Lluang Nam Tha boat trip

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Finally in Laos, we spent another tedious 24 hr bus trip, travelling to the north of Laos, fairly near the Chinese boarder. All in all this meant a total of about 36 hours sitting cramped in rickety old buses. Although highly uncomfortable, we felt it best to get it all over and done with in one go. A huge compensation was the fact that Laos is absolutely breath taking! The land is so mountainous that the roads are windy and poorly kept, which is why the journeys take so long. All we passed was thick jungle, forested hills and villages made entirely out of bamboo..not a brick in sight.

Luang Nam Tha is a fairly small, picturesque town in northern Laos. We had planned on doing some trekking, as it is highly recommended from there. Sadly our lack of funds prevented this from happening, as our guidebook with prices is severely dated. This was a real shame but we settled instead for a two day boat trip down the Nam Kahn (feeding into the Mekong), which was just wonderful. Our trip was from Luang Nam Tha to Pak Tha. There was no one else going that way when we arrived at the port so we had to work hard to haggle the price right down. The boat doesn't travel through the night so you are supposed to pay a bit more to stay in a guesthouse at one of the villages. Once we'd agreed a fair price with our boat man, he explained we would be staying with him and his family in their own village. He saw it as a way to gain a bit more money but we saw it as an added bonus!

We hadn't expected the fantastic experience we got from this boat journey. We had a small long tailed boat with a tiny motor all to ourselves. Laos people hopped on and off as we stopped at various villages along the river. They all seemed so fascinated and amused to see us sitting there. The Laos people seem so happy and content with their lifestyle. We passed so many people fishing or washing on the banks of the river and everyone smiled and waved at us. The scenery couldn't have been more beautiful - so lush and green, with huge peaks rising up all around. The only problem was the blistering sun, which, with the help of our malaria tablets, burnt us badly!

The village experience was one of the best we'd had, which is ironic considering it was by accident and not arranged. We were staying in the "boat man's" (as he refers to himself) uncle's house. The village over brimmed with children running wild all over the place and a small pack of them followed our every move. The first thing we did was take a refreshing dip in the river whilst some local naked urchins splashed around the boats. It was so nice to see children playing outdoors until the sun went down and not glued to a computer or TV! After our swim, Bex watched, whilst harassed by some little girls, as Dom got put to shame playing football with about ten kids. The village was so pretty it seemed obvious to us why the villagers appeared so happy. We were served three bowls of bamboo and sticky rice for our dinner, which may not have been our first choice, but was actually very tasty. We slept in the communal open space of the bamboo hut, glad not to have put anyone out of their room.

In the morning we awoke to a horrendous noise of a pig being slaughtered! It disturbed us but didn't seem to phase any of the already awake children. We packed up and said our goodbyes and continued our trip. The scenery was as it was the day before - just stunning! We were sorry it had to end, but we've a feeling the beauty won't end there. We left our cheeky boat man with a Beer Lao on us!

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