, there is a lot wrong with this picture...but the smoked dog (far right) takes the cake

Ok...maybe, MAYBE if I were invited to someone's home and served dog meat I would eat it so as not to offend the host. But I will never order it voluntarily and dog-carcass-jerky remains one of the most disturbing things I have seen in China. 

2. Turtle

There are lots of horrendous things that are done to turtles in China. Street vendors sell keyrings of live baby turtles in plastic bags...

And turtle soup makes an all-too-frequent appearance on menus around the country. At least it's nigh on impossible to mistake this for chicken:

3. Anything involving penis

T-bone? Rib-eye? Porterhouse? Nah, fuck it....I'll have the penis thanks. I hear it's good for virility. 

4. Anything I've petted on the way to my table

Like these poor bastards. I can't read their neck-tags but it doesn't take a genius to know their day is done. 

5. Flat Pig Face

I'm not really a fan of pork at the best of times. This is just grotesque. 

Dancing with the Dong

The Dong are one of the numerous ethnic minorities in China, famous for their carpentry skills, singing and rice wine. We had originally planned to coast through the region on our way to Hunan province but once our visas were extended and we found ourselves with an extra 30 days in China, we decided to stop off and see the Chengyang Wind and Rain Bridge, completed by extremely talented Dong chippies in 1912. 

 

Like all the local houses, the bridge is constructed entirely of wood which is ingeniously slotted together instead of using nails.

The five villages (Ma'an, Dong, Da, Yan, and Ping) are so close to each other they could be mistaken for one, but all have their own Drum Tower which forms the central part of cultural life in the village and is where locals perform music and dance for enthusiastic Chinese tourists (and us!). 

 

Actually our attendance at the show almost upstaged the local musicians and dancers. Being in China is like being a B-grade celebrity. People stare (a lot), ask to have their photo taken with you and then back away giggling. 

Unlike their woodwork, which even an imbecile can see is amazing, Dong music is an acquired taste. Like a lot of music we've heard in China it seemed to involve a lot of off-pitch discordant singing. Still, gotta love the girls headdress... 

Having tested two out of three Dong specialties, it was time to move on to the third! So far we've had a mixed experience with Chinese rice wine- a couple have been good, most barely drinkable and one truly vile. Most of the stuff labeled wine could send a rocket to the moon but this was a much gentler version (lucky really, since it came in a enormous jar). 

Apparently the Dong also have a Bull Intestine Eating Festival. Happily we'll be long gone by then.