---

Happy Christmas holidays everybody! Not too cold there in Europe? ;-)
We didn't get a white X-mas here, that's for sure!
Instead, we had a relaxed ánd exciting trip in northern Laos.....

Again we crossed a border on foot, this time from China to northern Laos.

The first thing that struck us when we crossed the border was how poor Laos actually is. What a big difference with China! In the main cities of Laos standards are good (although you can't really speak of “cities”, they are basically big towns, even the capital). But in the more remote countryside the story is very different. For us, it felt like being in Papua all over again: people were dressed in rags and dirty clothes and we even saw some bare brested women in one poor village. Before we went to Papua, we knew we would see a lot of poverty and you prepare yourself for it, but seeing the same poverty in some villages in Laos came a bit as an unexpected shock. Luckily, we saw that there are many NGO's active in Laos, so even the poorest villages now have access to clean water, sun power electricity and education for the children.

So what have we been doing in Laos?

In this country there are more than a dozen of National Protected Areas (NPA's) where you can do some serious trekkings, nature & wildlife spotting. We did three trekkings in total, but the number one favourite was:

The unique Gibbon Experience!

This special trekking takes you to Bokeo NPA and offers you a 'ones in a lifetime experience' : by steel kabels you zip over dense forested valeys, somethimes 100m high and 400m long!
Hold your breath, click yourself to a cabel and....ZZZIP (and watch out not to shxxx :-) ). And when you think this is amazing, this is not the unique part of it . What makes it a must-do is the fact that you zip from treehouse to treehouse (30 - 50m high) where you sleep, eat, take a shower and everything. Also, if you're lucky, patient and an early bird, you could spot some real gibbons (kind of monkeys) in the forest (which we diddn't...because of the early-bird reason...). And last but not least, a big part of the tourist dollars go to the protection of the park, the gibbons and to programs providing local people alternative incomes with respect of their living habits (without cutting trees in the NPA or killing endangered animals).
There are 7 treehouses in the park, most of them some 5 years old, but we were the lucky ones that could sleep in the famous “N° 7”, who was build last year. With 2 floors, solar energy, nice wooden floors, a bathroom with rainshower (albeit a cold one) and a view you can't find in any other bathroom, really decent sleeping material, etc. And to live up this magical place, we had the splendid company of 2 invitees from the projectmanager, Nuria and Xesco from Catalunia, and Michael from Australia who spent some time there recording sounds of the jungle.

Ok, we'll stop with the superlatives now; there was 1 minor aspect in this trip : Raf fell sick during the first night (high fever and stomach problems), which wasn't of course at the right place or moment! Some other tourists encountered the same problem, so probably it had something to do with the food or water. The second day it went better, so we zipped further in a relaxed way.

Another National Protected Area where we did a 2-day-hike was Nam Ha NPA near the Chinese border. It's mountanous and populated by different ethnic tribes (some of them even don't speak Lao, so you can imagine how far away they are from the rest of the world, without any source of news, etc. And as for our guide, he didn't speak their language either...). Most of those people are very shy, especially the women, which creates a rather strange and unwelcoming athmosphere. But if you're some time in their presence, after a few hours, they loosen a bit up, like we noticed in the “village” (i.e. 3 houses) where we spent the night and where our guide cooked us some fresh-fresh local dishes.

About 80 km from the capital city Vientiane lies Pu Khao Khuay NPA, an easily accessible (i.e. mostly flat) park, with some waterfalls, places to swim and the main attraction : a few dozens of wild elephants. There's a special “Elephant observation tower” for visitors where you can spend the night.
You can book a tour to visit the park and tower at 'Green discovery' in Vientiane city, but their commission is so rediculously high, that it's best to go directly to Ban Ha village and arrange it there (with a small posibility that it's full). But we took that chance and it worked out well. That means : there was place in the tower, guides available, a nice NPA to stroll around,....BUT no elephants and the 50/50 chance of seeing them (as is told to tourists) was largely exagerated, as we saw in the diary that there were'nt any spotted since September. Also, the night in the tower was quite terrible for all the visitors (very cold, no matresses, shabby sleeping bags too small to get your body into,....).

The relaxing site of Laos :

After 2 days on a easy going slow boat with 5 nice Australians that we met on the Gibbon Experience-trip, we ended up in Luang Prabang : ancient capital city ánd ideal place to relax. Loungy bars and restaurants, beautifull temple sites, night bowling,...

In some villages around Luang Prabang, the Hmong New Year festival took place at that moment; an event not to skip if you're around at that time. The cutest were the children in their colourfull costumes and the youngsters standing in a line opposite each other (boys on one site, girls on the other) throwing crisscross mandarines at each other as a seduction-game : if a boy and girl start throwing only at each other after a while, there's something in the air (and it's more than a mandarine!)

With Christmas coming closer and with the do-something-good, everybody-happy-atmosphere, we decided to do something extra for the people in Laos. Up in the north, we bought pencils and copybooks for the children and planting seeds for the farmers of vegetables they normally wouldn't have, and brought them to some remote villages on our motorbike or during a trekking.

We also saught for an orphanage, hospital or school which we could visit on Christmas-day with a surprise, and found a home for blind children near Vientiane : the 'Home of Light'.

We first went there to inform about their needs and about the manager's approach of receiving visitors with presents. The 25th we went back with a Santa-hat and -beard so that the children could feel Santa Claus : it was heartbreaking to see their reactions! Besides some usefull presents, like tapes, battery recharger and batteries for their taperecorders, a micro for the band that plays there every week, we brought of course some toys and candies.
It was the best activity we could have imagined on Christmas-day abroad, seeing the children and manager so grateful and cheerful!

To future travellers: if you would be interested to visit the Home of Light, you can go to the following address :
Ophtalmology Center - Thongpong Village - Sikhottabong District - Vientiane Capital.

You can also contact Miss Manilay Saysana, manager of the Home : tel. 856 20 5213136 or saomalaysia@yahoo.com.

Have a great New Year's Eve! And see you in 2010!

---