Spending time shopping around for a tour I wanted, I eventually settled on a 3 day trekking tour. Our group would be led by a guide through the jungle spending one night in a village with a family and the second night camping in the jungle. Unfortunately, the next morning I found out that the group I would trek with had canceled so I settled for a 2 day trek and one night camping in the jungle.
My group for the two days was comprised of our guide, a 28 year old Lao guy, a 21 year old Japanese guy for only the first day, and two 23 year old French Canadian girls. The trek crisscrossed a creek into the jungle, where bamboo and banana trees grew thick around the trail. The first day we hiked 5 hours, stopping to eat sticky rice, fish, and bamboo shoots for lunch. The weather, like usual, hung heavy around us with both heat and humidity. At the end of uphills, I stood drenched with sweat.
In the late afternoon, we stopped near a small trickling creek where a simple bamboo lean-to stood next to the trail. This was to be our camping spot for the night. We got to work collected firewood and banana leaves, which would act as both our roof and our bedding. For dinner we ate banana flower, vegetable, egg, and noodle soup with the ever essential sticky rice. For plates and a table, we used banana leaves. Everything else was bamboo; spoons, cups, candlesticks, a shot glass for Lao Lao (homemade rice vodka), even the soup was cooked over the fire in a large bamboo tube. This versatile plant grows everywhere and can be used for almost any perceived need.
After dinner we sat around the campfire, while our guide sang traditional Lao songs and we passed around our bamboo shot glass filled with the potent Lao Lao. Tired from the day, we slept soundly upon the banana leaves as the gentle ripple of the creek murmured in the night.
The night morning we awoke to drink coffee and eat sticky rice, bamboo shoot soup, and duck before we continued our trek. Soon we came out of the jungle and reached a Lantan village. We quickly became surrounded by curious children, who had been playing in a field outside the village. Carrying with me a bundle of children’s books bought from the NGO Big Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang, I thought this was a great opportunity to hand them out. I passed out the books and was greeted by numerous Kop Chai’s (Thank You’s) from the young children.
We then entered the village and walked around for 30 minutes, observing the life, where little children and puppies played in the dirt pathways and adults sat talking and going about their days. One older man came up to us and asked where we were from. Upon me saying America, he raised his eyebrows and proceeded to make motions with his hands of planes flying over and bombs dropping. Unfortunately this is the legacy left by Americans during the Vietnam War in Laos. While many people think that the Vietnam War was waged solely in Vietnam, this is grossly untrue, with enormous damage done to both Laos and Cambodia. Laos, according to my research of the credible Wikipedia, is the heaviest bombed country on Earth, with the total of one B-52 plane’s load of bombs dropped every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for ten years from 1964-1974. Over 2 million bombs still lie in the rural parts of Laos, killing people every year. This atrocious legacy definitely does NOT make me proud to be an American.
We then left the village and hiked around few hours before reaching our end at a river where we immediately jumped in to cool off in the searing heat. The day was Sunday and was Women’s Day here in Laos, which acted as another reason to guzzle down the BeerLao and Lao Lao and party. Near the river were two large open air tents where a group of 40 Lao people sat eating, drinking, dancing, and talking. Quickly upon arriving the scene, the 2 Canadian girls, our guide, and I were invited to partake in the carousing.
The people enthusiastically invited to sit down (cross legged of course. Chairs are not a thing in SE Asia) around a large array of plates of food. The group of people were from the nearby village. The village chief, the only one who spoke English, talked to us while people drunkenly danced away. Soon enough, we too were among the drunk, as cup after cup of BeerLao was poured and pushed in our direction. We eventually were prodded up to dance with the group, awkwardly swaying to the keyboard accompanied music.
Staying at the party for about two hours, we walked, or rather stumbled to the nearby road and took a minivan to town. Getting to the road was the last thing I remember before the last BeerLao washed over my brain, blanking any further recollection of my actions. I awoke in the middle of the night confused in the darkness of a foreign room, which I later found was a bungalow that I had checked into with the help of my two also drunken companions. The next day was taken slow for obvious reasons before taking the bus to Nong Khiaw.
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