Author: ajgaines

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten worse sleep in my life than in that homestay. The entire night the smoke billowed up between the enormous cracks in the floor and we breathed in the thick stuff the whole night.

We got up in the morning coughing, shook off the tired, and boated down to Muang Noy where we explored for the morning. We then went on a couple hikes to see some nearby waterfalls. Every surface of every rock was covered in some kind of moss or fern.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Eventually we headed back down to Nong Khiaw where we all parted ways and I finally got some decent sleep.

After quite a few days exploring the city of Luang Prabang I finally got my motorcycle fixed and plotted a course North to the river city of Nong Kiaw rather than the more traveled road south to Vang Vieng.

Today was day 1 of a 2 day trekking tour from Nong Kiaw. I don’t even remember where I booked from but I woke up at Meexai house and headed to the tour center at 0830. The tour cost me 600,000($60). I’m very certain I could have gotten one much cheaper but for once I just accepted it and went. I met my guide Mr Song and the only other people on the trip, a French couple.

We jumped in a boat and started our day. The boat ride was absolutely gorgeous and probably my favorite part of the day were the first 30 minutes of that ride. The boat glided over silty brown water while the sun lit the mountains into bright green humid triangles.

At one point we had to leave the boat and hike along the riverbank because the boat was so small it would not have had the power with that amount of weight to fight the current. We boated about an hour, jumped off the boat and our guide proceeded to hike through rice farms and some little off the grid villages.

It was cool but going through the villages was a little awkward, most people were trying to sell us something and other people just wanted nothing to do with us. The weirdest part was going to the local school. Maybe it was because the guide just kind of stood there but I felt like I was just looking at a zoo. I tried interacting with a few of the kids but they were very shy. In fact all the kids here seem to be very shy. 

We hiked a lot and ended up at a village where they cooked us lunch. It consisted of fried pumpkin, bamboo shoots with chicken, soup, a thing that kind of tasted like a mix of potato, apple, and water chestnut. I don’t know how they fried the pumpkin but it had to be one of the most delectable things I’ve ever tasted. After lunch we hiked a lot more and ended up back at the boat around 3pm. We took an hour more north on the river in the boat and it became more and more remote and the mountains next to the river became steeper.

We stopped along a bank and I tried my hand at fishing with Mr Song. We took our shoes off and ran along the slimy riverbanks like kids throwing the circular net out hoping to catch some of the small fish along the shallow shore rocks. I was actually pretty good at it. We ended up catching 20 or so baby fish with a river puffer fish that was actually pretty big. I had no idea puffer fish lived in rivers. Our method was to throw the circular net out with some spin so it will stretch out. Then run around the net looking for little silvery fish wriggling in the net. You then pull it slightly through the net as to get it stuck there. Then squeeze the poor thing through the eyeballs until the little skull pops. It was pretty gross but when in Rome…

We boated just a bit more and ended at a village that was quite nice. They had exchanged their dirt and sand for a dam a few years back for electricity from the Chinese. In general the Laos people did not have good things to say about the Chinese. They feel as if the Chinese want to take over, which is pretty obvious in about everything I’ve seen here.

 We ate at the homestay and it was the exact same food as this afternoon, other than the small fish that me and Mr Song caught. The fried pumpkin was even better than earlier. After we started eating this very grumpy little Laos kid walked in. I waved to her and she just shook her head no. I waved to her again later and she angrily pretended to kick me through the air. I pretended to kick her back and her grumpy face finally split into a smile. We went back and forth a bunch of times. Then she put on her mom’s high heels and walked out. She came back later and I played with her more, I really got a kick out of her. Absolutely adorable and she looked so grumpy but when I made a grumpy face she thought it was hilarious and cracked up. 

Mr Song was pushing the Laos Whiskey(laosky) hard and by the end of the night we had all drank quite a bit of it, especially Mr Song. We grabbed the laosky and went to the beach to make a fire and relax. We met another couple from Germany and some girl from Taiwan, tried for 30 minutes to make a fire but failed.

Then we headed back to the home stay which is an extremely basic home. One light, the kitchen is a fire on the floor and it just smokes up the whole house. Bedtime now.

I finally made it to my first real milestone, Luang Prabang. I thought it would take about 3 days to get there, but it took 8 of steady driving to get from Da Nang to Luang Prabang.

The last few hours going into Luang Prabang are exceedingly beautiful. Riding roller coasters up and down through Laos villages lining the mountain ridges.

I stopped along the side of the road at a little Loas house where they were selling food. It was about $.40 for the spiciest noodle soup I have ever tasted in my entire life.

These kids ran up to me interested in who I was and the little girl started shoving tissue paper in her noses. Her Mom got mad which only made her want to do it more. I’ve never seen anyone crack themselves up more.

I had my first wreck on the last 20km into Luang Prabang. I was taking a turn to the left and for whatever reason the bike just fell out from under me. I slid with the bike laying on my left leg all the way down the road. The whole time I was just thinking, “why did that happen.” I wouldn’t find out until later why. I hit my left arm and hip pretty hard but I picked the bike up, put it back on the road and drove extremely slowly the rest of the way down to Luang Prabang. A couple times I could feel it try to fall again and I just could not figure out why.

I made it to mad monkey hostel around 4 pm. It’s a little bit of a party hostel but still pretty nice. It’s got a nice pool upstairs and the rooms and beds are pretty nice.

Bobby, one of the Laos guys working at Mad Monkey turned 30 so I decided to celebrate with him. There was a music quiz at the hostel that one of my teammates knew almost every song to. The team next to us were 3 really drunk British girls and we ended up tying with them. We had 2 options for how to break the tie. One was to guess a hard song and the other was to send one teammate to chug a beer and whoever finished first won. I volunteered to chug and I downed the glass in the time it took the drunk girl to finish a quarter of it. It was a moment of glory for me.

We drank quite a lot and at 11pm we went to a bowling alley which is apparently the only thing to do at that hour in Luang Prabang. It was Bobby’s choice anyways. I was pretty lousy at bowling but it was fun hanging out with the crew. Around 2am we finally headed back to the hostel. I drove and probably should not have, but followed Bobby back. We made one stop to get barbecue which was ungodly spicy like everything else here. When we got back I finally headed to bed.