Trekking in Pak Ou - A little of everything

After our excellent trip with Green Discovery in the North, we decided to take another in the slightly-less-north.   Our five-day expedition promised more cultural experiences, good trekking and two days of kayaking on the Ou and Mekong rivers.  We decided to make this one a private tour, mostly because Susan wanted the guide to rescue us first in the event of a water-based mishap.  It turned out to be a good idea because we did everything at our own speed and got to know our guide, Thong, and host families a lot better than we had in big groups.  Also we smelled pretty bad.

Our first day was a long but relatively easy walk along a wide path through several Khmu villages.  Thong is from a Khmu village in the North, so he chatted away with everyone we met in Khmule while we quietly observed.  Our first stop was one of the poorest villages in the region.  People were tired-looking, no kids playing...quiet and sad.  The travelling doctor was making a stop (he comes around every few weeks), so we saw a lot of the sicker people as he was working out of the same hut we stopped for lunch in.  Since the trip was to last 5 days, we bought food from the villages...all except this first one, which didn't have enough to spare, so we brought some in and left what we didn't eat.  Our stop for the evening was in a much larger and more prosperous Khmu Village, and we had a great time entertaining the local population.  We smiled and bowed to the older people (proper respect), and they grinned at our coached manners.  The kids stared at us no matter what we did...which made changing for dinner interesting.  We mastered the local change-under-sarong style of preparing, which we'd learned in Cambodia (recall the near-fatal traffic distractions).  Thong led us around the village negotiating for various dinner ingredients, and seemed quite amused that he'd be our "cooking boy".  There are few gender roles in Khmu, both women and men plant, pick and process rice...clean, farm...but cooking is one of the only "woman jobs".  After Thong's first dinner though, we were content to let him do all the cooking...he put together great meals.  Since we were being as conservation-minded as possible, we paid a fair price for ingredients, and Thong could only buy what people had extras of...he told us that most of his cooking has to be creative since he never knows what we'll be able to get!

The next day was a tough but short trek straight up one of the taller peaks in the area.  Thong has the mean habit of lying on time estimates though...telling us there are hours left when we can SEE the village we're going to.  We didn't even ask that often!  The view from the top of the mountain was amazing, and we wandered through the two villages that share the clearing at the top.  The two are separated by the shared primary school in the middle, whose blackboards still hold the last lessons of the school year.  We stayed in the lower of the two villages, in the home of the village storekeepers.  This village is populated by Blue H'Mong people, and some of the older women wore traditional garments similar in style to those worn by the Black H'Mong. 

Our homestay was the site of the village satellite dish, so as we ate dinner the majority of the population trooped in to watch Thai movies for a tiny admission.  Thong told us that most Lao understand Thai, especially the hill tribes who have a lot more in common with Thai tribes than with city-dwelling Lao.  Since we spoke no Thai, and the tv room was pretty full, we headed outside and stared at the stars.  It was one of the few clear nights we'd experienced on the trip, and we could see the entire skyful, from horizon to horizon.  The stars were all so bright that we had trouble picking out familiar constellations...the pole star was nowhere near as predominant as usual!  We spent the next morning lounging around the village...Thong assured us that the trek for the day was short and easy, so we enjoyed watching morning activities...laundry, sweeping, catching and drying lizards.  Goats are a major part of the village's agriculture, so a big herd was wandering around.  A couple of big, bearded Billies walked in on breakfast...and baby goats got into trouble everywhere.  They were really fun to watch!  This was also the first village where we'd seen horses, a small herd, used for packing things up and down the mountain.  A few shy foals wandered around as well, but the horses were a lot less entertaining than the goats.  We found that we were much less of an attraction in this village than in previous ones, which was relaxing.  We observed, asked questions here and there, and observed.  Thong informed us that more foreigners visit this village, and tv commercials have made "pale people" less of a novelty. 

True to Thong's word, the day's trek was easy.  All downhill with periodic scenic breaks.  The day's wildlife consisted of giant grasshoppers and a palm-sized butterfly that looked almost dead, but wasn't (Thong poked it with a stick and it flew away).  We stopped for the night with the parents of a friend of Thong's, who handed us their family photo albums to look through.  It was really interesting to see photos of places we'd visited, taken 30 years before, when foreigners weren't permitted into the country.  We followed the couple's lifestory in photos, from the small village we'd visited on the first day to the big village in the lowlands where they live now. 

We set out the next morning in a songthaew with inflatable kayaks strapped to the roof for our first day of whitewater kayaking.  Susan's initial worries about the whitewater bit were totally unfounded...the monsoon had turned the water into a deep brownwater expanse so swollen from rain that the "rapids" were barely ripples!  There were a few stretches of splash and waves, but nothing treacherous enough to prevent Thong from going over everything sideways or spinning to show off.  The river was nice and relaxing after three days' trekking, and since the water was so fast very little paddling was required.  The views were amazing and local fishermen shouted loud "sabaidees" at us from the banks.

Our homestay for the night was a new one for Thong, he didn't know the host family or the village very well.  The couple that owned the house were very young, the husband a soldier and the wife a nurse.  They seemed excited to have us over, and they set up a ceremony for us that turned into another trip highlight.  We wandered around the village all day, stopping for a nap on the cool concrete floor of the house before a nice dinner.  After negotiating briefly with the restaurant owners, Thong decided that he'd had enough of being our cooking-boy, and we ate restaurant food.  Afterward we went back to the house to find a small party of guests seated around a flower and banana leaf centerpiece.  Our hosts wrapped us in scarves and the ceremony started.  A chicken had been killed for the event, and the nice bits surrounded the center piece.  We drank two shots of LaoLao and ate a small piece of chicken with sticky rice then everyone peeled strings off the centerpiece and started tying them around our wrists.  We were told to wear them for three days, and that they'd bring us luck.  We'd seen several Lao with similar white strings on both wrists on buses and around town and were excited to participate in a similar ceremony of our own!Thong told us that the ceremony is used to celebrate all kinds of things, the end of a trip, the end of a sickness, a wedding, the birth of a baby.  After the official part was done, spicy chicken soup was brought out.  Everyone dug in, and the drinking games started.  The chicken's head was put in a bowl, covered with a smaller bowl, and shaken up like a Boggle cube.  Someone lifts the top bowl and the chicken's beak points to whoever has to drink next.  The bottle of LaoLao went down pretty quickly, and the party got going.  Lao karaoke was put on the television, and we made a great friend in KhanSook, a 40ish woman who danced the night away with us and called us her younger sisters.  We finally begged off to bed, very drunk and danced out!

The next day started slowly as "crazy boy" Thong battled a serious hangover.  We dragged our kayaks down to the water and started the float downstream where the Ou joins the Mekong.  More beautiful scenery and an even lazier paddle downriver got us to the Mekong crossing for a lunch of Water Buffalo (undoubtedly a misbehaving one), and a stop at the Holy Pak Ou caves...which were caves.  Holy ones.  The rain started up as we paddled down the last stretch of Mekong before our takeout, and we took the opportunity to wash some of our surface dirt off.  We dragged our kayaks up the banks of the Whiskey Village, where only the ducks were enjoying the downpour.

Our requirements for a guesthouse upon returning to the city were: hot showers, clean bathrooms, laundry service.  We found it all at the oddly named "Thatsaphone Guesthouse"...Michelle promptly plugged the toilet.