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Boys playing a bacchi-esque game after school in an isolated 500 year old village. |
Northern Laos
We left Sapa on a night bus that took us to the border with Laos. We paid our visa fees and our photo fees, then went to the next window and paid our “check-in” fees, then went to the next window and paid our “ebola-check” fees, and then we were in Laos!
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Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship. |
We had been on the bus for about 18 hours by the time we reached Muang Khua, a sleepy town in northwestern Laos. We were on the bus with several German tourists who were all very friendly and spoke better English than us. We followed them to a cheap guesthouse perched over the Nam Ou river and, after 2.5 hours of waiting around for any sign of hotel staff, checked into our room.
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Our guesthouse (right) |
We learned that this is the new normal. Compared to Vietnam, it seems difficult to get people to take your money here in Laos. We ordered soup from a woman on the street and before we were finished she had taken off- 20 minutes passed before she came back to take our money.
The next day, having had no access to internet and relying only on our (outdated and terrible) guidebook, we boarded a boat upriver to a town called Phongsali, with a transfer in Hatsa (Hat Xai). Little did we know, this was the beginning of our soon-to-be Gilligan’s island-style "three hour tour" journey with a Vietnamese couple, a French couple, and a Lao tour guide. The French couple, Aure and Malina (and their hired guide), were on their way to visit a small village where Malina’s father was born, a village we would soon know much more about.
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Photo: Aurelien Dupas |
The narrow wooden boat made its way up the muddy river for four hours, navigating through the rocks and rapids, snaking through the untouched jungle. We saw beautiful birds, huge lizards, and monkeys climbing the bamboo stands on a backdrop of endless hills buried with trees and vines in decadent layers of green.
The Chinese have an increasing presence in northern Laos, and their latest project involves the construction of two large dams on the Nam Ou. For us, this meant getting off the boat to be shuttled past the dams by bus, where we would board another boat to take us the rest of the way. Well, we pulled up on the shore where we were supposed to catch the pickup truck and, after two or three phone calls, learned that the second boat had left without us.
We sat around for a while until the tour guide managed to arrange a different boat for us. We piled into the back of a pickup and bounced our way up the dirt road for an hour or so. We waited for about an hour, slowly chipping away at our water, crackers, and laughing cow cheese.
When the boatman finally showed up, we realized he had drunk a bit too much “happy water” so we passed on that opportunity and sat on the banks of the river while the tour guide negotiated with some unknown Lao men for a couple more hours.
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We sat here for hours. |
Finally another boat came down the river and delivered the information that he would only take us part way up the river, to the village where Malina’s father was born. Rather than camping out in B.F. Nowhere, we opted to spend the night in the village along with the rest of our crew. Relived to be on our way, we were once again delayed when the second boatman decided he needed to off-load some cargo in a neighboring village before he loaded us in, so we sat back down and waited another hour.
We arrived in the village just before dark and were greeted warmly by the elders, while the younger villagers stared at us wide-eyed, not sure what to make of our motley crew in their completely foreigner-free community.
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Peeking into the kitchen. |
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Interior of the house. |
We found ourselves in the awkward, yet awesome situation of witnessing the homecoming of Malina, whose father had left the village at the age of 6, but shared the same last name as many of the villagers. We were welcomed by her father's relatives into their home and were fed a tasty Lao meal consisting of chicken parts, vegetable soup, sticky rice, and cucumber, which grows in the shape of a small melon.
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Photo: Aurelien Dupas |
Their trusty tour guide translated for us and we learned many interesting things about the 500-year old village and its impending move to higher ground on account of the heightened water level caused by the Chinese dams. We were fascinated by the village's lack of roads which meant that there were no cars, no motorbikes, not even a bicycle anywhere for many miles.
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Walking paths only here. |
We slept, men and women in separate rooms, until 5:45 am when the roosters started, and the neighbors blasted their bass-heavy tunes, stuck in my head to this day.
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Good morning! |
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The local primary school.
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After a tour of the local school, Buddhist Stupa, and a delicious meal of the prized "Northern Nam Ou River fish" we finally managed to board a boat for Hatsa.
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Photo: Aurelien Dupas |
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A little hammering on the propeller should fix the problem... |
Despite a couple of stops along the way, first for a riverside propeller repair and the second so that the Vietnamese guy could hunt down some unspecified jungle critter with a knife on shore (it - whatever it was- escaped luckily) we did finally make it to the bustling metropolis of Hatsa.
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Chris passing the time inside Grand Central Station, Hatsa.
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