Advertisement
Published: March 29th 2006
Edit Blog Post
party time
Laos Chair dancing Well after 18 days I have finally made it over the Border into Laos, considering I was going to go straight to Laos first but that’s the best bit about no plans and no time limits. Cross 300mt of water and you really are in a different place to Thailand. The most important thing for me to remember is Laos has very few ATM facilities so I needed to cash up, and the the first stop was of course was Huay Xai, another little border crossing, very small and if your looking for night bizarre then forget it this place shuts down very early. But as I said before was invited to a party which was held out of town at a Very nice house, the best I’ve seen yet.. The guys who held the party are German and a few of their friends so they went to the trouble of cooking a traditional meal, which was named Schweinegeschnetzeltes with Spaetzle, something different to the local food you could say but it was absolutely brilliant. In all there was 8 different nationalities at the party, which set the base for a great house party with great music, and of coarse lots
Loa Loa rice wine and anything else you could think off, we were ready to see the sunrise again!! Music played all night long and I thought you could not ask for a better way to spend your first night in a new country, making new friends and setting up places to stay later on in my travels.
Managed to get a few hours sleep before being asked if I would like to go and have a Sunday picnic on the Mekong River with a Lao family and my new friends. This was something special to be had so no holding back as we got on the family boat and motored for about 1hr up stream. They parked the boat, as close to shore as possible then it was sink or swim time. I noticed when we got in the boat that they brought along 2 crates of BeerLao with them and thought that’s a lot piss to consume. I was told if you have one you are not allowed to stop, this meaning that they use 1 glass with ice and you are required to drink it fast, the glass gets passed on and on and on and on,
should have said no but hey I’m not going to be the first Aussie to nock back a beer at a picnic. The food was amazing, fish just caught out of the Mekong just minutes before cooking, papaya salad which was prepped on the boat trip, bamboo soup and lots of kick arse spices along with sticky rice, green leaf and noodle. You couldn’t buy a trip like this and thinking how lucky I am, for just going with the flow is proving to pay off well. After lunch we sat around drinking more as the Laos do and played cards for a couple of hours before heading back home.
Monday arrived and boy was looking forward to it, I booked myself onto the Gibbon Experience a 3-day trip into the Bokeo Jungle to sleep in tree houses. This really is some hippy shit but it was brilliant. The money goes towards saving the jungle and all the animals in it, especially the rare and almost extinct Gibbon monkey. If you are ever in these parts it is a must do for all. After a 3-hour drive up national highway 1 which is dirt and very rugged road oh in
home sweet home
sleep walking not recommended the back of a ute so depending on how old the Ute is a kidney belt maybe good. Then you have a 1 hr hike into the jungle from there you get into a harness and hook onto these wire ropes which can span anywhere from 50mt to over 400mt to get from tree house to tree house. Tree house one is the one I stayed in for 2 nights and is perched some 50mt above the ground. No ladders to access only zip lines (flying Fox). They bring all the food cooked from the kitchen on these lines as well. I ended up sharing the tree house with 3 other girls and boy could they talk, I thought we were going to the jungle to shut the F**k up and enjoy the serenity, listen to the birds and monkeys. No they were on some catch up trip and god I could have thrown them off the tree. The best way to find some piece and quite was to head out on the zip lines about 6am and hide in the jungle like Tarzan waiting for Jane, hoping to see some wild life. Well after 2 days of lot’s of noises and not seeing anything wondering if they actually did eat all the animals and are playing the sounds threw speakers lodged in the trees we managed to be privileged to see a cat just before we departed. But really it was something special and I will surely be back some time in the future to see how the project is going, as it only started 1 year ago. All the staff are Laos and over 40 people are employed through the program. A hand full of volunteer workers from overseas are there to teach English, assist with building the new tree houses and do the behind scene work. I repeat again a must do and would rate as a big kid adventure.
Back down the well beaten highway to Huay Xai to rest for a few days (ha ha) before we got back into party mode again, these people pull a party for anything, actually this was a going away party, no dancing for me this time I did the cooking on the BBQ aussie style and they were all impressed. Today there is a fun run/walk on which donates money to the kids in town, so I’m going to be Mr camera man take pictures for them and yes I believe they will be having more drinks and barbeques. Overall Huay Xai was great lots of new contacts and a free bed for a week except I paid that back by being Mr handy man, fixing the water pipes and putting up curtains. But really it is time to move on so tomorrow me and 3 girls are taking a boat trip on the NamTha for 2 days to get too Luang Nam Tha. They have work to do up there so it worked out I get this trip really cheap, as we will have our own private boat with cooks and all. This rout is not very popular with the tourist, as they all go down the Mekong squashed in like sardines doing the tourist trail, which is why I am going this way.
Shannon(livo)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0365s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
captainelectric
non-member comment
Namaste'
I am overwhelmed with your adventure and I thank you for sharing...as always...especially traveling down any river...like the Mekong. Blessing to you.