Happy Travels... :-)

We had one last day in Hoy Xai before our journey to Mung Ngoi and we were sad to leave. Although at first the little town had felt like our prisoner, with not much to do there and many days of waiting, we soon grew quite fond of the place: a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. However, we had many more places to see and were ready for a new landscape, new faces and and our next adventure.

The beauty of Mung Ngoi is that there are no roads to get there, so we booked a bus to Mung Khua and set off. The bus dropped us at 4am on the side of the road to what seemed like the middle of nowhere. After a bit of walking around, we managed to find a tuktuk driver who said he could take us to the boat. We hopped in along with 6 other locals and a few other hidden passengers....
As we were driving along I kept hearing strange noises - a sort of low grunt followed by a high pitched cluck. I soon noticed a wodden mesh cage strapped to the side of the car...holding a pig! There were also a couple of chickens in a bag under a man's legs and the locals laughed at me and Rosie's surprise.

We arrived at the river and waited 6 hours until the boat was due to leave. Little by little more people arrived and soon we had a whole heap of travellers: a pretty tight squeeze!

The journey was breathtaking and finally we arrived in what is possibly the most beautiful place of my travels yet...

Mung Ngoi is a wonderful combination of a small amount of tourism (enough to get a room to stay in) and a display of real Lao local life. There are a few guest houses, but they are all right next to or often in someone's home. The town is so small that everyone knows everyone and tourists and locals hang out together (in fact, there was only around 10 other tourists there). We found a lovely little wooden bungalow overlooking the river and mountains, with a hammock outside and princess mosquito nets inside. After a long day of travelling, it was the perfect place to be...

The next day we woke up to the sound of music and laughter. Throwing on some shorts, we climbed up the grassy banks to reach the main road or... main dirt track. A party was going on, with long tables set up and beers flowing. Some of our friends we had met the night before were already there, tucking into chicken laap and noodle soup. They waved us over, it seemed everyone was invited, and we heard that the reason for the celebration was a new baby that had been born the day before. Lao people are some of the most kind and joyful I have ever met. In fact, never before have I been to a country where everyone is happy all the time. I asked my friend Sai how it was possible. 'We people are very very poor, most just farmers out on the fields all day, but we are very rich in here', he told me, his hand on his heart.

We decided to go exploring and went walking to some caves. A man told me that the locals never go there as it was used as a hiding place back in the time of the war and there are believed to be ghosts inside. I'm not sure whether or not he was just trying to scare me but if he was it worked! Rose told me to grow a pair, gave me a slap on the back, and off we went. The caves were wonderful! Pitch black, we were glad we had brought our head torches and a group of 10 of us all clambered inside. The ice cold water came up to our chests as we sang and giggled at our own echoes.

The next day our friend Sai from the coffee shop said he would take us fishing. Before we went we had a game of cards with his nephew who had the quickest little hands I have ever seen, putting us all to shame! It was me, Rose, Sai and his friend How, his two little nephews, a lovely Israeli girl called Danell and an amazing woman called Mickola from New Zeland. Nickola said she had been here 10 years before, when the town was even less developed than it is today. She stayed a month, the only tourist. In the rainy season they had no food as the lakes were too high to fish, and had to live off bamboo. She said she had come back because she owed her life to the place: she had fallen from the boat into the river and started to get sucked into a whirlpool. The boat could not turn round to get her, as if she had climbed in, it would have sunk. A local man saw her and dived in to save her, dragging her to shore. I think she found it strange to be back, as changed as it was, and it made me think what the place might be like in another 10 years if I were to ever return...

We reached the river and I asked where the fishing rods where. Sai and How laughed at me, pulled their goggles down and dived in, using small speared guns and nets. I was absoloutely awful. I tried my best but didn't catch anything, whilst the two little boys shook their heads at my failed attempts and filled Sai's baseball cap. We made a little fire and used sticks of bamboo to barbacue our freshly caught lunch which went down very well with a few glasses of Lao Lao whisky. What a magical day...

After an early wake up and a few Lao coffees to put a spring in our step, we packed our bags and set off to the Gibbon meet point. Me and Rose were in a group of 8, with 3 english girls our age and 3 men from Greece. There was another group of 8 also doing the waterfall trip and we all set off together in a tuktuk. Crammed tightly in, the bumpy dirt road broke the ice as we were all thrown into eachothers laps at every turn and the journey was filled with laughter and excited anticipation...

We arrived in a gorgeous little village that seemed to consist of merely 7 wooden huts, frolicking ponys and giggling toddlers weaving in and out of the thick green grass. The two groups split and we set off on the journey to our first tree house. Last minute, I had decided that although I've been know to shoe-lessly stroll across london to buy some milk, barefooted trekking through the land of leeches might not be for me. I bought some industrial black rubber wellies from a stall in Hoy Xai that came all the way up to my thighs: pretty women goes jungle style. I looked a little like my dad in his waders/wannabe stripper but the rest of the group soon stopped laughing as we came to our first knee deep river crossing! After a hardy trekk, mostly uphill, we arrived shiny and grinning to our first zip line. Equipped with a harness and white cotton zipping gloves, I felt my outfit couldn't have got any better. The zip line was completely out of this world... after a 30 second safety talk in disjointed english and a lot of hand gestures, we were told to throw ourselves off a wooden platform and enjoy! However, any sense of nerves soon flew away as I sailed across the most beautiful landscape I had seen in Asia, the ground completely dissapearing from sight. We arrived at our treehouse at around 4:30pm to welcomed refreshments of steaming tea, fresh fruit and honey nut bars: well earned after the long walk. After a bottle of local wine between us (delicious), some card games and riddle-swapping, we curled up early to bed, already excited for the next day's adventures.

Day 2 was wonderful. We had a long hike in the morning with plenty of long zips (the novelty of flying never wears off), before arriving at a waterfall for lunch. We stripped off and dived in the cool water: bliss. There was a mini zip into the pond and even a bamboo raft...
The second tree house was smaller but cosy and even higher than the last: 50 metres in the air! The guides then allowed us to go off on our own to do some extra zipping. Panos, Theodore and Salip decided to stay so us 5 girls braved the jungle alone. Keeping to our lunchtime bet, everyone of us did a zip line completely naked! It was so funny if not a little breezy, and we all returned to the treehouse (fully clothed) in a fit of giggles at our secret. Before dinner the group (seperately) enjoyed a wonderfully cool shower in a bathroom that opened out onto a view of the misty tree tops and the orange light of the setting sun...

We all arrived back the next day feeling like true survivors after the 7-hour-per-day walks and all those creeply crawlies that we eventually made friends with...
We all had a group celebratory dinner in Barhow, a lovely resteraunt with a smiling family and the cutest ball of fluff that seemed to resemble a puppy. With home-brewed jack fruit whisky all round, the group toasted the trip with a fond smile and wonderful sense of achievement. :-)

Here I am in the sleepy town of Hoy Xai, watching the Mekong river slip past.
I have been out of India for three weeks now and excited for the next adventure....

After the chaotic yet wonderfully peaceful pace of Indian life, Bangkok seemed a blur of westernized civilization, with more tourists than you could shake a chicken stick at. Everything is served on a stick, fruit, pork kebab, fried squid and even dried turtle! As you walk down the street cheerfully rotund men make smacking noises with their lips. At first I was a little confused by this new way of greeting...maybe it's how they say hello here? My naivety was soon educated as I discovered this was code for something that starts with a ping and ends with a pong....

With time running out and much to see, me and Rose decided to whiz through and get to Vietnam as soon as we could. Luang Prabang is a palm-shaded, pretty little town although I got the feeling was not 'The Real Laos'. Swarms of tuktuk drivers insisted the drive us to see the waterfall, but we decided to rent bikes instead....phew! Definitely not for the timid!! It took us about two hours of hard cycling through sparse roads with beautiful green lolloping hills on each side. 32km in total and two shining red faces to show for it! We felt a great sense of achievement when we finally pulled up and collapsed in tired giggles on the side of the road.

What a destination. The waterfall is idyllic, with clear blue water cascading through the jungle. It takes roughly ten minutes to walk to the top, with little pools along the way where the water hits a ledge. Fully clothed, we jumped in, glad that we could blame our sodden t-shirts on swimming and not purely the slog of the ride! There is even a bear sanctuary at the bottom, where the animals lay back in huge hammocks, as if contemplating some deep philosophical problem.

Next step: Gibbon!!!! We have heard so much about the Gibbon Experience and were unbelievably excited. We hopped on a bus from Luang Prabang to Hoy Xai: what should have been a 14 hour journey. As we took our somewhat sticky seats we noticed scrawled on the wall 'Welcome to Hell'. We laughed it off - probably a bunch of flash-packers. What's a little bus journey? We've done it before. Little did we know how well it described what was to come......

The first break down was at 2:am. The engine had died. We all trooped off to have a look, hoping someone might be having a go at sorting the problem. However, our driver was curled up on a lovely padded mattress with a full VIP mosquito net and cushions. It didn't look like we were going to be setting off very soon. Finally, at 10am the next day, they seemed to have fixed it and we set off again only to break down another 3 times. It actually turned out to be somewhat of a blessing, as each breakdown was in a lovely little village. With green mountains kissing the misty sky and gorgeous wooden huts, the village people were happy and friendly. We were welcomed with smiles, steaming noodle soup and various little gurgling babies thrust into our arms. It was a actually quite sad when we finally had to leave...

What was a 14 hour journey stretched to 32!!! Luckily enough we were with a lovely group of people who all bonded through the experience. Dirty and tired, we all trooped together, curling up on the side of the road and chatting the time away. We all managed to keep our humors up...after all, it's what traveling is all about!

We arrived in Hoy Xai on the 5th, and, having booked nothing, were hoping there would be two spots available for our gibbon trip. We weren't so lucky, however, and have had to wait 4 days here. THERE IS NOTHING TO DO!!! Luckily, me and Rose have managed to see the funny side of it all, and have spent our days drinking lots of coffee and playing many a card game. Although it might not be the busiest of places, we have grown to love it. People are friendly, the food is great, rooms cheap and time for rejuvenating plentiful. We will be fully rested for our jungle experience...that starts tomorrow......
We are so excited!