A great breakfast to start the day and we were ready for our trip out to the jungle. No other travelers had signed on – but that didn’t bother us. Our Minibus driver was still having breakfast (Laos is so chilled out it’s great) so the manager in the tour office went through the plan. We started to feel concerned about the amount of time we were to spend with local families and in villages.

First stop was the local town market so that our guide (Alack) could buy a trail lunch for us. The manager in the office had said that if we wanted to ‘help’ we could buy books/pens for the village schools which V didn’t mind doing (next to backpacks it’s her next favorite shopping experience). The market was impressive and clean with wonderful smells. Fresh fruit, veg, spices, herbs etc. Nothing like a Chinese market. There were a few pots of live frogs, huge bull-frogs, frogs on sticks, deep-fried frogs, eels and roasted crickets – but in all it was a place I would not have minded shopping. A 30 minute hop in the minibus and we stopped to collect a local guide (we ended up with two) and headed into the jungle.

V and I have both been in the Amazon so we had some idea of what to expect. Travelers expecting to see animals or have a pleasant stroll in the woods will be disappointed. Jungles are about watching your feet, bearing the humidity and fighting off bugs. Any animals not hidden by thick bush will be scared off by the noise of traipsing tourists. That being said, there is nothing like bushwhacking your way through thick jungle – we had an absolute ball. Within 15 minutes our guide had hacked us a couple of sturdy bamboo walking poles (if we had know how useful they were to become we would have happily paid a fortune for them). The ‘trail’, more of a suggestion really, weaved it’s way along and up the river for the first few hours following our local guides. We gave up trying to stay clean and dry as often the easiest approach was to wade upstream. Lunch was great. Our guides gathered some banana leaves and laid out piles of food from the market. This along with sticky rice constituted a finger licking feast – when not chasing bugs off the leaves.

Our two ‘local guides, having carried water and food all morning, were to leave us at this point and return home. On packing up the food one of them tossed a piece of plastic into the bush. Alack immediately retrieved it and handed back to the guides to be carried out. We were very impressed and surprised, especially after China. After lunch we were guided past some huge trees, a tiny waterfall and up, way up, into a bamboo forest just as the rain started to pour down. The trail, already wet, muddy and slippery from yesterday’s rain, got even worse. We continued on using umbrellas (more suited to the urban jungle than the real jungle) where possible but in the thick growth it was often easier to just forge ahead. V managed to become the first leech victim. Aleck removed it quickly without a problem before any serious damage was done. For the rest of the afternoon the rains came and went in waves making sure we were thoroughly soaked, muddy and sweaty as we climbed and descended the hills eventually reaching the farm of Mr Phong :gps:(GPS)::20.918423::101.468117:gps:. Along the way Aleck had been instructing us, in his limited but reasonable English, about various fruits, nuts, plants and some of their medicinal properties. This seems to be a common thing to tell tourists while walking in a jungle and only mildly interesting. We tasted and tried a variety of things – not much took our fancy but we did enjoy chewing on some of Mr Phong’s sugar cane – haven’t done that for a very long time.

We arrived at Mr Phong’s home in the rain and were greeted warmly by the family as they went about their business. The farmhouses consist of a few traditional wooden buildings on stilts surrounded by hills and rolling fields of sticky rice (like normal rice but grows in regular soil to about shoulder height and is sticky – duh – when cooked). Alack was right at home with the family, immediately getting to work helping around the place and making sure we were sorted. He took us down to the river to have a quick bath where we noticed a small turbine behind a 1m high dam generating enough power for a TV and a few lights – we thought that was very cool. On our return we found that a couple of mats had been laid out for us in what we guessed was the ‘common’ building (TV room, lounge and dining area to you). The original idea was that we would cook dinner with the family outside, but the rain put an end to that plan. Alack insisted we take a little nap while he busied himself with preparing dinner (very fresh duck). We were not planning on it, but the sound of the rain on the palm leaf roof and the muted sounds of chickens, ducks, dogs and people outside had us both snoozing happily – besides it was nice to feel dry, warm and horizontal after 6 hours of reasonably difficult hiking in the rain and mud.

Dinner was brilliant and not just the food. We sat down in the common area around a small table with the family and Mr Phong pulled out his bottle of Lao-Lao (a strong rice wine/whiskey). Two neighbors promptly arrived to join in the meal. Before starting to eat we were the subjects of a small ritual involving eating broken hard boiled eggs and rice and having twine tied around our wrists by each member of the group while mumbling a kind of blessing (our guide explained it as something to do with good luck – must look it up some time). It was not at all posed or uncomfortable, and that is saying something for us. It felt like we were just guests at a friends dinner table – brilliant. The food consisted of the ever present (and yummy) sticky rice with bowls of pumpkin and a couple duck dishes, one of which was too deep in colour to be anything but duck blood, chili and spring onions (It tasted spicy but the thought what it could be had us avoiding that plate). As dinner wore on we chatted to our hosts via Alack as the bamboo shot glass of Lao-Lao made it rounds lubricating the proceedings. Hearing about Mr Phong’s life story was very interesting. He was a monk before military conflict left him homeless, then worked in an airport and lived in the city before selling up and moving to the country with his wife, daughter and her husband (and now a baby too).

Alack was on a mission to get the group singing – he succeeded partially. Mr Phong with his guitar sang for us followed by his wife and one of his friends – all were excellent. V and I can’t sing (or remember the words to any songs for that matter) and managed to wiggle out of embarrassing ourselves. Alack had mentioned earlier in the day that a lot of Aussies visit – I pondered how many times the family must have heard a slurred rendition of Waltzing Matilda. Keeping quite was the least we could do to thank our hosts for such a wonderful evening.

The table was moved, the guests departed with smiles and sleeping mats in a cozy corner appeared behind us. Laos is impressing!

[Pictures: In the Jungle and Lunch on a leaf ]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi