We woke up concerned about the weather as it was lightly raining, but once the trek started we realised that we had other bigger concerns...namely the 20 river crossings we had ahead of us, that we hadn't been told about...in fact one couple had been told that there was distinctly no water involved in the trek!!! (For Shane, change concern to adventure!!!) As we are travelling in wet season the river was fairly strong and high...just to add to the fun of the day!...so after we individually battled across the first river, we all decided that the best way going forward was to form a human chain to get to the other side....so if one went down we all went down!!! Luckily we didn't go for a full swim, but the water did come up to our chest...

So the rest of the day was spent walking in serious mud, attempting to keep our shoes on our feet while the mud tried to keep them, crossing rivers and taking in the amazing scenery around us...we eventually ended up in our first village, where it is just crazy to see the level of poverty and the standard of living, so different to the towns. We then went to our village where we are staying for the night....the Frisbee came out and all the children appeared from nowhere to watch....eventually some got the courage to join in which was great to see...they had a ball! Despite the poverty they did all seems very happy....although it's a really hard life that they have living off the land.

After a night's sleep in a rustic hut, lullabied by a collection of farmyard animals, we were off down the hill for a couple of hours before we went kayaking.....luckily the river crossing were kept to a minimum and the most challenging thing that happened was when Shane and 2 others had to push a tractor out of the mud....they were knee deep in it and happy as pigs in the proverbial!!! The kayaks had seen better days but we still had fun going down the river with the 2 of us leading the way and showing the others how it's done....well what we mean by that is that it was a really hot day, so the middle of the rapid seemed a great time to cool off (i.e capsize)....not sure why no one else followed our example??!!

After lunch on a beach, where the boys learned the local game and played with the kids to much excitement we finished the kayak with a tough paddle as we had underestimated the strength of the current!!! From there we headed to a whiskey village to taste some 50% Lao Lao before heading back to town a little bit broken!!!