Advertisement
Published: July 13th 2012
Edit Blog Post
The overnight bus trip from Kunming was made a lot more interesting by a massive storm, lashing rain and lightning for several hours. Crossing the border was a fairly quick process then thing’s slowed down. We waited for about 3 hours for other passengers to turn up to join our minibus heading for Luang Nam Tha - feeling we waited long enough with no new passengers we set off for our destination. On arrival the town seemed very quiet, but later in the evening the accommodation filled up with travelers. The town has a French influence and it was peculiar to see a number of shops selling baguettes and pastries.We found a large market area, where a lot of the stalls seemed to sell exactly the same thing with houses each having their own collection of hens, chicks and dogs.
It didn’t take long before one of the elderly Khmu ladies had spotted us as new arrivals and after some initial bartering trying to sell us some bracelets – which she succeeded in - she got on to the real deal of trying to flog us some opium – she was less successful.
Luang Nam Tha has to be
one of the most laid back places – this is probably a mix of the weather, the opium or the Laos Laos – a potent local whisky.
Our second day was spent cycling round the town, a little rain stopped us becoming too scorched – we headed for a double stupa, new and old – the old one being blown up by the Americans. The mount had stunning views out across rice fields and villages. Wisely we stopped off at a local village for some shade and a cold drink before heading to a second stupa – going some distance round the outskirts of the town the day was getting incredibly hot. Walking up a steep path - behind the local sports stadium - we passed a monastery with a monk and a dog on the way and at the top got a fantastic view over the town and of an approaching storm. Dashing back down to the bikes we arrived back at the hotel missing the worst of the rain. Rain will now feature regularly in the next few blogs.
After lunch we took on the challenge of the bamboo bridge – this operates in the dry
months and then is washed away in the rains – it provides a short cut over to the rice fields. (Fearing ending up in the river both of us wimped out on the first attempt). Trying out various routes through the villages to get up to the rice fields we eventually emerged and found beautiful views across a vast expanse of rice fields, many with Ox and workers in them. Mark successfully negotiated the Bamboo bridge on the way back.
We booked on to a short overnight trip one day jungle trekking one day kayaking. The morning was spent visiting a couple of the local villages, Lantean and Khmu tribes. We were shown around by our guide Si he explained that the Lantean is an animistic tribe and Khmu Shamanistic. Each is trying to preserve its traditions. We arrived at our hike point and were joined by a guide Kim from the Khmu village where we would be stay overnight. The walk started with a steep ascent – getting very sweaty for about 2 hours we passed through some heavily bamboo covered tracks our guide cutting through the path to make it passable. Before lunch it started raining so
became pretty slippery underfoot – but there was fascinating scenery and a fantastic selection of mushrooms. As we walked the guides collected various fruits and plants to help in the preparation of lunch. Thick bamboo was cut down to create a cooking pot, large leaves were turned into spoons, rattaan was cut down removing the spikes and turned into a delicious ingredient for the soup. Add in a banana leaf table, sticky rice – our first experience - and quickly created bamboo chopsticks we had everything we needed.
We continued through the rain in the afternoon – dodging the odd leech – and headed back to the village absolutely soaking wet. We took a thin and rickety bamboo raft back across a river to the village.
A short break and dinner was served Si our guide provided us with more stories and realities of life for the tribes. Particularly interesting were the stories of the Shamanistic rituals, the roles of leaders of the tribes and the initially unsuccessful family planning campaign that left the locals thinking that putting a condom on a banana would stop pregnancies.
After a very humid night we put on our wet clothes
from the day before and set out on a kayaking trip. We visited a village that had developed from Chinese immigrants and Buddhist and a further Khmu village. Lunching on a small sandbank we tackled some minor rapids and then headed back. The stench off our boots and clothes was quite impressive but a brilliant experience with fantastic guides.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.057s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0273s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb