Tribal Trekking

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Well, Rick's dream has come true and we are now breathing bonafide Chinese air (I know it's somewhere here amidst the exhaust fumes). We arrived here in Jinghong city, or I guess for Chinese standards village, yesterday evening. It was sad to leave Laos, but we've got so much planned I must admit our grief was short-lived. To catch everybody up, we left Vientiane last Thursday on a VIP bus to travel northwards to Luang Prabang. Here are some of the pros and cons of that trip. CONS: (I find it's always best to start with the negative, then the positive seems just that much better!): the road: this puppy was as twisted as my mother (sorry mom), making wild hairpin turns every 5 meters corkscrewing up mountains and snaking down valleys; the driver: apparently this guy wanted to be Mario Andretti in the worst way and unless people and luggage were falling into the isles, he wasn't happy; the puker: I knew this was going to happen the moment we stepped on the bus, me and Rick get seated next to the only puker, a woman who insisted on throwing up every 10 minutes (it was a 9 hour ride) into small plastic bags, then disposing them into a garbage can in the isle. Of course, the garbage pail was not bolted down and slid dangerously close to Rick on some of the more twisty turns. PROS: the villages: we had the utmost pleasure of passing through some of the most quaint (I hate to use that term but I can't think of a better word) villages as we careened up the mountains. These villages struck me as the quintessential southeast Aisa mountain village (if there is such a thing). Pigs, chickens, naked children, all running around shacks on the sides of mountains, while women and men, some in what I think would be considered traditional dress, went about their daily activities. True, the bus driver was going about 60 miles/hr so some of the time the villages were nothing more than mere blurs, but we caught the occasional glimpse; the machinegun: halfway through the trip, Rick and I noticed that there was a man sitting in the back of the bus cradling a machinegun. We weren't sure why he was there, but he looked pretty cool.
We arrived later that night in Luang Prabang, thankful to still be alive and lucky to be unsoiled by the puker. Although teeming with tourists, Luang Prabang still holds a lot of charm. It has narrow cobblestone streets lined with old guesthouses and tropical flowers, a lovely nightmarket with lots and lots of Lao silk, excellent food and coffee, and an especially endearing little tea house that showed fantastic movies for free every night at 7 o'clock.
Despite Luang Prabang's charm, however, we were soon eager to move on and so we booked a minivan to Luang Nam Tha (we needed a splurge after the last bus). Close to the Chinese boarder, Luang Nam Tha is renowned for its ecotourism treks. With a large portion of the money from these treks going directly to projects to help the local villages , we found it hard not to participate. We booked a 2 day, 1 night trek visiting three different villages 20 km outside of Luang Nam Tha and, needless to say, it was fantastic. After a day of hiking (including a mouthwatering Lao picnic halfway through the day...mmm..chile paste and sticky rice....) we spent the night in a Kmong village. Seeing as most of the day was spend hiking up mountains in fairly warm weather, we were overjoyed to see a river running by the village. After washing away our daily sins, we toured the village and eventually dined with the chief. There, through our guide, we asked the chief questions about his village and their culture, satisfying our thirst for knowledge. Other thrists were satisfied, as well, by lao lao, or homemade Lao whiskey. Rick said, through watering eyes, that it was comparable to a really strong sake. I wasn't brave enough to try.
In the village we also met 2 anthropologists from Montreal, doing a study on the effects of tourism in this particular tribe. From previous data collected on this village, the anthropologists claimed that the effects of tourism have been quite positive, seeing as a portion of the money from the treks goes towards funding projects such as establishing a clean water supply or covering the costs if a villager needs medical attention.
Anyway, that's about all for now. For everything you ever wanted to know (AND MORE!) about Chinese transit, stay tuned for next week's episode.

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