Ang Nam Ngum

Nam Ngum lake is huge, man-made, and contains many islands as well as tree stumps! We've read that when the lake was made the area was not deforested first, and locals from surrounding villages have found ways to cut down the trees from under-water as the teak wood is valuable. So we guess that now, while the water level is low, these many visible tree stumps are the remainders of ones that have been chopped.

We decided we'd pay it a visit from Vientiane, as we'd intended to go there from Vang Vieng (the first time we were there) but wimped out of the two hour pick-up truck journey.

We arrived there at about 5pm, then had some of the nicest food we've eaten in Laos at one of the lakes less appealing restaurants before looking around for a boat trip. We wanted to see the lake then get a pick-up truck to Vang Vieng where we'd pick up our passports in a couple of days. It seemed to be the perfect time to go out on the lake as the sun was just going down over the mountains and the water looked turquoise. However, the events that followed proved that it wasn't such a perfect time to go after-all.

We found an old man who would take us out for an hour for $6. It was not long though before the boat broke down (just me and steve on a falling-apart long [and slow] boat, the sun had gone so it was nearly dark) and a storm was coming. We got rescued by the son and small girl on a speedboat (canoe with an engine) who brought a new battery, yet by this time we had already drifted onto some tree stumps underwater so they had a battle trying to get us off. We were just about to jump into Steves sandal and sail to safety when the boat finally started moving. Within a few minutes we reached the shore but, unfortunately, to reach it we had to walk a plank as wide as one flip-flop, in the dark and it bounced up and down, with our backpacks and hand luggage. To top it off, it was by that time 7pm, completely dark and no-one would take us to Vang Vieng so we had to stay at the lake. It turned out not to be too bad though, the accomodation was nice (if a bit exensive for our budget), and we sat and had a beer with some american guys who we'd shared a pick-up with to the lake. It was quite a shame that the man next door had a very serious snoring problem and sounded like he was eating at the same time as breathing and kept us awake for most of the night. Then, just as we were so exhausted we dosed off anyway, someone put their TV on full blast at about 3am!!! We decided it must have been another guest who was awake because of the snoring and turned the TV on and whacked up the volume to block it out.

The next morning, we got up early (as the snoring man was talking in a booming voice on his mobile outside our room), had breakfast with the americans and got a pick up with the locals to a nearly village called Thalat. We wanted to go straight to Vang Vieng but found there was a kind of bus system in place with the pick-ups meaning we had to go from Nam Ngum- Thalat- Pong Hong- Vang Vieng. After three packed out pick-up journeys later (complete with a strange, singing village woman and food deliveries) we arrived in Vang Vieng.

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