Down on the River Nam Ou...

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After the festival the girl from Australia went back to work in Kunming. So now it was only two of us left, Vajira from Sri Lanka and me.
I had long since thought about using a float or a boat to travel in northern Laos. This is way more natural than going by bus, most places here haven't had road connection until very recently. The Mekong and all its confluents are an extensive network of waterways and many villages can still only be reached by boat today. I asked Vaj if he wanted to go down the Nam Ou river with me on a bamboo float. We agreed to try to built one in Nong Kiaw which is 65km from the mouth of the Nam Ou into the Mekong and 90km from Luang Prabang.
When we arrived in Nong Kiaw the place itself already proved very rewarding. The town is located between steep limestone cliffs and the whole setting with a big bidge at the river is really awesome!
But when we started to look for a good place to build a float, we soon realized that Nong Kiaw was not the right place. There was not enough bamboo left and most parts of the river bank are vegetable gardens. We felt that the locals would not be too amused if we started to cut down bamboo insode their gardens...
Instead we found a local fisherman who was willing to sell one of his used boats to us. So we went home to think about it and the next morning we showed up to buy the tub! When we tested the boat it was a bit leaking, but the fisherman got it repaired with a simple cloth in five minutes. We loaded all our bags, two paddles and a cup for putting out water were included in the boat price, and off we went! At first we were rather helpless and the boat was turning around all the time. The locals were watching us from the river bank, I think they soon got the feeling we would never arrive nowhere...
After some hour and a change in our sitting position in the boat we slowly managed to stear the thing. Vaj was now sitting in the far end and I was sitting right in the front. So there we paddelt through untouched wilderness alongside steep limestone walls and occasionally passing by small villages.
We had been warned by several people of rapids. They had told us, that some parts were to wild for our boat and that we always should stop at rapids and investigate which way to go from the bank. So we did when we reached the first signs of splashing water and by picking the right way we could bypass the main rapid. Still some water swashed into the boat but Vaj could easily empty it with the cup.
Passing several rapids that day we never encountered a real problem. Once a big rapid spaned the whole left part of the river. In this place the river was divided by an island and to the right side of the island many mangrove trees seemed to block the way. Still the water was rushing between the many roots. Then two local boys in their boat appeared and waved to us. They wanted to help us finding the way trough the trees. They where quite good in stearing, one of them was standing (I would never have managed to stand in my boat, I was glad not to capsize while sitting...) and holding a long bamboo pole. So we paddelt hard to follow them between all those trees. The passages they went through got narrower and narrower and the water got faster and faster. Soon we saw the last passage open to the main river again, but the water was rushing directly towards some ugly bushes! We paddeled like hell and the two boys kept shouting at us to turn our boat. But the boat seemed to be so dull! Finally the frontside of the boat missed the big roots only by centimeters and the branches nearly threw me into the water. Then we had made it, the last rapid of the day was done.
It was half past five already, the sun was setting, so we started looking for a place to sleep. Half an hour later we came to a village again and we stoped. The people welcomed us warmly and aftera refreshing swim in the river let us into their village. Dozens of curious children followed. On the stilt terrace of a big house some banana leaves had been arranged together with a mosquito net and two blankets as our place to sleep. One of the women served us fish with sticky rice and noodle soup together with an oil lamp. So we had dinner under the curious stares of the children and many older people watching us. At times I had the feeling, the whole village had gathered on our terrace! Later I used my rechargeable flashlight which was the attraction to the kids. It has got a crank attached to recharge the cell and every child wanted to have a look. Everyone of them came to me, asked politely to get it, fascinated turned the crank some turns seeing the light inrease and gave it back so the next child could ask for it...
The next morning we started early, we were not really sure how many kilometers we had managed to paddle the previous day, my back felt like houndreds, but the river had been rather slow between the rapids. We wanted to reach Pak Ou, the mouth of the Nam Ou today.
About two hours after we had said good bye to the village people we saw the road running next to the river. This meant we had roughly done 30 kilometers now, so lets keep going!
Again the river started to become narrower and rapids occured. Around one o'clock we reached a broad rapid that spaned the whole river and looked quite wild. Only on the far right side some trees blocked the view. After investigating the left side from the river bank we decided to have a look at the right side first. What else can you do, if it looks just impossible?
So we paddelt upstream at the side of the river and crossed to the other side. We must have been near to a village, some people where standing at the river, some children were playing in the sand, and we saw some vegetable fields. We asked the locals which way we should go, they told us to go behind the trees on the right side. I walked down the river bank to have a cloder look. The passages were not to small and the water had no rapids but two small ones in the end. We decided to give it a try. There was no other good possibility, the boat was to heavy to carry. The locals warned us to be careful and we started to paddle. We found the entrance into the tree passage and soon came to the two rapids. I had figured out, that we should pass the first one sligtly to the right and pass the second one sligtly to the left for minimum disturbance. Being closed to them they didn't look so small anymore! But we nicely steared towards the first rapid, gained some speed and got onto it. We survived it and the boat proved to be quite stable with all that luggage. But we got lots of water into the boat. It was nearly filled to one third and got even more dull. I turned it around and started paddeling against the current to gain time until the second rapid while Vaj was shoveling water out as fast as he could. The children from the village had followed us at the bank and were cheering at us. Alone I could not hold the boat away from the second rapid for a long time. Very soon I needed Vaj to help me paddeling again. We had to turn around the boat at least and get some speed for the second rapid. And in the middle of it we were already! The water was splashing all around us, from all sides it swashed into the boat, one wave the frontside really dug into, lower and lower the boat floated. The lower we floated, the more water we got and finally the boat just sank beneath our buts! The children were shouting in excitement...
So we had to start swimming! The main rapid was over now, but the river was still fast flowing. And all the luggage pieces started driffting to several directions. Vaj had a big and a small backpack and a small trolley, I had a big and a small backpack, too. All the luggage was floating pretty good, especially Vaj's trolley was amazing ;-)!
After we had drifted down the river several hundreds of meters we saw a boat coming upstream. It was a local fisherman and we tried to hold onto the boat as it passed by. But the water was still flowing to fast. The fisherman turned round and followed us fishing all our luggage piece by piece. I had found the boat floating upside down and when the river finally got slower I managed to push it onto a sandbank. There we all gathered and examined all our belongings. Nearly nothing was missing, one paddle had floated away, Vaj was missing one flipflop, and I lost my towel I had been sitting on. Fortunatelly we had used plastic bags to pack all our stuff. But still Vaj had some serious damage to his digital camera and he had been carrying his mobile phone in his pocket. Later he could get his mobile phone fixed but the camera had to be converted to spare parts. I had been very lucky, none of my belongings had got wet al all, the big backpack had hardly touched the water inside its waterproof raincover, the plastic bags inside had done the rest. My small backpack had been inside two layers of plastic bags and the water had only penetrated the outer layer.
Still we could not go on with our boat. One paddle was missing, and more important, we realised that we still were too far away from Pak Ou to reach it that day. Also Vaj wanted to see a mobile phone and a camera shop before his items had corroded away...
So we gave the boat to the fisherman that had rescued us and he brought us to the other side of the river. We climbed up the bank an reached the road soon. When we got a lift to Luang Prabang we saw that we still had been far away. In the evening we found a nice guesthouse and started a big wash and dry session. In a mobile phone shop Vaj's phone was disassembled into pieces, every piece thoroughly dried with a hair-drier, one chip was changed and it was working again! But the camera had to wait until Bangkok.
To get our backs fixed we had a go on the traditional massage again, this time combined with herbal sauna, just wonderful...
I was a little sad that I had not seen the mouth of the Nam Ou, with its famous cave. But the whole experience had been a real adventure!

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Photos

Nam Ou
From the bridge at Nong Kiaw the river seems quite peaceful...

Vaj
This is the adventurous guy who was brave enough (maybe he now thinks stupid enough...) to join me on the river.

Local Fishing Boat
A boat of this kind we used for our down-river trip.

Dinner with Vaj
In the village we stayed over night we had dinner the local way. Little oil lamps are used as lights because no electricity is available

Village at the River
Painting by a local artist.