26/11/09 Village Trek Day One

We awoke to go on our 3 day trekking tour and we were ready to go waiting outside the guesthouse for the tour guide. After about half an hour Phil went to the tour office to see where he was and then a chap arrived and apologised to Liz for being late. Apparently the guesthouse we were in was new so noone knew where we were staying. We were a bit worried as we'd booked a cab with the same company to the airport when we got back from the trek. Anyway we met our guide, Kor who was a young Laos guy with very good English. He got us mountain bikes to ride for the first part of the trek and we set off after making sure the tour office knew where we were staying. We had a 10km cycle to start the day through town then along some unsealed roads through roadworks to the first stop, Elephant camp. There we met a few elephants feeding then climbed aboard a large male callled Bun Sou for a ride in the forest. He was 45 years old and a retired logging elephant. We rode along for about 20 minutes through the forest up and down some steep sections and crossed a main road. After a short time the mahout gestured to us to swap seats with him so Phil clambered forwards and sat around the elephants neck. He put his feet behind his ears ( the elephants!!) then shouted instructions for left, right and forwards. Phil rode there for a while up and down some really steep paths where he had to squeeze his legs tightly to stay on the elephant, then Liz sat at the front. We walked through more forest and through a river where Bun Sou had a drink then uphill back to the camp. It was great fun to sit at the front of the elephant but a bit uncomfortable as his shoulders hit your bum!! We carried on cycling for another hour up a really long steep hill where Liz looked like a beetroot at the top. At a small village we stopped to eat some fried rice for lunch while chatting to the store owner . She wanted some English words to welcome people into the shop so we taught her a bit of English. It was quite a giggle as she tried to pronounce the words correctly. After that we went to the nearby river to catch a longtail to the opposite bank to start our walk. We went about a kilometer upstream then started to walk along some fields. We asked Kor how far we were walking and he said another thirty kilometers and we were pleased to realise he'd actually said thirteen!!! Kor told us to be on the lookout for snakes as there were alot in Laos much to Phils pleasure. We walked along many narrow paths, through some lovely forest areas , beside rice fields and saw giant milipedes and lots of butterflies. The terrain was pretty good underfoot, not too steep or slippery. Phil and Kor crossed a wide stream on a log while Liz waded through instead. We shortly passed a group of local hunters all carrying home made guns, out to find rats, birds or squirrels to shoot for their food. Phil wanted to take a photo but the guns are illegal so the men said no. We came to a really small village in a remote hillside area where there were more hunters with guns and all the people came out to see the westerners !! The H'mong village was very small and basic with no water or electricity to it, with about ten wooden huts on stilts there. It was all very picturesque but the life must be pretty hard for the families who live there. We carried on walking for about another hour and after a few ups and downs we arrived in Hoify, the Karen village where we were staying for the first night. We had spent the last half hour following some villagers along who were carrying huge sacks of rice on their heads!! Tescos seems so far away!! We walked through the middle of the village where a handful of other trekkers were sat watching the local teenagers playing a football type game over a high volleyball net with a rattan ball. There were lots of children around all giggling and playing together. Kor took us to the home we would be staying at and we were shown to our room for the night which was a wooden hut with a double mattress and mossie net inside...perfect!! We dropped of our bags, changed into some cleaner clothes and went to watch the activities in the village. It had a school , shops( hatches into houses selling some foods and other small supplies)The village was quite big with about 80 families living there and loads of children everywhere. The smaller children were playing with a few home made toys while the older girls were generally helping with rice crushing and grinding near their homes. Kor joined the locals playing football until he disappeared to make us some food for supper. It went dark pretty quickly so we went to eat our food of sticky rice and chicken and vegetables. Liz mixed her rice into the meat and veg which we discovered later was a complete no no!! After dinner the owner of the house where wew ere staying pulled up some chairs at his fire one of many lit around the village. Many local came by to say hello and have a quick peep at us all with ready smiles. Kor joined us then went off to buy us a chicken for the next days lunch. He was unsuccessful on his first try but went off again with a local and returned with a large cockerel who looked very relaxed for a bird about to be killed!!! He was to stay in the house over night then get cooked the next morning for us, can't get much fresher or more organic than that. We sat warming by the fire for a while and a tiny kitten came over to Phil. He couldn't have been more than a few weeks or even days old and was all shivery. He got up on Phils arm and snuggled into the bend of his elbow and started purring!! He was so cute we didn't really want to leave him there but we couldn't take him into the house so he just had to fend for himself. We have seen many small animals wandering about without their parents. some of the local children were peering througfh the wooden walls of one of the houses to catch a glimpse of the TV inside. Many locals were inside watching it as it was one of the few in the village.We had a chat to a dAnish guy who joined us by the fire then went to bed pretty early as the whole village had gone quiet by about 9pm.

27/11/09 Village Trek Day Two

We were woken by crowing cockerels at 3am!! They kept going so we only managed to doze through to 8am before we got up as the village was all up hopurs before preparing rice. By the time we surfaced the chicken was already cooked and a soup made for breakfast!! We had it with eggs and rice and bread and jam...good combination. We had some time before we needed to set off so we went to have another look round the village. We went to visit the school which had five classes of children all learning Laos and mathematics. The teacher, one of two teaching all the classes asked if we could teach the children some English. We went into the first class full of quite young children who were all concentrating really hard on their work but all stood up and said "Sabaidee" loudly with their hands closed together at the front politely. They were all very cute and smiling at us, as interested in us as we were in them. Liz went around the class asking each child their name and each one stood up and said "hello my name is........" . In the next room were some older children and Phil went round asking their names. The young girls were all flustered and embarassed to speak to him but so polite ad respectful too. In the next class we pointed to all the features of our faces to ask them which parts they knew then got them to tell us the words in Laos. It was so much fun and we boith really wenjoyed our time at the school. The children have very little opportunity to get away from the village life even with a bit of education but were all so keen to learn. We felt quite sad that these lovely children were so grateful for their opportunities while some at home bunk off and don't bother even going to their school down the road with free education until 18 years old. Some of the children at the school walk for two hours along the trail we were trekking to get to school and then at 12 the education has to be paid for so most children don't get to continue as their families are poor. We left a donation to get books and sports equipment then wandered back through the village. We saw a few young girls grinding the rice and not in school as Laos women are pretty much destined to stay at home and have a family. In another part of the village a group of women were sat weaving roof panels from reeds. They were having a great laugh and Phil went over to take photos which they all thogught was very funny. One of the women gave us some stuff to chew on which they were all chewing too. It made all their mouths red and ours too. We couldn't chew it for long as it was so bitter tasting but spat it out round the corner out of sight so as not to offend the locals. We starting trekking again through fields and up and down some hills into a small settlement to deliver some photos to a village from a previous client of Kors. The family who he was delivering the photos to weren't in but a fragile looking women came out to see what we wanted. We gave her the photos for the family and she asked Kor if we could help her as she was sick.She had 9 children (28 years old!!!) and had been unwell since the last baby 4 months before. She looked quite thin and had an upset stomach. Phil asked if she would mind hil examining her abdomen and befroe we knew it she had stripped off her top half and let hm take a look. He couldn't find anything too obviuos and her symptoms did sound more like a bug than anything so we gave her some of our antibiotics and some anti diarrhoea tablets which would hopefully help. We had to write the instructions down for her son to read as she couldn't. After that we carried on walking for a short while up an incline to a viewpoint across the valley. The scenery was really lovely with native forest and small cultivated areas. At the viewpoint there was a women doing some needlework and we bought two cushion covers from her. We passed by a house in a really remote spot where the three children were playing while their parents were out working in the fields. Lots of children here look after themselves and are very advanced for their ages. Wwe walked on a little further and stopped in the shade of a big tree in a harvested rice field to eat lunch. Phil spotted a snake which he nearly sat on under the tree and Kor said it was a poisonous one. We sat on some reed roof panels Kor found nearby and he got the rest of the chicken from his bag for us to eat, with some very hot chillis and sticky rice. We used banana leaves for plates and it was a great lunch. We carried on to the homestay village where we would spend the night. It was much larger than the previous one and we were staying in a brick house with a huge communal room with TV!!!! The roof was open sided and wooden though. We walked around that village and had quite a laugh scaring the local children by jumping out at them. The adults thought it was funny and we gave the children sweets and crisps which they all shared with the other children in the villlage. The Laos children all seem to instinctively take care of each other and its very sweet to watch them making sure others are ok We went with Kor to have a wash in the local Nam Khan river. There was lots going on when we got there with people swimming, washing, playing and collecting river weed to eat. We went in and had a swim and a quick wash sharing Kors soap then Liz got out leaving Phil to float downstream to the neatrby bamboo bridge. He didn't realise the current was so strong and got dragged off under the bridge downstream. He managed to swim to the bank and get out though. We had a pretty quiet evening there as the family went to bed in the communal room by about 8pm and so we had dinner of spicy beef and of course sticky rice then went to bed after a bit of diary writing. We slept in the big room next to the family and Kor.

28/11/09 Village Trek day three

We were woken really early by the chickens again and had a nice breakfast of eggs and bread for breakfast. We got changed into wet gear as we were spending the day kayaking, said thanks and goodbye to the family and headed across the bamboo bridge to the opposite bank to meet the truck. We left our bags on the truck and carried the kayaks down to the Nam Khan river. We shared one and Kor had the other as we started the journey downstream to visit Tad Sae waterfall about one and a half hours away. We were able to see the life along the river of the Laos people going about their day to day things which was lovely to see. Most of them smiled and waved to us as we passed. We stopped at the waterfall and climbed onto the bank to walk the short distance to see the falls. They are a wide cascade through the trees which is really pretty and almost looks artificial as it is so nice. We walked around for a while and looked at the zip wire that is there then went to a swimming pool part of the falls. Phil and Kor jumped in to the freezing water first followed later by Liz. In the pool we met a Canadian lad who we'd been on the Kuiwi bus with. Liz recognised his voice and it took us all a few minutes to work out where we knew each other from. We chatted to him for a while and as Kor knew his tour guide we decided to all kayak the rest of the way together. We carried on for another hour or so after we'd had some lunch at a resturant near the falls. we passed some elephants being washed with trainee mahouts (you can do a two day course and wash and feed and ride the elephants.) . When we reached the elephant vilage resort we got out and walked through to the elephant camp to join the truck and our bags for the ride to town. It had been a really great three days and Kor was a really brilliant guide. We checked back into the hotel and then showered to go out for the evening to see the night market we had briefly looked through before. We walked round the lovely craft market which all girls would love- handbags, pictures, clothes, lamps, handicrafts and bedlinen. Phil is a demon shopper too so we had a lovely time mooching through the stalls and bought ourselves a bedspread....very domesticated aren't we!!! The bedspread matches the cushion covers from the village. We called into the resturant where we'd eaten with Tom and Eimair before our trek and had another good meal. There was a big group on a GAP Adventure tour and we got chatting to Adam and Ben a couple from the group who we had a bit of a laugh and a few beers with before bed.