After passing the border from Thailand to Laos we found a “taxi” and headed out directly north to the mountains. Once at desnitation, a small city surrounded by jungle and forest, we checked out the trekking possibilities (2 days, 3 days, rafting down a river, etc.) and having unfortunately little time in Laos opted for a 2 days/1 night guided trek.
We had to be at 8:30 in the trekking office to store our extra backpack and material and pack the provided water bottles, so we decided to go for breakfast at the same place we were the night before (right in front of the trekking office), despite a not too good dinner. Luckily the morning food was better. After a baguette (Laos is an old French colony) and scrambled eggs we crossed the street and at 9:00 we hopped in a minivan and a driver took us and our guide to a village about 30 mintues away. There we put our raincoats on and started the trek with the guide and a young man from this village as a “sherpa”. Luckily for us, it stopped raining a few minutes later. On the way the guide showed us all the edible and similar looking not edible plants in the rainforest. After a short while our guide stopped and talked in Laotian to the young villager who disappeared in the jungle with his machette. We heard branches being shaken, then chop chopping sounds and again leaves being moved, and after less then 5 minutes the young man came back out with 3 perfectly cut bamboo walking sticks.
The first hour was quite steep up (about 300m change in altitude) but afterwards more level, just a nice walk in the forest. For lunch there was a little shelter with two benches and a small table all made of split bamboo. We took the leaches off our shoes and in the meanwhile the young local guy disappeared again in the forest to come back with beautiful banana leaves to use as a table cloth. The lunch was spread out directly onto the leaves: sticky rice which we made into flat balls with our fingers to scoop up mixed vegetables and chicken and a cricket sauce, which I tried and found to be crunchy and spicy but good. Afterwords Ingrid told me she saw some parts in it like legs. (If I had seen those before…) The one hour rest was actually good, because of the first part steep uphill. The local guy left us to go back to his village and we went further up and down across rivers until we arrived in the evening in the village to stay overnight. The bungalow dedicated to us was located between the village and the river, a bit outside of the villagers‘ houses. We actually arrived on the second day of a marriage where the whole village celebrates the event for three days (The most important and the actual marriage is the first day).

Since there is no way to tell the people in the village some tourists will come today our arrival was somewhat of a surprise. Past the first akward moment of arriving on a wedding day it became more normal to be there. The kids of corse started right away to play around us, the tiny little dogs and pigs as well. First we took off our boots and sat down on a wood bench to rest a bit.

One woman from the village prepared the dinner and we sat down to eat with this women, her husband and the village’s wise man, had some LAO LAO a riceshnaps with quite a bit of alcohol. The way they drink it is fill a glass, give it to one person, this one needs to empty the glass and give it back. then the same glass will be filled again and handed to the next person around the table. If you don’t want anymore you hand it directly to the next and everyone will laugh at you for pass it over. The wise man asked us to sing a song in our language, then sang one in laotian and was laughing more and more. After the bottle was finished he asked to join him in his tent to drink some more, but we refused and went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up and had some rice for breakfast, went to the village to watch the water installation made of bamboo-pipes, the feeding of the little piggies, and could see how two women were pounding the rice with big logs of wood.

Then we started our second day through the jungle following the river for 1 or 2 hours, again with people from the village carriyng our lunch. At the point where the path ends in the front of the river was a cord from one side to the other and a bamboo-float on the other side. Our guide yelled and there was an answer from the other side. After a while someone came and crossed the river with the float to our side. Then it was our turn, we climbed aboard, but just Ingrid, me and our guide could go on it at the same time. The two from the village waved goodbye and we started to cross the river, feet in the water because of the overweight 🙂 The crossing was wicked but cool. On the other end we hopped on the slippery rocks where I tried to help the guide to come up and slipped the down the rock in the river… Yeah cool, wet feet for the rest of the day. The walk now was a lot of up and down, some short rests and a lot of water drinking. We made again a 1 hour lunch break and were really happy to arrive in the evening, again in front of a river seeing the road and a village on the other side. Two little boys where already waiting with a pirogue (Einbaum) to cross the river and earn some money. Our driver was also waiting on the other side and we drove one hour back to the trekking office.

We went to look for a room to sleep, a little dinner and slept quick, deep and well.