The last week

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Last entry only took us up to our first night in Houay Xai, the border town in Laos. We booked up to catch a bus north to Luang NamTha which we knew could take a whil longer than anticipated due to rain. The weather was not too terrible though so we went for it which meant a 20 hour nightmare journey driving through what looked like stroganoff but was in fact the clay soil in the region. The road on this route is under construction so it's pure clay with scattered bits of aggregate and random bits of machinery. We didn't have a bus as we were told we'd have, we had a big tuk-tuk. They fit 20 people, falang and Lao, and heaps of luggage onto this 4WD with a tuk-tuk carriage on the flat bed bit - there was a couple from Nottingham on a two-year trip and a group of very demanding Israelis, us, and some local guys. It was a horrid, horrid journey broken up by various problems the most serious of which being a collapsed axel on our truck and the convoy truck 'running aground' in a ditch maybe 6 foot deep. This did mena though that we spent part o the day in a works unit for the road workers sitting in a chicken coop to shelter from the rain and yet more time in a village while our driver was overseeing repairs to the vehicle. Suffice it to say many hours of driving in the dark on cliff edges in sludge with nil traction made me wonder if this trip would be my cup of tea... When we arrived safely at the bus statrion it was three thirty am and there was no option but to bed down on a bench for a few hours until guesthouses reopened. Thankfully we were so tired that fear of being murdered/bitten to death didn't stop us sleeping. Then it was on to a fantastic ecolodge called the Boat Landing where we stayed for two nights. Our first day there was a relaxed affair to aid recovery, followed by an evening of great Lao food and the sounds of all manner of insects and amphibians chatting - really very, very nice. We booked up to go on a trek the following day which I thought would be a semi-strenuous affair but nothing too touhg - how wrong could I be!? Again road construction, this time up a mountain, proved our downfall as we were out for 11 hours tramping through mud on a serious steep ascent. Going underfoot made some routes impossible so we and our fantastic guide Ket were tiptoeing at the edge of jungle drops with zero grip just hoping that it'd be OK... When you lifted your foot there would be maybe 5 kilos of mud hanging from it, it even broke Matt's tevas - the sole just came right off so we had to fasten it back on with hairbands and random bits of rubber from the construction. When we finally reached the summit after maybe 6 hours we had tea and lao-lao (local rice whiskey) with the chief and tribe of an Akha village - it was kind of odd and I wasn't very comfortable as you feel like you are making a specatle of their lives- it was really interesting though and particularly intense as we were the only people there. I bought some purses they'd made and Matt took about a million photos then we started the descent, which was equally hard going - I was a bit freaked out as it was dark by the time we finished so we were walking in the pitch black. n It was an excellent day, I whinged lot and was scared a lot but I am really pleased that we arranged it. We stayed the night at the lodge again so had a great meal and a couple of beer lao to celebrate survival then it was crash to get on the move again...
Luang NamTha is a beauiful province - it was more than worth the effort of a tough journey.

Our route then went:
Luang Prabang
Vientiane
Near Pakse
Si Phan Don then into Cambodia
Pnomh Penh
Siem Reap (where we are for the next 3 days before heading back to Bangkok)

I will fill in the blanks when I can...

Sorry for being boring, I'm writing this to help myslef to remember really!

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Photos

The 'raod' to Luang NamTha
Definitely best kept for the dry season: clay+rain+overlaoded trucks+mountains = 20 hours of pain!