Hill Tribe Trekking in remotest Laos

Me and Christina have just returned from a raw four day trek into the remote hill tribes of Laos and had an awesome time.

The trek was arranged through an eco tourism company called Tiger Trail where the money you pay is distributed to the villages that you visit and the local community.

The trek was four days long and involved some stunning jungle scenery, a lot of walking in 40+ degrees and a lot of curious stares from the local Hmong and Kamil tribal villages we stayed at. Me and Christina were quite concerned that it might feel like a zoo, where we just stare at them like animals, but it was indeed the complete opposite. Everyone looked at us, and we wouldn't have drawn anymore attention to ourselves if we'd been dressed in crab suits with a squirrels tail and and a space mans helmet!

The villages we visited cannot be reached via road, and involved some arduous trekking up and down remote hill slopes of Laos. The villages were really simple, no electricity, no running water, and the people don't even speak Laos let alone English!

Our guide was originally from the Kamil tribe and could speak the tribal dialects which was very handy.

Our accommodation was with the local families in the villages, so much of the time this was a bamboo hut with a mud floor. It was really the authentic experience we were looking for.

The following picture is of the local Hmong children who were fascinated by us, and even more by my camera:-

















It seemed like they had never seen white people before, and i managed to make many tribal babies cry because of my beard, it got to the stage where i would cover it up with hands!

Here's the first village we stayed in:-
















On the last day we were both feeling quite sick, we'd eaten something dodgy at some point and had been sick during the night, but luckily we met some other "falang" (Lao word for foreigners) who had some antibiotics to kill stomach bacteria. We chased these industrial strength Thai made pills with a few glasses of Lao Lao (home brewed rice whisky!) offered to us at the local village party. These combination was surprisingly effective!

Here's a picture of Christina dancing with the locals (these people know how to drink, and were pretty much drunk at 3pm!):-

















Tomorrow we leave Louang Prabang and head down to Vang Vieng, where we plan to do some kayaking and tubing (essentially where you sit in an inflated tractor inner tube and float down the river).

Laos is proving to be a very nice country so far, and should prove to be a highlight of the trip. We only have Cambodia and Vietnam left after Laos, and the end of the trip is nearing. We'd probably both agree that six months is a perfect amount of time, we both start to miss the stability of a home, and just knowing where you're going to be sleeping tonight!

Laos Incoming!

Hello Everyone,

We've now crossed over into Laos, our fifth country on the trip, and have thankfully avoided all the trouble that was kicking off in Thailand.

Before leaving Thailand we visited the far north of the country, and stopped in Chiang Mai for a few days for the Thai New Year (called Songkran), this pretty much involved a full on water fight for five days to celebrate. So in good humour we armed ourselves with water guns and took to the moat side, and soaked and got soaked! The festival was a lot of fun, and most of the days were spent soaking wet, as people patrol town throwing buckets of water over each other, and obviously as a foreigner you're a big target.

Here's a photo of Chrissy, post water fight, and on the quieter side of the moat:-
















After Songkran we headed to the Thailand-Laos border and crossed over via Chiang Kong, across the Mekong to the Laos town of Houyxai. While filling out immigration forms at the Laos border we were sweating so much the sweat was falling onto the forms. It's starting to get really hot now, in the real hot season before the Monsoons break.

We then floated down the Mekong river for two days on a slow boat, which took us through some amazing scenery through the interior of Laos.

Here's a late afternoon shot i took from the boat:-
















After two days on the most uncomfortable converted rice barge boat ever we disembarked at the second biggest city in Laos - Loung Prabang. This place is actually really quiet and laid back, and it says something of the small density of the population of Laos (around 6 million in all!). It's got touches of French here mixed in with Laos architecture, and the whole place is a UNESCO world heritage site.

A picture of Chrissy on the river bank of Louang Prabang:-
















We had a relaxing day today and visited the Laos Red Cross centre where they offer an hour long Laos/Swedish massage and a herbal sauna for around 4 pounds! The best thing is all profits go towards the charity. We're about as relaxed now as we've been so far on the trip!

After Louang Prabang, we're heading into the remote Northern provinces of Laos to do some trekking among the hill tribes. After this we'll be heading down south passing through many places, and within about 3-4 weeks time will cross from Southern Laos into Cambodia.

Someone explained to me today that the Laos PDR, doesn't actually stand for the "Peoples Democratic Republic", but actually "Please Don't Rush", this makes a lot of sense in this extremely laid back and relaxed country!

Diving, Culture and Myanmar

Firstly just to let everyone know, we're ok and safe. The protests and the newly announced national state of emergency sounds a lot worse than it is here in Thailand. We just caught some protests in Bangkok, but here where we are there's nothing to tell that there's anything wrong. Thailand gets a new government every couple of years, by protest, so this is nothing new!

Well it's been a crazy couple of weeks since we last had a chance to use the Internet properly. Much of the time has been spent on the southern Thai islands such as Koh Phi Phi, Koh Tao, and Koh Payam (an undiscovered gem near the Myanmar border). It's suffice to say that me and Christina are as tanned as we have ever been.

Here are two typical views from Koh Phi Phi:-










































Koh Phi Phi is an amazingly beautiful island, with surrounding limestone islets included Phi Phi Leh, which is were they filmed one of my favourite films "The Beach". The lagoon here is amazing. The only problem with Koh Phi Phi is that post-tsunami it's gone upmarket, so it's quite expensive and there are a lot of tourists.

Koh Tao was less developed than Phi Phi, especially as always we headed to a quiet bay that other people don't seem to bother with. Koh Tao is where i gained my PADI Open Water diver certification. This is done over four days, which includes reading a 300 page book, answering several exams, and completing 2 closed water dives (in a swimming pool) and 4 open water (the sea) dives, and demonstrating you can carry out several practical tasks underwater. The course was harder than i imagined and was quite full on, i passed in the end though and saw a lot of amazing coral reefs and a lot of sea life which was mostly amazingly beautiful or amazingly ugly, and to be honest a lot of the time deadly (Lionfish, Scorpionfish, Stingrays etc...).

Here's an action shot Chrissy took, just as i rolled off the back of a long tail boat...



















After completing the Open Water course i was certified to dive to 18m, where there's a lot of interesting stuff in these countries, however if i want to dive in England i'll want to go to a ship wreck as some point, and these are between 18m-30m.

I resolved this situation in Koh Phi Phi where i enrolled to do the PADI (Advanced Open Water) certification course. This course consists of five adventure dives (two compulsory: Deep Dive (down to 30m) and an underwater navigation dive), the other three dives are optional and i selected to do the Underwater Photography, Peak Performance Buoyancy (controlling buoyancy and your water level based on your breathing, very useful!), and my favourite the Night dive. The course also involves reading another 400 page book and completing a number of knowledge reviews.

The night dive was especially special, we dived in a group of five, with one instructor and one dive master to ensure no one got lost and took underwater torches. The sensation at 18m underwater at night is scary and amazing (which is why i liked it so much), when you turn your torch off and move around in the water loads of bio-luminescent creatures light up, and you can see small jellyfish which are clear but have many small different coloured lights tracing up their bodies. It's the most amazing thing to wave your hand in the water and see all these organisms light up around it.

The deep dive went down to the desolate abyss at 30m, where there was little life (we only saw one stingray), and where the current was crazy. We stayed at this depth long enough just to feel and test the effects of nitrogen narcosis. Nitrogen narcosis effects people in different ways, where some people just can't handle it, and either flip from euphoria to complete irrational behaviour (forgetting all their training and do stupid things). We tested for it by timing how long it took to write our names down backwards at 30m and then again on dry land after wards. The time difference for me was only 4 seconds, which seems to be good.

After completing this course I'm now a certified Advanced Open Water PADI diver, certified and trained to depths of 30m. To go deeper will require technical dive training and nitrox training (special tanks containing a higher percentage of pure oxygen). This would allow me to go to 45m, but there's poor visibility and little to see at these depths, and already i feel a little bit too much like Jacques Cousteau !

After the islands we passed through Ranong and Koh Payam, both on the Myanmar border. These places have interesting people, with a 50% Thai, 50% Burmese population.

Koh Payam was lovely and undiscovered, where we relaxed for two days before heading north. It was also where i was hit by a motorbike. This is pure irony, because this was the quietest place we've been to on the whole trip, and survived unscathed against the ferocity of the Indian city traffic! So me and Chrissy are walking along keeping in to the side to allow room for motorbikes to pass (this island doesn't have cars, only motorbikes and tractors!), when i'm suddenly flying through the air, with a million thoughts going through my head (like oh no this is where my trip finishes!), and then worrying because i'm heading straight for Chrissy who is in front of me, i hit her and we both fall to the ground. Kind of luckily she broke my fall (thanks!), and we both only had shock and some minor cuts and bruises. What made matters worse was when i get up to give the driver a piece of my mind i see a young boy looking very scared and apologetic, this was the driver of the motorbike! The irony is unbelievable, and we can only laugh in hindsight!

We then passed through Kanchenaburi, Bangkok, Sukothai and we're now in Mae Sot. Mae Sot is another border town, with only a river dividing Thailand and Myanmar. Today we took the plunge and visited Myanmar (Burma) for the day, this involved a mostly moral dilemma, which is if we go we have to pay a 10 pound visa fee which goes straight to the Myanmar dictatorship, which we don't support in any way. However we also really wanted to see it for ourselves. So today we did.

Instantly life the Myanmar side of the river seems harder, it's noticeably less affluent than Thailand, cyclo-rickshaw and self proclaimed guides gather around you (which is where we remembered our training in India!) trying to earn some money. The people are also so, so not used to seeing foreigners, we received constant bemused/inquisitive stares from people, which we returned with beaming smiles, which they then reciprocated. We visited a number of stunning Buddhist temples, and happened to experience some kind of celebration, where we quickly became the biggest attraction, scores of Burmese people now have mine and Chrissies faces on their cameras!

Here's a photo:-



















The town called Myawadi, is a kind of edgy border town where there's quite a dark undercurrent of illegal activity. The main economy here is of the smuggling nature (teak wood, gemstones, and copious amounts of Meth-amphetamines (known locally as Yabba, ominously also the Hindu goddess of death, but also similar to Crystal Meth obtainable back home). So it was with a little relief we reclaimed our passports (held by Myanmar officials as insurance so we come back) and crossed the bridge back into Thailand (where we got a new 15 day visa for free)!

In a few days the Thai new year festival celebrations begin called Songkran, this is based on the lunar new year, and coincides with the hottest time of year, so the Thai have combined the two which involves people throwing loads of water over each other for several days. It seems to have already started as we've had several bucket loads of water chucked at us today (foreigners are a big target!), it's very refreshing in the heat of the day and it's all done with good humor.

We head to Chiang Mai tomorrow where we will be for most of the festival, which is supposed to be "the" place to be for it.

Laos is now on our radars, and we'll be crossing over in between one to two weeks.

Relaxingh Thailand

Hi All,

Just a quick update to let everyone know we're ok, given that riots kicked off in Bangkok yesterday. By chance we were actually just passing through while getting to the North of Thailand.

We're up in Sukothai now, and in a few days are debating whether to cross in Myanmar (Burma) for a day or not. In around 1-2 weeks we'll cross over into Laos.

Everything is going well, considering i was hit by a motorbike the other day (minor cuts only, and shock), also my day pack fell out of a local bus the other day and hit the road at 30KM per hour, ironically after these two incidents the only damage to my camera is a dent in the LCD cover, result!

More coming soon!