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Published: November 5th 2009
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River Crossing
Crossed a large river before beginning trek Sadly the camera problems were mounting at this point in the trip. So many pictures were lost due to this. The good news is the ones left are from an awesome trek that Jamie, Sir Alex Dickey and myself did near Luang Prabang. Laos is my favorite SE Asia country I have visited thus far. It's already back on my itinerary for my upcoming trip. The people are quick to smile, the touts are not as persistant as India or Thailand and Beer Laos is the best in SE Asia.
Our trek was with a cool ethnotourism oriented organization. A 1/4 of the cost went directly to the villages we visited. We hiked 7.5 hours on the 1st of 3 days, crossing streams 32 times! The village we stayed in was inhabited by Khamu people who had come over from Cambodia. We stayed in the village chiefs house. Before dinner we walked around the village of 300 people comprised of 50 families. The women were threshing rice with a large cylindrical piece of wood (at least 5 feet long) and large wooden bowl. Others were stripping bark from trees, which was used for cordage and clothing. We had an awesome
Lunch
Forest dining complete with banana leaf plates dinner of sticky rice, vegetables and some damn good pepper steak. After dinner things became a bit surreal beginning and maybe partly due the introduction of some rice whisky. This style of whisky is made by fermenting sticky rice in a ceramic pot. It's ready to drink in 3 days and continues to gain potency until after 7 days when its practically undrinkable. We drank right from the pot through long bamboo straws that rose 1.5 above the pot. Half way through this merry-making we were invited to another hut where 2 local shamans were trying to heal a young boys broken arm. One was chanting whilst the other rubbed alcohol over the wound. A young chicken sat on an altar as a sacrifice to the spirits. Out of what seemed like nowhere one of the shamans blew alcohol into the boys face. He cringed but amazingly did not let out a whimper. The shaman decided that the spirits had not been appeased and a squealing pig was being drug in as we departed the hut.
Day 2 was a lot of uphill made quite difficult by a persistent light rain. The terrain was still mostly slash and burn
in various phases. For lunch we huddled around a fire in a Hmong (another indigenous group most well know for helping American soldiers in Vietnam) village. After lunch we climbed a bit further before descending for a solid three hours. We finally passed through some beautiful tropical forest that had been set aside by the government. The rain made the trail treacherously slick and Alex and I found ourselves sliding down several times (did I mention it was steep?). We were down by 3 or so and spent our last night in a Lao Lum village. They performed a really fun good luck ceremony for us. First they made a small stupa (buddhist religous monument) from banana leaves with ornate flowers positioned around it. This was set in a large bowl of rice. At the appointed time we were dawned with scarfs and sat around the stupa with a dozen or so Lao. They then blessed us with a short mantra as a group and then came around to each of us individually and tied white strings around our wrists repeating the mantra each time. The next part is every Lao's favorite I believe. They opened a bottle of lao
Panning for Gold
Average earnings, $5USD a day lao and started handing out shots. This went on until the bottle was gone. About half way through they started breaking out big bottles of Beer Lao. Half a glass was filled and then downed by each person in the circle. We went through about a dozen bottles like this! By the end there were quite a few tipsy people especially some of the Lao women and one of our guides. It was a great way to end the hiking portion of our trek. The next morning we took kayaks down a river for about 5 hours completing our fun-filled adventure.
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