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Published: February 5th 2009
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Sitting on a local bus heading north from Luang Prabang we met a woman from California (who had a Canadian flag on her backpack by the way!) who had a local Lao guide with her for a village trek that she was about to embark on. We told them where we were headed and the Lao man said that we should follow them and take a boat an hour up river from where the bus drops us off as it is a much nicer village than where we were headed. With a few days to spare we took his advice and hopped in a small wooden boat packed with locals and tourists and headed up river through small rapids and swirling eddies to the small village of Muang Ngoi ('mung noi').
The village of Muang Ngoi is relatively new on the tourist map, but there are no shortage of guesthouses to choose from. We found a little bungalow with hammocks overlooking the river for just over $4/night. Muang Ngoi is very much a traditional local Lao village with the only way in or out being by boat, and where the traditions of weaving, basket making, and rice farming are their
means of income. It was very refreshing to see that the people of this village still live a very simple life where food is cooked over an open fire, scrap metal is melted to make propellors for boats, and old bomb casings are used for decorative planter boxes. Yes, the entire town is decorated with giant empty shells that would probably hold 50 smaller bombs in it. Laos has been the most heavily bombed country in history. More than 2 million tonnes were dropped over 9 years, which is more bombs than were dropped on Europe during the entire second World War! It equals 1 plane load of bombs every eight minutes 24 hours a day for 9 years, of which 30% didn't explode! This is a major problem still affecting the majority of Laos, but specifically the northern regions as it makes finding new land to farm very difficult, and life and limb loss isn't uncommon. The fact that scrap metal is so sought after doesn't help either.
The next day we hiked for about an hour to the neighbouring village through dormant rice fields with grazing cows and water buffalo. We heard music coming from the village,
and knowing that the generators are usually only turned on between 6pm-10pm, we thought we should see what all the excitement was about. We arrived into the village and saw the entire village outside of one house, very very intoxicated from drinking the local Lao Lao (rice whisky) and dancing to the music. Somehow we learned that a new baby boy was born into the village that morning and they were celebrating. We were encouraged to help them "celebrate" and seeing as we had now become the main attracting no was not an option. They wre all trying to talk to us, and the combination of their lack of english and their slurred speech left us all laughing. I brought out the camera and soon they all wanted their pictures taken making silly faces, and then laughed when I showed them what they looked like. One of the guys who spoke a few words of english offered to take us to a waterfall that was nearby so we followed him. He said we could go swimming but when we got there it was very small and the water was of couse freezing! He only asked for us to buy him
a package of cigarettes for taking us there, and for the 50 cents they cost we bought him two. We got back into the village and said goodbye to the group who continued their party and on our way out saw another group of men who were playing a game similar to bocce ball. They saw us watching their game and invited us to play a round. Obviously Matt couldn't resist! They gave us a shot of Lao Lao whiskey before we started, as per tradition of course. They were much better than us (in our defense they play it all day every day) and when we lost they said that the tradition was that the losing team bought a bottle of beer for everyone to share, so we did!
We hiked back to the village and found a place offering a hot shower and herbal sauna. With the cold nights inside our bamboo hut (we had to sleep with toques on) we decided to indulge. For $2 why not! We put on sarongs and sat in the herbal sauna with smells of euchalyptus and lemon grass and enjoyed the warmth and the hot shower that followed. The next
morning we got on the boat heading back in anticipation of our next adventure...The Gibbon Experience!
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