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Published: February 10th 2011
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Since we’ve been away travelling we’ve both really wanted to really get off the beaten track, and visit a local village out of the more touristy areas. Laos seemed like the perfect place to do this as it’s such an interesting remote country but the people are so friendly.
With Claire and James we put our heads together (and with a little bit of help and friendly advice from a local guy in Luang Prabang) we decided to arrange our adventure by ourselves and not with an organised tour which would have only taken away from the experience we were looking for (and cost triple the price!).
We left Luang Prabang by bus to go further north to Nong Khiew, and once we had arrived we needed to find the port for taking a boat (only after a few wrong-turns and directions from helpful people in the town to finally get there!). From Nong Khiew we took a boat up through some spectacular scenery, passing water buffalos lazing on the banks eventually reaching Muang Ngoi just before evening. We had taken longer than we had expected so we decided to stay the night here – which was no bad
thing as Muang Ngoi is a gem of a little place sitting on the river (there are no roads so you can only arrive here by boat which makes it even more isolated).We settled down with some dinner, knowing we had an early trek ahead of us the next day.
The next morning we set off on an epic trek to reach the village we were looking to get to – Ban Na. On the way we were able to visit some eerie caves which gave us some cool shelter from the gleaming sunshine. The journey to Ban Na was a serious trek - after the caves our track became a battle trying to climb logs and force ourselves through over-grown bushes. Eventually we were forced to wade through a couple of rivers (by this point wondering if we were even going in the right direction!!). It got to the stage where there was only the four of us and one bull standing in the middle of a field!! Hmm, who could take who out?!! After trekking through some picturesque paddy fields we eventually saw a wooden sign for Ban Na and made our way to the village! Result
- and all in 3 hours!!
When we walked through the local village, the locals stopped in their tracks to look at the ‘newbies’ - being the only westerners in sight we had to get used to the staring! We were pointed to some huts that were available for the night, they were run by a lovely local lady. Since we had come to mingle with the locals, we headed back into the middle of the village, taking the presents we had brought for the kids the previous night (schoolbooks and a couple of Laos footballs). By luck we got speaking to a villager who arranged a game of bools with Paul and James. After each of them paired up with a local it wasn’t long before alcohol got thrown into the mix - the rules were if you lose take a swig of Lao-Lao (home-made whisky) or if you win take a swig. Sounds fair to us!! We also met the local school-teacher who gratefully took our books for the village school.
After this the curiosity got the better of us as we headed even further into the village only to be surrounded by a lot of
the interested kids – Paul and James took the opportunity to have a football kick-about with them (sport is such an easy way to communicate!). The kids sounded like they were having a great time, giggling away and trying to impress us with their best moves! As the game went on it was like word got out that westerners were in toon and more kids kept coming to join in! At the same time Tina and Claire were surrounded by some of the younger children curious as to why they were here!!
In need of some decent grub, the four of us sat down to some over-barbequed buffalo for dinner (like chewing rock!) and played some cards. Sleeping in our stilted wooden huts was a bit of an experience as throughout the night we could hear cows underneath where we actually lay!! Mooooo!!
The next morning we were up at 6am for the trek back for our boat and bus back to Luang Prabang - the trek was a bit easier and shorter when we realised that we had taken a wrong turn on the way here!! We left on our boat from Muang Ngoi well happy that
we achieved our stay in Ban Na all by ourselves and grateful to the locals in the village for taking time to make us feel welcome.
Leaving Laos From Luang Prabang it was time to head back down south to the capital Vientiane again for a couple of nights as we had a flight to catch to go to Malaysia. It was also time to say cheerio to Claire and James who we’d had a cracking time travelling around with for the past couple of weeks. Cheers guys!! Our paths will cross soon enough though in Singapore! The bus journey down was fairly horrific (if not one of our worst standard-wise) it was cramped, dirty with mud and dust, people were being sick on the winding roads and one puncture on the way!! Just what we needed after sleeping rough the night before!!
We both really enjoyed Laos, the country has given us some of our best memories so far – tubing and the homestay in the village!! As we were leaving Laos we were really glad that we had seen it at the right time before it catches up with the 21st century.
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katrina
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katbarnes54@yahoo.co.uk
sounds like a really interesting trip - must have been a real experience for you both - different life eh.... Mum