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Published: December 29th 2007
Getting Late
The day is coming to an end.Hi All
OK, I have a LOT to write about, yet I don't want to waste the entire night at the computer. So... I'll try to give an abbreviated version. I left off last at Luang Prabang, which was an amazing place. The day after my last check in I took a private guided tour through the Laos 'outback'. It really is something else. I got a first hand look at how the people live over there. A family of five will live in a one room bamboo hut, if they're luckily it's on the river, and eat fish they catch from the water using spears made from a bamboo stick with a sharpened rock at the end. Unbelievable. The thing is, is that they all seem VERY happy, all smiling at you and trying to speak to you. My tour guide was one of the 'natives' himself. His name is Buon Cheng, and he's a Hmong. They are a tribe of Chinese origin that you can find in North Thailand, throughout Laos, and in parts of Cambodia. They tend to make camp at the tops of very tall mountains. Buon Cheng would have to trek 8 hours each way
Elephant
They use their elephants for everything for school. There is only a trail that links the two, and it is over very rough terrain. He would make the trek each Monday, early morning, stay in the barracks throughout the week, then would leave at 2 PM Friday, arriving back home that night around 10. The government of Laos gives the three top students at each school a scholarship to one of the three Universities in the country. He finished first in his class, so is currently a student at the college in Luang Prabang. I asked him if he had a choice of which of the three he went to, to which he answered yes. I then asked him a question to which I thought I knew the answer. I go, "so the college at Luang Prabang is the best of the three?" He replies, "No. The one at Vientienne is better. However, Vientienne is more like a city, while Luang Prabang is a village. This was important to him, since he needed to go get his food from the forest on the weekends, gathering it for the week ahead." Pretty crazy huh. He's real tribal.
The tour itself was awesome as well. First, we
went biking for about 20 miles, through the trails, stopping at a village and two temples. Then, we arrived at a camp, where they had a bunch of elephants. There was a baby one which I was able to feed, and play with it. Then, I was able to ride one of the three big elephants, which was cool. Then, we took a motor boat, which was really just a small motor attached to a carved out tree, for about 30 minutes until we reached this waterfall. It was sooo blue, and it wasn't just a regular waterfall. We hiked up, and above the biggest waterfall itself, there is an area that would best be described as a 'water forest'. It looked like a regular jungle, but on the ground, it was this unbelievably blue water for acres and acres. And, for all the eyes can see, you can see all these waterfalls further up the mountain. After spending some time there, we took a bamboo raft for another half an hour then switched to kyacks. We took the kyacks for about 25 miles, which took about an hour and a half. There was some white water, but for the
Our boat
We took this boat down river. most part it was rather calm. It is 'low season'. Along the river there were all these tribesmen and villages. It was an awesome day.
Talk to you Later,
Dan
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