Jungle Fever the Hard Way
To see the Nam Tha NPA, one had to get downright painfully physical - because trekking in the jungle is hard and hot and at times dusty work and your muscles WILL feel the effect.
Luckily at this dry time of year, it’s not muddy and slippery work as well. However, during the two-day trek, I certainly navigated enough crumbly narrow jungle paths with sheer drops next to them and loose soil sliding underfoot for one lifetime.
I was not alone in my efforts, but in a group with six others, one guide and a local guide, who was changed at every other village. The six or us represented Finland, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Argentina. No people from North America. In fact I don’t think I’ve run into a single one on this trip.
Here our guide, Pon Si, is chopping some walking sticks for us. I grew to love and hate that sturdy stick during the next two days, but it was admittedly very necessary.
So there we were, hot and sweaty, walking and huffing gracelessly uphill for hours and then downhill for hours through lush greenery on very narrow and at times impressively steep paths.
We stopped for lunch at makeshift shelters.
Lunch was served on the large leaves of nearby plants and eaten by hand. Everyone sat on the ground around the leaf and just dug in. No plates, no cultery. Food hygiene was forgotten as we passed each other tasty morsels by scooping them up from the leaves in our unwashed hands.
Finally, just before dusk starting to set in, we arrived at our destination for the night. And the very first thing I did was go and soak in the river. Oh that glorious, joyous, refreshing (not even chilly) soak! It made the sticky day seem almost worth it!
We stayed overnight in Nalun village in Nampha NPA. Nalun was a village of the Khmu people, who are the largest minority ethnic group in Northern Laos, constituting 11% of the population here.
Nalun village looked like Asterix’s village! Beautiful wooden buildings on stilts,
chicken, children and dogs running around, people cooking at open fires.
The tour operator business in this region has thankfully improved in the last several years, and tours in the Nam Tha region make sure a relevant part of the proceeds is left to the local community in some form - such as wages for local guides and compensation for accommodation and food at the villages. Our tour operator claimed 50% of our fees went to the village. That can be taken with a few spoonfuls of salt, but clearly we were an important factor in the village economy and were very warmly received by the villagers.
In fact so warmly and with so many bottles of corn-based Lao Whisky, also known as Lao Lao or Happy Water, that some of our group as well as our guide were looking a little worse for wear the next morning. The party took place in the space under a house.
On offer was also a communal pot of fried cow-hide stew, which everyone dipped into with one and the same spoon. This delicacy was also passed on to me, but I hate to admit, I very ungraciously and with little thought for my hosts feelings, declined. The braver ones in our group who partook of this delicacy pronounced it very chewy - as in chewing gum chewy - and after attempting to make headway long enough, secretly spat out the hide and gave it to the village dogs. An acquired taste clearly.
After dark, it was truly dark. There is no electricity in the village, just a few lamps running on batteries. The starry night was sky bright enough to burn your retina if you stared at it long enough. As I always do, I looked for the North Star just to know, in roughly which direction home was in.
And then it was time for bed, which was a stone hard and thin mattress on the floor of a family’s home. The tour operators switch houses every time they arrive with a new group, so that the money from tourists is more evenly spread in the village. I’m sure the level of accommodation is the same, wherever you lay your head.
I have been saddened that the beautiful old wood houses are being replaced by ugly stone buildings all over Asia. It seems that as soon as the local population’s income improves to the level that they can afford a stone house, they hasten to build one. After my night on the floor of this particular wooden house on stilts, I start to think they may have a point.
One problem is that there is absolutely no sound proofing. Zero. Someone speaking loudly outside the house could just as well be speaking inside your room. Also, when someone changes sides on their mattress, the whole floor wobbles. Or if someone tries to sneak off for a midnight toilet break, you will most certainly we woken by the bouncing of the floorboards and the creaking of the doors. Being Finnish I am well aware, that there is such a thing as a sturdily build wooden building, which doesn’t have any of these characteristics. It just seems that sturdy building is not en vogue here.
In the unlikely event that you have managed to fall asleep despite the sounds and the jumping floorboards and hard mattress, be assured it won’t last. Because by around 4am the cocks start to crow. And not in the distance either: the household cock lived in the space under the building - directly under the floor we were sleeping on.
So I was, for once, up much earlier than I needed to be to check out the local shops (with a very proud cock-a-doodle-dooer in front of it)
And local puppies. Don’t be alarmed: the puppies were not the main protein for supper, simply dozing in a pile beside the cooking fire.
The second day of trekking was much of a repetition of the first - with sorer muscles and no lovely village to arrive at. However, I must admit to being immensely happy to return to the creature comforts of my Luang Namtha guesthouse: A long shower followed by 12 hours of sleep in a soft bed, uninterrupted by a single creaking floorboard or bloody cock-a-doodle-doo.
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