Vang Vieng - The Laos Party Town

Our bus to Vang Vieng was scheduled to take 6 hours to get there from Luang Prabang. Jenni and I believe that the people here in Laos must not know how to use basic physics formulas like velocity = distance / time which every high school student would know can be rearranged using simple algebra to give time = distance / velocity. If they do know the formula, they must simply ignore the fact that the bus driver decides to drive his bus at about half the speed as what is expected, because like other bus trips we taken in Laos, we arrived very late to Vang Vieng. Fortunately the bus route through the mountains was spectacular with the green rolling hills.


A 45 minute pit stop at the very top of the mountains didn't exactly help either. On down the road, about a kilometer from where we pulled over, one side of the road was in such a poor condition that the traffic passing in the other direction could not drive on it. Thus, people driving in the opposite direction were using our side of the road. Usually when something like this happens, regular people can sort themselves out to allow the people driving in the opposite direction to let a handful of cars around the bad patch of road, before taking your turn to drive around. Not here in Laos it seems. We, along with all of the other buses and trucks had to wait all that time, just for a policeman to drive up to the top, stand at the 10m stretch of poor road to direct about 30 cars moving in both directions!


When we finally arrived in the Vang Vieng town centre, the first order of business was to find somewhere to stay. Like the places we visited in southern Laos, there was not many online booking facilities available for accommodation in Vang Vieng. The first place we went to was listed in the Lonely Planet. Upon arrival, we stood there for about 5 minutes with staff mulling about the place, completely ignoring us. We loudly announced to each other that if the staff wouldn't pay us any attention, we would happily take our business elsewhere, so we did. The next place we tried didn't have any rooms available, but the nice lady at the front counter recommended we try a new guesthouse around the corner and kindly marked it on our map. The place recommended ended up being a good find. The only drawback to it was the fact that it was located right next to the veranda and the rain leaked in under the door on the last night of our stay. Fortunately, we had already packed most of our gear and luckily the water avoided everything we left on the floor.


Vang Vieng is very different to most other towns in Laos. The centre of town is mainly set up to cater for the drunken shenanigans of the young backpackers visiting the town to go drunken tubing down the river into town. Scattered around town are clothes shops selling boardshorts, bikinis and waterproof bags to hold your money and camera while tubing down the river, western-themed pubs and restaurants and chill-out bars with small beds and large plasma TVs screening episodes of 'Friends' and 'Family Guy' all day long. This all sounds like a blast, but we felt that it was a bit embarrassing seeing all of the young foreigners, stumbling around town completely wasted EVERY NIGHT, only wearing their boardshorts or bikinis, shouting and carrying on and having little to no respect for the locals. 


Nonetheless, on our second day in Vang Vieng, Jenni and I joined in the romp and went tubing down the river with all of the other drunken lunatics. Tubing in Vang Vieng basically involves a massive party at a series of riverside bars along a 500m stretch of river about 3km upstream from Vang Vieng town centre. Each person is issued a large inflatable tube which you use to float down the river from bar to bar, eventually passing the last bar and letting the river float you all of the way into town where you get out. We took a tuk tuk with a whole bunch of other people up to the start of the tubing area. We had been warned in numerous travel guides that the tubing activity is actually quite dangerous because the river's current can get quite strong at times. This mixed with stacks of alcohol is a recipe for disaster and leads to a handful of people downing each year. While in our tuk tuk, we heard from one of the other passengers that a local guy had drowned the day prior because he had swung off a rope into the river, landed in the water awkwardly, winding himself and was swept downriver in the current. As expected, this raised a few eyebrows in our tuk tuk. Jenni and I had previously agreed that we weren't going to go too crazy with the drinking and were going to avoid doing anything stupid like trying to do a backflip off a 10 metre high rope swing.


We are glad to report that we stuck to our guns and enjoyed the day partaking in a couple of drinks and did not do anything too stupid. The mass of people joining in the tubing party seemed to stick together, with everyone moving en masse from pub to pub down the river. Jenni and I were more keen on having only a couple of drinks at a few of the pubs scattered along the river, rather than getting completely blotto at the first one like everyone else. We stayed at the first bar, enjoying just one drink each while watching a stack of people swinging off the huge 10 metre high rope swing into the water.


After finishing our drinks we felt like we were ready to start our bar hopping down the river. As you float down the river toward a bar on the side, a person will throw out a rope with a plastic bottle attached for you to hold onto as they reel you in. On our first attempt to tube down the river to a bar about 100m down, Jenni somehow managed to fall out of her tube while attempting to catch the rope being thrown to her. The river's current was actually quite strong and quickly pulled her and her tube downstream. Luckily, she managed to keep hold of her tube to keep herself afloat and I was able to quickly paddle downstream to her to help her back on her tube, narrowly missing a couple of small rapids in the middle of the river. Jenni managed to catch a rope thrown to her by the nearest bar and pulled herself onto the decking.


By this stage, Jenni was very shaken up due to her ordeal and not too keen to jump back in the river. For the next half an hour, our mood was very solemn as we were a bit annoyed that the whole debacle had taken us so far downstream and past the majority of the busy bars. However, by the time we finished our drinks we convinced ourselves that we hadn't really missed out on anything because we weren't there to act like a bunch of idiots, drinking to the point where we could hardly stand up. There was a still a few bars left further downstream for us to visit that we could pop into on our way and a whole 3km float down the river into town for us to look forward to. During our float back to town, we stopped in at a bar run by 3 kids, none older than 12 years old. They were selling all manner of booze, not to mention marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms! Only in South East Asia! Jenni regained her confidence on her tube and we both thoroughly enjoyed the 30 minute float back into town. Upon reaching town, we lucked out, taking the correct fork in the river, allowing us to exit at a muddy bank, right near the drop off point for our heavy tubes. 


The following day we went on a trekking, caving and kayaking tour. We were joined by 2 hilarious Korean guys. One spoke impeccable English after having living in Australia for a few months, while the other spoke only Korean. The communication barrier with the guy who could not speak English did not stop us from having a great time with him. His wacky antics, including creeping up to buffaloes for a photo, just to be chased down the road screaming was enough to let us know that he was a real character.

Our small group trekked through a village to some caves. The first cave was quite small, a large cavity in the side of a huge rock with a large Buddha statue inside. We trekked a short while to reach the second cave, the deepest of the three that we visited. All of us were issued lights to illuminate our way through the pitch black. Our group went 250m deep into the cave before reaching a deep pool of water that prevented us from going any further. Unlike all of the caves for tourists in Australia all of the caves we visited did not have lit up walkways with safety railings built for you to walk on. The cave was pitch dark and the floor extremely slippery due to the combination of fine dirt and water condensation creating a slick mud over the floor. Our guide was only wearing flip flops and actually slipped and fell over on two occasions, painfully landing in a rock pool of freezing cold muddy water on one occasion.


The third cave we visited was only a short walk from the second. This cave was not as deep, but had two very large cavities inside. This cave was even more slippery than the first. To get into the back cavity, we had to climb up a steep slippery wall of rock, with a large deep drop only a few feet to the left. Jenni not quite feeling up to this challenge, elected to wait in the first cavity for me and the other guys to clamber up the rock and see the cavity within. A series of large rock pools in this cavity had created a very unusual look to the floor of this cavity, resembling a snake twisting around on the floor. On the way out, we could see Buddhist scriptures written on the ceiling of the cave. In both this cave and the one prior, our group was surprised to encounter an odd inhabitant of the caves, a dog! Our guide told us that he is actually from one of the nearby villages, but often follows tour groups to the caves and runs around in them. He looked like he was having a ball, jumping up on the cave walls to sniff things and diving into the muddy water in the rock pools. The slippery mud on the floor and the lack of light did not seem to phase him in the least!


After lunch, we all trekked a couple of kilometers to a cave that was submerged in water. The plan here was to all get into our swimming gear, jump in a tube and going tubing through the cave. We all stripped of into our swimming gear and jumped into the water. Each of us was handed a headlamp to light our way through the cave. The headlamp was powered by a large car battery which was hung by a rope around our necks with the wires all exposed and hanging in the water. Then we all jumped on a tube and used the guide rope to pull ourselves across the current toward the cave opening. We all managed to get into the first small chamber, but unfortunately the water was so high in the cave that we could not go any further without needing to dive under the water and reemerge a few meters in the cavity ahead. Our group all decided that this sounded far too dangerous and elected to give it a miss. It was a real shame because it looked like a lot of fun. 


After drying off, we trekked another couple of kilometers to the main road. Along the way we passed through a small village where a bunch of angry geese chased Jenni, myself and one of the Korean guys down the road. As mentioned earlier, a buffalo also chased the same Korean bloke down the road, after he tried to get a bit too close for comfort for a photo.


From the main road, we were picked up and driven to the nearby river. It was actually the same river we went tubing in the day prior, but an extra 6km upstream. From here we were to kayak downstream into town where our tour would finish. Jenni and I were placed in one kayak, the 2 Korean guys in another and our 2 guides in a third. The river was actually moving really fast where we first entered the water, with some sizable rapids less than 50m downstream. Without much notice or instruction, our guides pushed Jenni and I straight into the river before anyone else. With the quickly approaching rapids only a few seconds away, we did not get much time to find our feet in the kayak. As a result, we were quickly swept downstream, right into the heart of all of the rapids. We had lost control of our kayak and the river was spinning us in all directions. Seeing that we were in trouble and very likely to flip over, our guides started screaming instructions at us and frantically started to get themselves in their kayak to come and rescue us. Jenni and I had attempted to gain control of our kayak right up until the first set of large rapids without success and we were bracing for the inevitable. Jenni stopped paddling, preparing for the huge wave of water to hit us from behind (we were actually travelling backward down the river at this stage). I drove my paddle into the water and managed to steer our kayak to face forward into the rapid with about a second to spare. To Jenni's and my amazement I managed to navigate our kayak safely through the first set of rapids. We managed to find a calmer section of water a little further down the river and waited for our guides and the Korean blokes to catch up. Unfortunately, the Korean guys weren't as lucky as us as they managed to tip over going through the rapids. Happy with Jenni and my progress, the guides left us to our own devices and split up the Korean guys between the two guides.


The rest of the paddle back to town was a piece of cake in comparison. We had no problems with any more of the rapids for the whole 9km back into Vang Vieng. We even passed through the tubing area to see everyone carrying on at one of the bars along the riverside. The calmer waters along the way enabled us to safely pull out our camera and take a few nice photos too. About 45 minutes later we pulled into Vang Vieng. We said our goodbyes to our guide and the 2 Korean blokes and headed back for a good shower. Our was one of the most enjoyable experiences we have had on this trip.

Jenni and Michael's Elephant Experience - Can I Have One Mum Pleeease???

Getting to ride an elephant is one of the things that I have been most looking forward to on this leg of the trip. After all, how many times do you get the opportunity to  say that you rode an elephant through the jungle in Laos?

We signed up for the 2-day Mahout Experience, run by the Elephant Village. It was less than an hour's drive from Luang Prabang, situated on either side of the Nam Kahn River in a beautiful jungle valley. The Elephant Village is a German-owned operation that buys elephants from logging companies, where they are often mistreated. It's a great concept, because they get a much better lifestyle where they are well cared for, and the company gets revenue from the tourists to be able to provide for the elephants (1.4 tonnes of food a day and a full-time vet does not come cheap I'm sure!) and eventually rescue more of them. There are apparently 560 elephants left working in the logging industry and only 1,600 left in the whole country. They estimate that elephants will become extinct within the next 50 years, except for those remaining in captivity, which is possibly one of the saddest things that I have ever heard.

To get to the elephants we had to take a little boat across the river and then walk to a clearing. In normal weather it would probably only be a five minute walk, however the recent rain made it into a slippery twenty minute trek through ankle deep slush. What would normally be a gently sloping dirt track was turned into a muddy stream. People who wore flip-flops took them off rather than have them lost in the mud. We wore sneakers, and it's true to say that they have never looked the same since!

Mahout actually means 'Elephant Keeper' and we started off the course by learning some of the basic commands like stop, forward, left, right etc. Then we had a bit of a wait around before jumping on one of the elephants and taking her around a clearing. I'm pretty sure that she wasn't really listening to us tourists though, she was just following her mahout around. I think that the elephants probably couldn't hear me anyway, because they don't have great hearing and the mahouts have to shout out their commands about three times really loudly. That does not mean that they are unintelligent however, in fact their intelligence has been ranked on the same level as dolphins and primates, making them one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. You can really see the understanding in their eyes. For example, when you tell the elephant that you want to hop on, they lift up their front leg so that you can use it as a step and if you have trouble getting up they lift up their front leg further to give you a boost!

After Michael and I had a go, we got to go for a ride through the jungle. However, this was just sitting in one of the special elephant chairs called a Howdah. Michael attracted a new friend while we were waiting for our elephant, it was a tiny butterfly. The butterfly happily sat on Michael's hand for about  five minutes before transferring to his hat. He stayed on Michael's hat for probably about an hour in total, even riding part of the way with us on the elephant! It had been raining during the night and also on and off during the day, so the paths were extremely muddy. A couple of times we went up or down very steep inclines and I was amazed how well the elephants were able to keep their footing. You could see them hesitate every now and then, thinking about where they were going to put their feet so that they wouldn't slip.

After that we had lunch across the river, before going back to the clearing and being introduced to our elephants.

My elephant's name was Mae San, one of the youngest elephants at only 32 years old. She was not in a good condition when she was brought to the elephant village. She was underweight, and abcesses and furuncles on the most sensitive parts of her skin showed that she had been stabbed repeatedly with a knife. Also, she had eczema where the logging harness would have sat, indicating that she was pulling logs much too heavy for her. They also suspect that she was given amphetamines to make her work harder. One time, a chain on her harness broke and she fell forward into some branches, leaving her blind in one eye. When I first saw Mae San, I was a bit apprehensive as she was taller than some of the other elephants. I had some trouble climbing onto the other elephant before, so I was hoping that my elephant would be smaller. But when her mahout (Mr Pan) gave the command to let her know that I wanted to get up, I was so surprised when she actually bent all the way down so that she was nearly laying on the ground, making it much easier for me to jump on.

Michael's elephant's name was Mae Boun Nam and she was much older than Mae San, having been born around 1960, making her 50 years old. Mae Boun Nam is blind in both eyes, and uses her trunk like a blind man's cane to feel her way around. She is notorious for always stopping to eat if she sees some particularly tasty branches on the way. Her mahout would yell at her "pai pai!" (forward, forward!), but she would ignore him until she was good and ready. Her mahout, Mr Sao, would sometimes sing traditional Lao songs in the jungle (he had a really good voice!) and apparently Mae Boun Nam sometimes sways her head in time with the music, although she didn't treat us with a display.

We rode the elephants (with their mahouts riding behind us) from the clearing near the river into the jungle where they spend the night. It was an amazing experience, but quite stressful since it took a lot of concentration to stop myself from falling off!

Then we walked back to the clearing and got into the boat which took us upriver to Tad Sae Waterfall, where we had a swim in the clear water at the bottom. On the way back to the boat we caught a glimpse of a solitary male elephant. Then we were taken to the Elephant Lodge where we spent the night. The room was lovely, however it was right in the middle of nowhere, so there were enormous daddy-long-leg spiders, mozzies and all manner of horrible insects filling our room. We even had a surprise visit from a huge rat in the bathroom. Luckily there was a mosquito net covering the bed, however it had some holes in it, which I ingeniously patched up with bandaids from my first-aid kit.

The next day we walked to the jungle to pick up our elephants, before riding them to the river where we scrubbed them down with course-bristled brushes. Mr Sao kept shouting something at Mae Boun Nam which made her lift up her trunk and then smack it into the water, giving us all a good splashing. I later found out that Mae San likes to spray herself with mud right after every bath, so I'm sure that all my good work was for nothing, but it was still great fun!

After saying goodbye to our elephants we were taken across to the restaurant for breakfast before being taken back to Luang Prabang. It was definitely one of my most favourite experiences and I was heartbroken to have to leave, because I'm pretty sure that I could have fit one of the smaller elephants in my backpack to take back home...

Luang Prabang - A Bit Of Rain Ain't Going To Stop Us

Jenni and I arrived in Luang Prabang airport in the late afternoon. From there we took a taxi into the centre of town to our guesthouse. It was really nice, with a log cabin feel to it. It was next to one of the most expensive restaurants in town, L'Elephant, which was a bit out of our price range for dinner, but we did enjoy a couple of breakfasts at the more reasonably priced cafe branch of L'Elephant, located a mere two doors down. The only draw back to our guesthouse was the fact that it was a good 5 to 10 minutes walk to the main area. We spent our first evening chatting with family over the internet and uploading a few articles to the blog. It had been more than a week since we last had the opportunity to use the internet to communicate to our parents that we were still alive and kicking, so it relieved both our mums to hear our voices.


Our first full day was mostly spent organising a few tours and just walking around town. Luang Prabang is a town with a lot of character. It is probably one of our favourite places we have visited on this trip. The houses in the centre of town were mostly built before 1950, under the influence of the French colonists. This, coupled with many cafes and restaurants all throughout town, gives Luang Prabang a very European feel. The contrasting green jungle foliage and flowing Mekong and Nam Khan rivers surrounding the town make it a very pretty place. Making the place even more unique are the many Buddhist monks walking around town. There are so many of them because there are quite a few local temples.


Throughout our stay, we frequently enjoyed sitting down to drink a fruit shake while chatting with some of the local kids. On one occasion I was able to enjoy a game of hacky, using a wicker football with a couple of the local boys. The ball was really small, only slightly bigger than a tennis ball. For the first few minutes, the two of them laughed as I was not as good as them keeping the ball up as I am used to playing hacky with a full sized football. They soon changed their tone as within a few minutes I had got used to the smaller ball and was just as able to keep it up and do tricks with it as they were. On another occasion, we sat down with the kids to play a couple of games of checkers on a homemade chess board, using bottle caps for pieces. The kids were VERY good at checkers as they play it all day long because there is not much else for them to do. While Jenni and another girl that we met played checkers, I had a group of the kids crowding around me while I solved the various Rubik's cubes for them. While I was solving one, they would go and get their friends to come and watch, so by the time I was finished, they would have the next one scrambled so I could solve it again for the friends they brought. Some of them were eager to wait around 15 minutes just to see the more complicated cubes be solved, only to mess them up as soon I was finished, hand it back to me and request that I solve it again!


At the end of our first day, we climbed up to the top of Phu Si hill, a large hill in the centre of town that has a Buddhist tower for worship built on top. From the top, we sat and watched the spectacular sunset over the mountains in the west. We had heard that watching the sunset from the top of the hill is quite popular, so we were glad when we decided to head up about 45 minutes early as we were among the last few people to actually get a seat. Over the next 45 minutes we were joined by a large group of people to watch the sunset. Most people up there spent the whole time looking through a camera lens. The Lonely Planet has mentioned the existence of "epiphany inducing sunsets" in Laos. Up until this point, that sounded like a load of cods-wallop. But upon Phu Si hill, among all the avid photographers, while watching the sunset, I had an epiphany of my own and managed to conquer the mighty Megaminx :) As you can see from the big grin on my face, I was rather chuffed with myself. 


That evening after dinner and on a couple of other occasions during our stay in Luang Prabang, we stopped to browse through the night markets. This market was one of the best markets for locally made wares that we have come across in South East Asia. Most markets we have visited, especially in Vietnam, are chock full of knock off items such as clothes, shoes and watches. These markets always carry some of the local wares too, but they are always overshadowed by the knock off items. The market in Luang Prabang had an excellent selection of tapestries, paintings, lamp shades, table cloths, bed linen, jewellery, wood carvings and all sorts of other local wares. Like the night markets we visited in Cambodia, getting a reasonable price for an item was fairly easy, so we managed to pickup a couple of nice things for good prices.


On our second day we got up early to visit the Palace Museum which was only open for a few hours in the morning, before closing for a break and re-opening for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Jenni and I were among a small group of people who were fortunate enough to be guinea pigs for the brand new audio guide which had only become available to the public the day prior to our visit. We were happy to report back to a Laos tourism official that the guide was one of the best we have listened to. The Palace Museum is actually the palace of the last king of Laos. The palace was built by the French colonists about 100 years ago, so it is still in very good condition and has a very European look inside. After removing our shoes, we were allowed to walk through most of the rooms inside. The most notable rooms were the throne room and the king and queen's separate bedrooms. A lot of work had gone into decorating the throne room's walls with mosaics depicting stories of the royal family as well as setting up various things around the room in preparation of the coronation of the crown prince. Unfortunately for the prince, his hard work in getting his throne room ready for his coronation was all for naught as the country abolished the monarchy a short time before his coronation.


The king had a bedroom all to himself that he slept in alone. The king's wife had a separate bedroom where she slept and this was used for 'business time'. Except for the last king, most of the kings took many wives who lived elsewhere in the city. When the king called for them they would stay in this room overnight. When one of the king's wives came to visit, they would have a secret code. She would always hold a bunch of Frangipani flowers while walking to the palace. If the flowers were white in colour it meant that she was ready for 'business time', but if they were coloured pink, it meant 'I have a headache'. I reckon that each time the king invited a wife to come to stay the night, the only thing on his mind would be what colour the flowers were. I can just imagine him, trying to sit on his throne all proper, but at the same time, craning his neck to try and catch a glimpse of what colour flowers she was holding. If he saw they were pink, I'm willing to bet the first thing that went through his head was "Damn, I should have asked for Tracy instead!". 


During our stay in Don Det, we got talking to an Irish bloke who highly recommended that we visit a bar / restaurant in Luang Prabang called Utopia. We had also seen this place mentioned on a couple of flyers around town that listed a whole series of 'Dos and Don'ts in Luang Prabang', claiming "Do spend an entire day lazing at Utopia". We finally found the place, tucked away behind a series of winding alleyways. If it wasn't for all of the arrowed signs around the neighbourhood pointing in its direction we would have never found it. We were very glad we did so as this is possibly the best bar / restaurant that Jenni and I have ever visited. The place is set up right on the edge of a steep hill, only about 20 metres from the edge of the Nam Khan river which, about 1km downstream, joins up with the Mekong river. At the very top is a hut with huge cushions, small tables and sheshas, overlooking a zen style garden with tables and chairs made of rock throughout. Next to the hut is a full-sized beach volleyball court with tall netting set up all around the outside walls to stop the ball from bouncing away from the court. In front of the garden, overlooking the river is the best part. Built on tall stilts, on the side of the hill overlooking the river, is a large bamboo decking with a huge thatched roof overhead. On the decking are many knee high tables with little beds that have large pyramid shaped cushions for you to lean back on while lying down. Here, overlooking the river, Jenni and I spent pretty much all of our spare time in Luang Prabang reading our books, playing with the Rubik's cubes and surfing the internet, all the while enjoying beers, fruit shakes, homemade lemonade and eating some of the delicious local specialities like Luang Prabang sausages and jerky with special made chili sauce and sticky rice. 

That evening Jenni and I went to see a traditional Lao music and dance show. The story was kind of difficult to follow, but Jenni and I are pretty sure we were able to figure it out. In a nutshell, it was a play about a bunch of monkeys who had a bit of a break dancing session in front of their king and queen. After receiving a note from the king, they danced off somewhere else. Along the way, the head monkey had a big fight with a bird guy. After the fight, they all made up and sat on a throne with each other having a laugh about it. Then a demon, a beautiful lady and another bird guy came out in front of the monkey and bird buy sitting on the throne. The beautiful lady was more interested in the bird guy than the demon. The demon had a stick with sparkles on it and waved it all around, singing to the lady, "Well I've got a fancy pants stick, what do you reckon about that!?!" When the lady didn't respond to this, the demon decided, "Well how about I just beat your bird buddy with my stick, what do you reckon about that!?!". The demon proceeded to beat the snot out of the lady's bird guy, while the monkey and other bird guy sitting on the thrones just sat and watched. After that, the demon, bird guy and lady just walked away and the remaining bird guy and monkey guy got off their thrones and had a bit of a yodel. After a good yodel, the bird guy flew around a bit with the monkey on his back. After setting down, the monkey, bird guy and the rest of the monkey's buddies had another break dance. After that, they just took off and a heap of demon guys all came out, all of them branding sticks. They then had a good dance around, waving their sticks singing to us, "Now we all have fancy sparkling sticks, what do you reckon about that!?!" That was the end of the play. It had excellent atmosphere and narrative in our opinion! Five stars!


On the third day Jenni and I awoke to the sound of heavy rain. We both groaned as we had planned to go on a trek to one of the nearby waterfalls that day. Nonetheless, we dragged ourselves down to the cafe where we were to meet our tour group. Jenni and I were the only ones mad enough to turn up for the trek, so it ended up being just us two and our guide Solkit. Solkit was a very interesting person to talk to as he had been a monk in Luang Prabang for 7 years. During our trek he was able to give us a very interesting insight into the everyday life of the monks and even more interesting, their frame of mind when it came to leaving the monks to join lay people in society again. Not only was he very interesting to speak to in regards to being a monk, but he had also grown up in a rural village and had an excellent knowledge of the jungle. While we walked through the rain on the very muddy trails, he would stop along the way to pick and eat wild mushrooms and point out herbs like coriander growing in the jungle. On one occasion, he ripped out a whole series of the herbs by their roots, wrapped them in a large leaf, tied the package with a thin vine and placed them in his backpack to bring them home so he could grow them himself. 


The three of us started our trek in a village which was home to 3 ethnic groups of Laos, Lao people, Hmong people and Khmu people. Walking through this village was not as awkward as visiting some of the other villages that we had been to while on a tour as the rain had forced most of the people to take shelter in their huts. This allowed us to walk through the village without us gawking at them and them gawking at us. From the village we walked through a couple of valleys where the villagers had various fields of crops like rice, corn, sesame seeds and reeds used for making the thatched roofs of their huts. The whole time we were walking it continued to rain, making the trail very muddy. Although our raincoats kept our upper body mostly dry, our shoes and lower legs got very wet and muddy. The constant rain made taking many photos difficult, but we managed to keep the camera dry enough for a few seconds here and there to snap a few.


We continued over a few hills, passing a few small groups of villagers carrying large bags of harvested produce while walking bare footed through the mud and over the slippery rocks on the hills.  At one point we passed two young men carrying rifles who had been out hunting for the night. When Solkit asked them how they went, they shook their heads and told him that they were coming back to the village empty handed because they couldn't find any game to shoot due to the rain all night long. From the valleys we trekked through the jungle to a mountain spring where we had lunch. The water in the spring was flowing out of a small cave and looked very clear. We would have loved to go for a swim there in the clean looking water, but it is forbidden because it is a holy place for local people.

In the jungle we saw our fair share of local wildlife. A small green snake jumped out in front of Solkit, who narrowly avoided being bitten. He claimed that his heart was racing when it jumped out in front of him as he knows that the breed of snake is poisonous. We also had a scorpion about the size of the palm of my hand walk across the trail in front of us. I even found a small mud crab, sitting in one of the big mud puddles in the middle of the trail. Solkit brought it with us to the waterfall where he said a little prayer for it and let it go in one of the calm rock pools. Along the way to the top of the waterfall, Jenni got the giggles as we trudged through a 500m stretch of mud that stuck to our feet like clay. The stuff just wouldn't come off and picked up more and more as you took steps. Eventually the three of us were a good inch or two taller due to the amount of mud stuck to the soles of our shoes. 

By the time we reached the top of the waterfall, the rain had eased to a drizzle. Solkit took us through the ankle deep rock pools at the top of the waterfall to the very lip. There, with a mere rickety bamboo railing as the only thing stopping us from falling over the edge, we stood at the very lip of the waterfall overlooking a good 50 to 75 metre drop. It was well worth being soggy and wet as the view down was spectacular. The waterfall had a series of large drops before hitting the very bottom. We finished off our trek by making our way down to the very bottom of the waterfall. There we had a swim in one of the large pools. The water was rather cold, but very refreshing. It was a very enjoyable day trekking and swimming, but we were still very glad to get back to our guesthouse for a nice warm shower and to get some dry clothes on. 


We spent another couple of days around Luang Prabang, mostly lazing around at Utopia, but also visiting the nearby Elephant Village for an overnight stay. Jenni was really in her element during those couple of days, so we have decided to leave them to her to write about. Stay tuned!