Wuuups, sorry I forgot I hadn't published this post! This was back in the first two weeks of October. Photos, errr...
My main reason for going to Louang Prabang was to do some trekking and see some countryside and "local people". I booked on a 3 day trip with a company off the main street, and that was probably my first mistake. I ended up being the only person on the trip, which I didn't mind so much at first, but it meant that instead of a minibus, they transported me by motorbike, in the rain, 50km to the start of the trek. Some things exacerbated the stress of this ride. One, we got a flat tire about 10km out. Two, my guide (called Nikom) asked if I wanted to take a picture, and I agreed. So we stopped and took a photo, even though I didn't really want to because I knew it would make a crap photo because although the rice paddies looked lovely to the naked eye, you just can't fit it all into a photo, but anyway...when he went to start the bike again it wouldn't start! While we were waiting for the oil to be changed (after having pushed the bike about 1km down the road), Nikom explained to me
why he'd been late picking me up that morning: because he didn't even know he was going to be a guide that day! Apparently his boss had told him he might not be going, so the night before he'd gone out and got drunk, so on the first day of our trek he had a hangover, a crap bike, no food or water, and an empty backpack - not even a change of socks! So our next stop was the market to buy some food and water. I didn't realise at the time that the two one-litre bottles were supposed to last us both the whole 3 days....ggrrrrrr!
We eventually started walking, and about a couple of hours into it, it started raining. And raining. In five minutes, my waterproof walking shoes were squelching water and leeches all over the place.
LEECHES.
They are evil, you see them reaching up into the sky to grab at you as you walk by. They are waiting for you on the path, and then they zoom up your legs without you feeling a thing so we kept stopping ever 5 minutes and screaming and picking them off. Yes, I have to emphasise that we screamed, because Nikom in fact was more scared of them than I was! HAhaa!! It wasn't so funny when he said that we had to share a bed in the hut that night because of his fear of leeches. And ghosts. Sigh. Although it made me feel less scared of the leeches, I was then more worried about his lechery!!
His jokes started to wear thin quickly too, if that's in fact what they can be called. He was laughing anyway.
He: "You no like rain."
Me: "Nooooo."
He: "You like sun"
Me: "Yes. Much nicer and there are no leeches then either!"
He: "You like rain! Ha haaaa!"
? Does anyone out there understand?
Nevertheless, despite the lechery and leeches and rain (putting on dry socks and then soggy wet shoes - which didn't dry out until about a week later - then taking off and putting on wet socks as I went into peoples' houses, very blee) and stupid jokes, and lots of annoying things, like him moaning about all the walking - we're doing a trek and you're being paid to walk you mong shut up! - I did kind of enjoy the experience. I got to see how the Hmong tribe villagers live. They're very poor, but they're doing well by having tourists to stay. The ones that have guests to stay have sent their children to school or University in the city, and have houses with cement foundations, rather than just wooden stilts. However they still live with their cows, pigs and chickens running around free around them in the mud between the houses - and still have to walk through the mud in nothing but flip flops. They do have generators in many of the villages though, so in the evenings there is electricity and even a TV - albeit just the one for the whole village of about 100 people. They eat well too, as food is abundant all around them. They grow rice, and usually eat sticky rice, which is so sticky that you eat it with your hands, and they eat the pigs, bamboo shoots, veg, loads of fruit of course, and eggs and chicken.
One thing I noticed is that they don't seem very ecofriendly or into the sustainable methods. They still use the slash and burn technique, and they don't seem to have a planned de/forestation method - just get wood from wherever its available, and then leave the waste and leftovers where they are without tidying up (which isn't great for taller visiters who aren't looking where they are going and walk right into the stuff that's left behind! see below, it happened to me). Something also needs to be done about the paths between the villages, coz with the increased number of people using them they are quickly disintegrating, and just ankle deep mud when it rains....however if concrete/wooden paths are laid it will take away some of the fun of the whole experience.
It took me about 5 hours to decide whether or not to give him a tip after all his rubbishness, but in the end, it turned out he didn't even expect one - probably realised he wasn't getting a tip on the first day when I threatened to "tell" on him to his boss if he didn't stay under his own mosquito net, and then when I had to explain to him again that just because I was a lone western girl didn't mean I'd gone on the trek to pick up a Lao groom, and that if I was a Laotian girl he wouldn't dare try anything on, and then when I blamed him for letting me walk into a tree, because he was just whinging and letting branches fall in my face, and asking me how much I paid for the trek etc, and I was watching for leeches and trying not to slip over in the mud and then WHACK, I smack into a big branch....actually only on the first occasion I didn't "save face" and just shouted at him, but the other times I think I did well. - Good job he didn't expect a tip, as I'd decided not to give him one to teach him a lesson! BUT, instead, I took him for a meal and a beer instead, and we had Lao-style barbeque, where you cook the food yourself in the middle of the table over burning embers, he was even good enough to get his wallet out at the end, and feign the motions of paying, but I let him off.
So it was good fun in the end. A memorable experience!
My main reason for going to Louang Prabang was to do some trekking and see some countryside and "local people". I booked on a 3 day trip with a company off the main street, and that was probably my first mistake. I ended up being the only person on the trip, which I didn't mind so much at first, but it meant that instead of a minibus, they transported me by motorbike, in the rain, 50km to the start of the trek. Some things exacerbated the stress of this ride. One, we got a flat tire about 10km out. Two, my guide (called Nikom) asked if I wanted to take a picture, and I agreed. So we stopped and took a photo, even though I didn't really want to because I knew it would make a crap photo because although the rice paddies looked lovely to the naked eye, you just can't fit it all into a photo, but anyway...when he went to start the bike again it wouldn't start! While we were waiting for the oil to be changed (after having pushed the bike about 1km down the road), Nikom explained to me
why he'd been late picking me up that morning: because he didn't even know he was going to be a guide that day! Apparently his boss had told him he might not be going, so the night before he'd gone out and got drunk, so on the first day of our trek he had a hangover, a crap bike, no food or water, and an empty backpack - not even a change of socks! So our next stop was the market to buy some food and water. I didn't realise at the time that the two one-litre bottles were supposed to last us both the whole 3 days....ggrrrrrr!We eventually started walking, and about a couple of hours into it, it started raining. And raining. In five minutes, my waterproof walking shoes were squelching water and leeches all over the place.
LEECHES.
They are evil, you see them reaching up into the sky to grab at you as you walk by. They are waiting for you on the path, and then they zoom up your legs without you feeling a thing so we kept stopping ever 5 minutes and screaming and picking them off. Yes, I have to emphasise that we screamed, because Nikom in fact was more scared of them than I was! HAhaa!! It wasn't so funny when he said that we had to share a bed in the hut that night because of his fear of leeches. And ghosts. Sigh. Although it made me feel less scared of the leeches, I was then more worried about his lechery!!
His jokes started to wear thin quickly too, if that's in fact what they can be called. He was laughing anyway.
He: "You no like rain."
Me: "Nooooo."
He: "You like sun"
Me: "Yes. Much nicer and there are no leeches then either!"
He: "You like rain! Ha haaaa!"
? Does anyone out there understand?
Nevertheless, despite the lechery and leeches and rain (putting on dry socks and then soggy wet shoes - which didn't dry out until about a week later - then taking off and putting on wet socks as I went into peoples' houses, very blee) and stupid jokes, and lots of annoying things, like him moaning about all the walking - we're doing a trek and you're being paid to walk you mong shut up! - I did kind of enjoy the experience. I got to see how the Hmong tribe villagers live. They're very poor, but they're doing well by having tourists to stay. The ones that have guests to stay have sent their children to school or University in the city, and have houses with cement foundations, rather than just wooden stilts. However they still live with their cows, pigs and chickens running around free around them in the mud between the houses - and still have to walk through the mud in nothing but flip flops. They do have generators in many of the villages though, so in the evenings there is electricity and even a TV - albeit just the one for the whole village of about 100 people. They eat well too, as food is abundant all around them. They grow rice, and usually eat sticky rice, which is so sticky that you eat it with your hands, and they eat the pigs, bamboo shoots, veg, loads of fruit of course, and eggs and chicken.
One thing I noticed is that they don't seem very ecofriendly or into the sustainable methods. They still use the slash and burn technique, and they don't seem to have a planned de/forestation method - just get wood from wherever its available, and then leave the waste and leftovers where they are without tidying up (which isn't great for taller visiters who aren't looking where they are going and walk right into the stuff that's left behind! see below, it happened to me). Something also needs to be done about the paths between the villages, coz with the increased number of people using them they are quickly disintegrating, and just ankle deep mud when it rains....however if concrete/wooden paths are laid it will take away some of the fun of the whole experience.
It took me about 5 hours to decide whether or not to give him a tip after all his rubbishness, but in the end, it turned out he didn't even expect one - probably realised he wasn't getting a tip on the first day when I threatened to "tell" on him to his boss if he didn't stay under his own mosquito net, and then when I had to explain to him again that just because I was a lone western girl didn't mean I'd gone on the trek to pick up a Lao groom, and that if I was a Laotian girl he wouldn't dare try anything on, and then when I blamed him for letting me walk into a tree, because he was just whinging and letting branches fall in my face, and asking me how much I paid for the trek etc, and I was watching for leeches and trying not to slip over in the mud and then WHACK, I smack into a big branch....actually only on the first occasion I didn't "save face" and just shouted at him, but the other times I think I did well. - Good job he didn't expect a tip, as I'd decided not to give him one to teach him a lesson! BUT, instead, I took him for a meal and a beer instead, and we had Lao-style barbeque, where you cook the food yourself in the middle of the table over burning embers, he was even good enough to get his wallet out at the end, and feign the motions of paying, but I let him off.So it was good fun in the end. A memorable experience!
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