Hill Tribe Hiking

It finally rained last night, and the temperature significantly cooled down. I mean, something like down from 35C to 28C - but it makes a big difference! It was lucky for us since today was all about hiking, up and steep, and we were quit glad the sky was overcast and the air somehow less hot. Somehow, I said...

So off we went, with a charming guide whose name we didn't quite get, in an old Land Rover outside of the city. We crossed a small river on one of those dangerously small sampan, and started walking in the lush vegetation (yes, I like this word, thank you) towards a khamu village.


Starting the hike up into them thar hills.

The Khamu are one of the mountain tribes of Laos, one out of 94 or so. They cultivate and eat sticky rice and live in what would be described in our countries as outright poverty.



A ban (house) within the Khmu village (ban).

The company we were hiking with does ecotourism , so that we know every 6 months the village gets money in compensation for all these "falangs" (white people, originally used to refer to the French) hanging out in the middle of their huts and taking pictures of their children. Still, it was a little bit disturbing, and looked like very harsh living conditions.
We took some rest in the classroom where were posted some health education posters that I found very striking.

The second part of the hike was in denser vegetation, a muddy trail winding between bamboos and teak trees, and very, very steep hill. Brian and I sweated all we could and drunk about 12 liters of water each, while our guide was hopping around in his overworn flip-flops.


Resting, near the top of the hill. I've been on some hikes in my life, and this one wasn't remarkable in length or vertical gain, but it was up there with the most challenging hikes because of the extreme heat and humidity.

The hike was rewarding though, as the view were stupendous, and we felt like explorers fighting the tigers and the elephants. Ok, the only elephants we saw were tamed and carried tourists, but whatever, it was still exciting!

The Hmong tribes live higher up in the mountains, again, far from everything, no road, no electricity, no water, and probably not a huge lot to eat either. Most of them were off working in the fields for the day, so the village looked a little bit abandonned. They use slash-and-burn (culture sur brulis) so the mountains have those big ardk paches averywhere. It's a very unsustainable practice, that accelerates deforestation and erosion, but apparently the government does not really care.

The hike downhill took us into more villages with more playing kids and apparently a little more resources - easier to grow fruits, have fish ponds and the likes at a lower altitude I assume.



After the hike, ready to get into the sampan to travel back down the Nam Khan to the land rover. Totally wet and wrung-out. This is the photo we'll use if we turn this into a travel guide book.

We finished off the day by a boat ride that took us back to our starting point. Along the way we saw fishermen, kids playing in the mud, buffaloes rolling in the mud, and again, beautiful scenery. We jumped off the boat to wash off the seat and the heat - well, wash off might not be word in such muddy water, but it felt good for sure!

Of course the day would not have been complete without the old land rover breaking off on the way back. We sat on the side of the road and watched kids trying to get their buffaloes out of a mud pond until we got hold of a tuktuk and finally made it home. And here's the picture of us at the end of this day!


And then after what we thought was the end of the day, the Land Rover broke down. So we got out and watched village life for awhile. Do we look like we mind?

Luang Prabang

Just an digest before more details and pictures - tomorrow (?)

Importantly: we're still alive, doing good, a bit sweaty but ok besides that.

We reached Luang Prabang on Friday night after a long and windy bus ride in the mountains of Laos. Amazing landscapes, all kind of beautiful pictures coming up (they take very long to upload so we're getting tired of spending our evenings in front of a computer - sorry!)

Today we spent the day strolling in Luang Prabang, in boiling heat. Loads of beautiful temples (wat), pagodas, royal palace museum, and so on. And tomorrow we're going to hike in the mountains and visit some ethnic minorities villages, the hmong and the khamu.

More news soon!

Pics of Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang has been amazing. An enchantingly charming town. UNESCO found it to be "the best preserved city in Southeast Asia" and declared it a World Heritage Site in the late 1990s. Practically, this means money for architectural and environmental protection, and a lot of recognition and attention from tourists. So, it's becoming a tourist town like Venice or something, but very slowly, and very Lao-ly. I mean, the country has only been open to any tourism since 1989, so it's still very unimpacted, even in this town where one can see the potential tourist mecca. Besides it's dozens of temples, it's located at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Kahn rivers, and was the historical royal capital and major trade center. It's definitely the country's second city, and probably its first most culturally rich.

Today we did the in-town tourist thing, visiting temples and museums. It's incredibly hot and humid here. We're exhausted and soaked after ten minutes of walking.

Today was a day of temples. Luang Prabang is a city with some dozen Buddhist temples, most gorgeous and very interesting. Then there's the Royal Palace Museum, with it's collection of ancient and international religous art. So - lots and lots and lots and lots of Buddha figures today. Here's one from one of the most famous temple.


Emilie diggin' the temple


Luang Prabang style temple architecture at the Royal Palace Museum.


Temple detail


A quiet narrow street typical of Luang Prabang.


Monks relaxing in the shade. We were just entirely melted at that point - Sunday was the hottest day so far.


This is a reclining buddha on Phu Xi, a hill in Luang Prabang with a little wat on the summit and older wats on the sides.

(another) bus ride

Today was another bus ride, from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang. When we caught the bus, it turned out to be the same bus, driver, and wo stevedores that had dropped us off two days before! So, we had another great ride (almost) for six hours through gorgeous and fascinating Laotian countryside and villages. I say almost 'cause the seats were so darned uncomfortable, and this time we were going up and down huge mountains on potholed roads, so it was hard the body just holding on.


Yet another cheesy picture of us, waiting for the bus.


Getting some fruits for the ride


Here's the view we had for nine hours total. Sorry, I can't really do it justice without the Thai and Chinese pop music blaring.


One of my favorite shots of the view out the bus window - the views were fantastic, but difficult to catch in photos. Also, I'm not showing the numerous little villages we went through, with the kids and daily life, nor the slash-and-burn agriculture all along the road.


Emilie looks comfortable doesn't she - that's not realistic, it's only because I'm across the aisle snapping the photo. Old Korean buses really aren't built for bodies like hers and mine.

Biking in the rice fields

Today we spent the day biking in the rice fields, surrounded by those beautiful karst mountains, sleepy buffaloes and always so kind laotians.
We snubbed the local travel agencies who ask for a delirious price (yes, 15 dollars is delirious by local standards) to take you in a noisy tuktuk in the quiet rice fields, and rented ourselves bikes to go on our own - by which I mean, without the beer-drinking aussies 9see yesterday's blog). It took us a little bit of work to find bikes on which we didn't knock our knees into our chins, but we finally found some decent mountain bikes and headed towards the other side of the river.

While yesterday night we had used the newly constructed bridge and forded some of it, like locals do (see pic), today we didn't feel like carrying our bikes in the water and took the """ferry""", oh so thin and low sampan (little dinghy) where our bikes almost fell into the water 13 times in 2 minutes and a half.

The scenery all day was amazing, lush vegetation (la "vegetation luxuriante", ca ne vous rappelle rien la famille?), typical Asian scene of farmers working in the rice fields wearing their pointy straw hats.
Vang Vieng is famous for its caves, in the karst mountains, that you can explore with a local guide or with your own flash light.
(emilie) Time to be snubby again: Lao countryside does not look at all like Cambodia, which is endlessly flat (at least not northern laos), but really much more like China, in Guilin, and Vietnam's Halong Bay. So this cave thing might remind something to my dear family with whoim I went exploring caves in the Baie d'Halong (avec ou sans "h", by the way???).

Here's a photo of our fearless guide leading us to the first cave, and then again with Emilie as she waited patiently for the falang to catch their breath after the climb.




(emilie) The caves we saw today were crazy, huge, with all kind of weird shaped stalagtites and stalagmites. Some of them were empty and you could play drums, or rather bong, on them. Brian got all crazy and spent hours taking pictures of every one of them. Luckily for you, pictures are really slow to upload so you might be spared most of them...

(emilie) In one of them that awoke my looming claustrophobia, we snuck into a tiny passage into a cave filled with clear water, and took a short swim into that interior lake. That was a bit of an experience!

(brian) Here's Emilie swimming in the lovely cool pool at the end of the long narrow "slipply" cave. She's fearless.



We stopped for lunch under grilling sun (did I mention it's a little hot here?) (brian) Notice the chiles drying - I spiced my Pho (noodle soup) with last season's chiles and had one of the sweatiest, eye-tearingest, and tastiest meals yet. More cleansing than a sauna.




Then we headed towards the last cave, huge cathedral of stone, with a reclining buddha in the first chamber, and then a humongous, dark, creepy second chamber.

(brian) The cave behind the Buddha cave was immense. Huge. Kept going on and on, each successive chamber extending into invisible dark in each direction, and there were mysterious sounds coming from a few different directions. I felt like the Fellowship of the Ring in the Mines of Moria, and like Tom Sawyer in Indian Joe's cave all at the same time. We clambered up and down massive boulders pitted into sharp crannies by long ages of raindrops, I came across roand holes that fell away for at least meters - I don't really know how deep - and I saw stalagmites that I swear were glowing with some kind of luminescence. It was way creepy and exciting at the same time. We probably went in a couple of hundred meters, and we could have gone further. I took a couple of dozen of photos, hoping the flash would light up all that wass beyond my flashlight's reach. But of course it didn't, so I had a couple of dozen black photos, except where I specifically snapped a stalagmite, or where you can see Emilie's headlight in the darkness for scale.

It was a bit of a a climb to get there...
(emilie) Yeah, here's the man climbing up!

...so after that cave we went for the best swim of the day into a gorgeous blue-green lagoon - that's us playing like little monkeys in the water!

And then, well, we were wet (lao people are not so much into bikinis), and it started raining. A good, heavy, monsoon thunderstorm. So we put our ponchos on and biked the 13km back under a wall of rain, in the mud. Unfortuntately we do not have photos of that memorable part of our day - I'm sure it was a funny picture though.
(brian) Riding back in the rain was fun as hell. Reminded me of some of the best of rainy season California, like mud football as a kid, when you could get completely drenched and didn't care and then could just enjoy a world of vertical water and splashing mud. But this was even better, 'cause it was totally warm - no worries about getting cold.


Finally tonight, after some serious drying off we ventured into the backpacker area for an organic vegetarian meal, with mulberry-coco shake (yum!!) and palm sugar beer (mouais). Life's pretty good tonight.

Vang Vieng

Today we took the bus to Vang Vieng. Ah the bus! It was great. It was the express to Luang Prabang, as opposed to the air conditioned 'VIP' bus with other foreigners, and yet quicker than the actual local bus, and we were one of only three groups of "falang" amidst the Lao. It was brutally hot, the only relief came with moving forward with all windows down, until the rain started and the world was just drenched in utter downpour. Passing out of Vientiene, the scenery went from the city to the suburbs to the country and villages, marked by the progression from concrete dwellings and tile roofs to wooden buildings and tin roofs to traditional Lao raised houses made of woven bamboo and thatched roofs. Beautiful scenery of rice fields, rich forest/bamboo, and steep mountains, dotted with buffalo.
These photos are from a cigarette-pee-and-secure-the-load break on the side of the road.







These are some scenes from the village where the bus pulled up for refreshments...






Now we're in Vang Vieng, where limestone 'karsts' rise as sheer-sided stunning mountains all around, with a lazy river flowing through. This photo (and the one starting this post) is the view from our bungalow beside the river.

We splurged for it, at $7. And it's outside town, which is good because town is full of Aussie backpackers intent on eating the "happy" pizzas and watching the Simpsons and Friends (I kid you not) on rows of recliners in bars lining the main road.

Tomorrow we'll grab some bicycles and go check out the limestone caves, Hmong villages, and the river that are the attraction around here, with a lot of swimming thrown in.

In Vientiane

I guess I had expected Laos to be very different from Cambodia, and at least on that first day, the difference was not obvious to me. Same dusty red streets, golden wats (pagodas) with naga (mythical snakes) on the roof, children running around, backpackers dragging their sandals around, and heat. Heat, humidity, sweat, rain, less heat, more heat, more sweat again, and still humid. The tropics - how quickly one forgets...



Big novelty though compared to Phnom Penh: no motodop here (the moto taxi), but real tuk-tuk, or jumbo as they call them here, more thai style.


Vientiane is small and very quiet though, especially after that nightmarish ride into Bangkok the day before. Makes me worried a little bit about how I will fare a whole sumer in such a polluted and noisy city. But anyway, Vientiane, that way, is fairly enjoyable. We took a walk around the city center, strolled in the market for hours. I love these markets where they sell everything from fresh -or not so fresh- chickens to washing machines, tourist paraphernalia, and gorgeous fabrics. Oh, and food too, rambutan, mangusteen, longan, durian, dragon fruits and all kind of exotic fruits.

We also stopped by the National Victory Gate, inspired from the French Arc de Triomphe (really??), where we took what has to be the first of a long series of cheesy pictures. As official sign itself quite accurately describes: "from a closer distance it appears even less impressive, like a moster of concrete"

We met up with a friend of Brian from Berkeley (yes, another ergie!) for a fruit cocktail in a tiny bar where apparently the whole expat community gathers. Not so different fronm Phonm Penh again - actually to a point that I run into a guy I knew from there. Small world...


We tried our first, real lao food that night, following the expert advice of Brian's friend, Mike. The local specialty is the laap, sort of salad with all kinds of good herbs, mint, lemongrass, cilantro mixed with meet or fish, that you eat with sticky rice. It's instantaneously become a favorite, which is probably a good think because it looks like we're going to eat a lot of it.

Getting there

What! Do I look tired on that picture? Don't see what makes you think so...

The trip to get here was extremely long and uninteresting. Twelve hours or so to Taipei, then 4 hours sitting in a cafe at the airport, then 3-hour flight to Bangkok, a hot and painful commute into the city to drop our luggage in a storage place, then back into the airport, for another 2-hour wait (our plane was late). We finally reached Vientiane around 22h30 on Tuesday night local time, under pouring rain, 30 or so hours after we had left Brian's place on Sunday night. Long and uninteresting, as I said.


And tiring too - did I mention that already?

h-12

We leave in twelve hours - and ooops... we still have quite a bit of packing left!

Time to stop playing with my computer

Emilie

Welcome to Emilie and Brian's blog

We're hoping to keep everybody posted on our adventures in Laos and Thailand that way. Hopefully with some pictures too.

Do post comment and email us!

Emilie & Brian

PS: à mes amis francophones, j'essaierai d'écrire un peu dans les deux langues, pour ne pas faire de jaloux :-)