Visiting the Hill Tribes

One of the main reasons that I had wanted to visit Laos was to go on a trek through the jungle. I'd heard that this was one of the best places in the world to visit if you enjoy hiking and getting away from the modern world. When Chris and I signed up for a trek, we were looking forward to leaving the capitalist world behind (even though Luang Prabang was thus far the smallest town we'd visited on our whole trip!) and being at one with nature...

By the end of the trek I was truly humbled and overwhelmed by...lovliness.

We left Luang Prabang with two local guides, Jin and Khit: these kind, friendly and patient guides would spend the next three days cooking for our group of six, helping us through the treacherous terrains and setting the pace during our eight hour treks. We were touched by their humility and kindness. Despite being tired themselves having been trekking with tourists for the last six days without a day off, their patience with us was unbelievable.

Khit and Jin, our guides for the next three days.

I kept wondering what they must be thinking about us from Europe and the US, struggling up the mountains, breaking out in massive sweats and needing so many breaks! If they found us funny or frustrating, they never once let it show and conducted the whole trek without complaint or comment. I doubt I personally would have been able to show the same humility in their position! This is one thing I have come to love about people here in Laos; their kindness, constant positivity and uncomplaining nature is like nothing I've experienced before.

Chris and I were happy to be finally using our hiking shoes, and boy, did we need them! Many of the ascents were steeper than anything either of us had climbed before and because we were trialling a new route, often the 'paths' were nothing more than a clearing through the jungle plantations - if we were lucky!

On our first day we learned about rice production. On a distant hilltop, we could make out a solitary figure who, from our viewpoint, seemed to be hovering over the rice fields. He was calling out a song which our guides told us was to summon the wind to help remove the bad grain from the crop.

Wind-caller

We passed people hitting the rice sheafs against tarp on the ground so as to loosen the rice granuals ready for bagging up for storage.

The people we passed must have walked miles to reach their particular field. We would come across people every couple of hours: while we were about to flop in fatigue, small, barefooted girls of around eight years old would hurry past us in twos carrying rice bags uphill back to their villages.

This boy was intrigued by our group and RAN ahead of us

for a couple of hours, stopping every few hundred metres

for us to catch up.

The children here are undoubtably so strong and fit: I was huffing and puffing up the mountains with nothing more than a tiny backpack and here were girls practically running with huge bags of rice! This really hit home and I wondered how these people must see us...

Lunch was eaten in the shade of a little hut amid the rice fields and eaten from Banana leaves. Sticky rice was the staple but during the course of the three days, we sampled bamboo soup, green beans used in different ways and a few chicken dishes. Banana leaves are ideal plates for on the go; thick, strong and non-porous, they hold everything you want to eat!

At the first village we came across, boys played with wooden spinning tops the whole time we were there. I could tell these gave them hours of fun.

These were clearly the cool boys in town; the smaller children stared wide eyed dreaming of the day they'd be allowed to join in with the bigger boys.

Something as simple as this brought on all kinds of emotions and thoughts in me. It surely isn't too long ago that children in Europe were content with small wooden games like this and spent hours competing outdoors with their spinning tops. The modern, technological world means things are different now. I don't know whether I felt happiness that these boys were so engaged in such a simple game or sadness that this kind of entertainment is far gone for a lot of children back home. Either way I was overcome by emotion: perhaps it was the sight of the next mountain looming before us, inviting us to climb it!

This trek was the most physically challenging thing I've done for as long as I can remember. The heat combined with my severe lack of fitness after three months of doing nothing but drink beer and read/sleep all day meant that climbing the mountains and even descending seemed near impossible to me. It wasn't helped by the huge blisters that had been forming and were being rubbed raw by my boots.

By the time we reached the village where we were to sleep on our first night, emotions were running high. I had almost given up twice... Goodness knows where I expected to sleep but I felt at times that I just couldn't go any further! On normal treks, we would have stopped at the previous village (after five and a half hours of trekking) but because we were on a brand new trek, the first ever to trial it, we continued another two and a half hours to the next village. It was dark when we arrived and we were apparently the first tourists to ever have spent the night there. This was special. The village leader greeted us with 'Thank you'. Whether this was the only word he knew in English or whether he wanted to express his gratitude to us for staying in his village, I can't say, but either way, it was fitting and of course, made me even more emotional. When he brought his six year old son out to read for us, well... you can imagine how moved I was! Completely overwhelmed by lovliness. I took a video and will post it in a following blog.

The Village leader with his wife.

If we wanted to shower, we were to go to the village water pump and wash there. The toilet reminded me of that in one of the scenes in Slumdog Millionaire. A hut covering a hole in the ground, below which a, let's say, 'waste disposal' cave had been dug.

One thing's for sure, after an eight hour trek, a good meal in our tummies, a few hours with our guide listening to him tell us of the history of this particular tribe and stories of his childhood, we were all very pleased with out humble accommodation and dropped right to sleep.