The ride continued on, as we stumbled through "real" Lao villages. It was impossible to avoid noticing the differences between Luang Prabang and the wood huts along the roadside. By far the most poverty I'd ever seen. But that said, and this was something I continued to notice throughout my stay in Laos, is that everybody seemed to be happy. Through all the crap Laos has gone through, and continues to go through, her people seem to be pretty happy, and seem to enjoy the happy parts of life. Pretty inspiring stuff. :)
So we finally stopped to take a pee break at the first even small town we had passed, two hours after leaving LP. Except we couldn't find a bathroom. Even a talk with the locals, in which I had to fake unzip my pants in order to get my point across the language barrier. Eventually one rider, Gabe, and I found a gueshouse, but it seemed deserted, so we walked around the back. Finally, we found a couple rooms open, and seized the moment. Then a guy came out from somewhere else and pointed Gabe, our watchman, in the direction of the actual bathroom, right after I had come out of what I soon found out to be this guy's room, and the girl was still inside the other room.
Bladders relieved, we got back into the car and drove off, but not before a picture of backpacker bb!
We finally saw a sign suggesting that Nong Khiaw was nearby, when all of a sudden the driver stopped by a crowd of school kids. We picked up from the hand motions, that the lady with her infant child was trying to convince the driver that we should pick up all these kids and take them to Nong Khiaw. This propopsition was of course perfectly ludicrous, since our minibus was already just about full. But it became obvious that an unknown amount of kids were going to join our bus...and then the lady and her infant get off the bus in the middle of the street to make room for some kids. Completely bewildered, we drive off, now completely squushed, but fortunately not very far from Nong Khiaw. We later found out that this lady was the driver's wife. I assume he picked her up later.
So now our bus looked like this, for the last few minutes into the small town of Nong Khiaw (yes, there is an empty seat, as one Lao girl had gotten off at her destination:
So we made it to Nong Khiaw with a little time to spare for the 2:00 boat to the small village of Muang Ngoi. After desparately searching for the dock as the minutes counted down, we found out the boat left at 2:30, and we settled down a bit. We tried to eat lunch, but kinda failed on time, and had to jump down to the boat, and Jesse got his rice to go.
I was less than thrilled to have to sit on a cramped wooden boat that looked like it would sink at any moment, especially with a bunch of people piled into it, but we knew the boat ride was in theory only about two hours long, so I figured I could tough it out. I mean seriously, how often do you get to take a boat ride through the Jungle of Laos? Also, Muang Ngoi is ONLY accessible by boat.
Other than the loud motor, though, the trip was fairly comfortable, as the boat wasn't entirely full (so we had some room to stretch out), and we were pretty much enthralled by the scenery. OK, well maybe Jesse had a little nap first:
No but really, check out the scenery:
There's more pictures, but I can't put them all here - look for them on Facebook someday soon, I hope :)
So anyway, after about 90 minutes, we approached the village of Muang Ngoi. But how to describe Muang Ngoi briefly? Muang Ngoi is a Lao village that became an actual tourist destination, and seemed to gain some wealth by in large part switching the village economy to promoting touristry, and becoming somewhat of a tourist town. But despite the obvious touristy-ness, it's still a Lao village two hundred miles from anywhere only accessible by boat.
Oh, and did I mention they only get electricity 3 hours a day? (6-9 PM)
We wanted to stay at a guesthouse overlooking the riverside, but they were all booked, so we ended up choosing some random place in some back alley away from the "main drag". And when I say main drag, I mean this:
And when I say back alley, I mean this:
And when I say some random place, crap, I forgot to take a picture of the room. Basically, it was very rustic, with a mosquito net (which had a hole, oops), and a rather old bed, and a bathroom with some very icy water. But hey, it cost us $7.50 for two rooms for a night. And after a quick walk through town, a short visit to the village wat, and a touristy dinner on the riverside, we got to hang out with two of the guesthouse's owner's family members, who went by J and V. J was quite the entrepreneur, who had picked up an amazing amount of English just from talking to tourists. He was upfront when he said he didn't go to university because his mom couldn't afford it, but did inform us that his younger brother (V), who didn't speak much English, was already accepted to university in Luang Prabang. V was in the same boat as so many of us in the states - when asked what he wanted to study, he sheepishly shrugged and said he had no idea.
So there we were drinking some Beerlao, and then J wanted to know if I had any American music. So in short order, I'd given him about 7 rock/metal songs, and we were blasting Japanese metal in a Laotian village.
J had really been trying to sell us on a trek, as trekking is one of the main activities to do in Northern Laos. As it turned out, our limited amount of time in the country precluded us from any such undertakings, but finally he convinced Jesse that we should wake up at the crack of dawn for a mini trek up to see the view of the village. Gabe and I were less than enthralled about waking up at 6, when the boat left for Nong Khiaw at 8 AM. But J assured us that there was another boat at 9:30. In the end he and Jesse convinced us. But what really clinched it was that it was only now that we learned the power went off at 9 PM. 9 PM bedtime, 6 AM wakeup...well that's plenty of sleep! Gabe and I actually played a game of Scrabble in the moonlight before heading off to bed.
And sleep did come. And fortunately, mosquitos did not. But we didn't count on another epic slayer of sleep. Or like hundreds of them. 3 AM...enter...THE ROOSTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The roosters started crowing, and by God, they never shut up. It was a chorus of hundreds of roosters crowing for hours on end. It was almost kind of hilarious. Fortunately, I was tired enough that I managed to fall back asleep for a couple hours, before finally giving up hope at about 5:30 - which was fine, because I'd already gotten almost 8 hours of sleep, and quite frankly felt good.
So we met J outside and started out mini-trek. After weaving our way out of the village, we started up a path. And I use the word path very loosely, as the path seemed to soon go up more vertically than it did horizontally. Soon it was mostly stepping from boulder to boulder, with the occasional bamboo ladder to climb up, with nothing really to support you, except your own will to persevere. I'm actually vaguely surprised that I survived. But then we got to the view of the river, and it was all worth it.
And we journeyed a bit more to see the view of the village. And then it was another one of those moments of pure awesomeness. The whole village was spread out before us, flanked by the river, and surrounded by the mountains. It was a view I suspect few people ever get to see, completely one of a kind. It was one of my favorite moments of the trip.
But the hour was getting late - we're talking 8 AM here, folks. So we had to somehow get back down this same trail - an equally daunting task. Somehow we all remained intact, and hustled back to the guesthouse. Before we left, we asked J if he had facebook or anything, so we could keep in touch. And wouldn't you know it, he had never heard of Facebook. And his family did have some sort of internet access, as their guesthouse has an email address. No Facebook??? !!! ??? !!! It was sort of a reinforcing fact that we were almost as isolated as you could possible get - so far off the map, so hard to reach, that things are completely different here. We were in a rush, so I didn't have all that much time to think about it, but it sort of summed up the entire experience of visiting this village. And keep in mind, Muang Ngoi is a touristified village, so I can only imagine what other villages are like (unfortunately we had no time to visit any others).
Before running off to catch our boat, we took a picture with J. I bet he's gonna do just fine for himself - the savvy entrepreneur would just strut through town, and you could tell he was well respected around the village.
Back up at the viewpoint, J explained to us that Muang Ngoi would soon be getting a road. As we boarded the boat, we asked each other: what will be the fate of this town? what is it's future? I don't think I'll be back to Muang Ngoi anytime soon, but I will watch from the eyes of wikitravel what happens to this little village. I suspect it will be fascinating. And then, what village will be the next Muang Ngoi?
Anyway, we got back on the boat to head back to Nong Khiaw. This boat was much older, and much more crowded. I was honestly a bit spooked, but we made it back downriver to Nong Khiaw in an hour. I wasn't really looking forward to another minibus ride, but it was better than those damn wood panels. And before I know it, I'm sitting on another boat bound for Luang Prabang. 7 long aching hours away.
It was 7 hours of beautiful scenery, but it was 7 hours of stiffness, awkward positions, and sweat. As I was telling Gabe midway through the boat ride, it was totally painful then, but as soon as we made it back to LP, I knew I'd be glad I did it. And that's exactly how I feel. But I'm getting sore just thinking about it...oh wait no, that's because I just walked all over Hong Kong today, and am about to board my 12 hour flight home to SFO. moar motrin naoooo.
Fortunately we did get one break in the middle of the ride. There were too many rapids, so we all had to get out and walk along the riverbank until we could get back on the boat. And then we finished the remaining hours of soreness. But eventually we met up with the Mekong, and eventually Luang Prabang slowly crept into sight. Getting off that boat was, I won't lie, incredibly satisfying.
I actually don't have many pictures from this boat ride because my camera batteries ran out, but the scenery was much like the prior boat rides - breathtaking and awe inspiring. If you should ever find yourself in that part of the world, please do yourself a favor, and boat up to Muang Ngoi. One final offering of the scenery, for now:
We checked back into the guesthouse, and then ambled over to the main road. We were too tired to explore too much, so we went to a tourist place on the main road...and were pleasantly surprised at how good the food was. It was actually really good.
And then we went home. And went right to sleep. We'd though about leaving for Phonsavan the next day, but it was clear we needed to sleep in, and we had one extra day to spare in Laos, so we decided to allocate it to exploring Luang Prabang. And that is where the next entry will pick up.
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