A Distinct Lack of Teenage Kicks
Up river an hour later and still in one piece a few jumbled together buildings breaking out of the jungle came into view, flanked by towering mountains. The forest is so dense that from the river you can see only tiny patches of vertical cliff that aren't green. Muang Ngoi is a tiny roadless village. It has only one main street that stretches straight from the monastery to the Resting Lady Mountain. The whole town is struggling for space with nature. It is beautiful and remote and probably the worst place in the world to be a teenager. There are only a few shops and restaurants (which always seem surprised and disorientated to have customers) which cater solely to the tourists and nothing very much ever happens. There are only one or two boats to Nong Khiaw everyday and of course, no road, so no cars or bikes which in turn means that there are chickens and ducks and cats and dogs and all their numerous offspring all over the place.
Roosters wake you up at 5am with their incessant growing, which doesn't matter for the locals because they get up early anyway. Why? Well because they have to utilise the daylight because there is no electricity! Generators provide power for three hours in the evening until 10pm but that's it. Some people (swanky guesthouse owners) have their own generators but not many, but aside from that there's no TV, no music, certainly no internet and almost no phone signal.
The author - Main street of Muang Ngoi towards the Resting Lady Mountain
Still for a tourist it's a veritable Lao paradise. Half the town virtually tumbles into the incredible scenery of the river while the rest has that traditional feel travellers crave while still having the necessary conveniences. Life moves slow here and we found ourselves a little bamboo hut in a small garden in a beautiful location overlooking the side Nam Ou river and the mountains beyond. We sat out front in our hammocks all day watching exotic birds and butterflies wheel around.
It's always warm in Muang Ngoi, even in the pouring rain and we sat in the restaurants at night until we couldn't see the river and the mountains were lost in a swathe of inky blackness. The eateries are cheap and friendly and always have a cat or two to keep you company tend to kick you out at 9 ish so they can go to bed. Back to the bungalow we would go and read until the sad winding down noise let you know that the generators were about to die. After that all you could see outside were the stars.
We sort of had to become one with nature during our stay, which Theo managed much more successfully than I did. While he led hungry chicks up the street like some sort of poultry pied-piper and pondered the feasibility of using lizards to carry messages to each other (there are more of Louis' friends and relative than we care to count in Muang Ngoi), I continued to wrap myself up in the mosquito netting brandishing a flip flop and shrieking if anything brushed against me. There are bugs everywhere, ants in the bathroom, millipedes in the door frames, spiders in the ceiling and once a big fat beetle under the scoop for the toilet (no flush here either). At night the crickets are almost louder than city traffic.
The Resting Lady from the Nam Ou river
In to the Wild
Our first Muang Ngoi excursion was a kayaking trek with Laos Youth Travel led by a young man named Kaow. Like Chiang Rai's Ken, Kaow was super cool. He was dressed in the Laos equivalent of surfer shorts and a Super Dry shirt (that is baggy shorts and a fake Super Dry shirt) while also nonchalantly sporting a baseball hat and spiked earring combo. After paddling us and the kayaks upstream we stopped on a convenient beach and got into the kayaks. Kaow, of course, was a natural. He knew all the routes that caught the best currents and glided along effortlessly whereas Theo and I, who had both kayaked before but not in a double and I had never been on a river, splashed and squabbled and span round in circles. We did OK once we got going but we didn't seem to have any gear between drifting in the current and full race style powering down the river. At one point we had a total communication breakdown and crashed straight through a large bush.
The Resting Lady from the Nam Ou river
Back in the kayaks we paddled to the village from which we would walk to a waterfall. I managed to gracefully leave the kayak but unfortunately lost my balance in the slow boat we were using as a stepping stone to get to shore and fell on my bum, rolling around in the bottom of the boat with my legs in the air. Fortunately Kaow, Theo and the sober looking Laos man who had been driving the boat thought this was hilarious. "Too much Lao Lao (whiskey)" Kaow said knowingly.
At the village we rested and were examined for a while by lots of solemn faced children. Kaow took a great interest in Theo's John Lennon t-shirt and told us with glee how he'd met the man himself last year. He was very upset when we told him he was dead.
The walk to the waterfall took us first through pretty paddy fields with the mountains all around us. We took the winding paths across the fields and crossed little makeshift bridges over streams of water that ran for miles over the tiered plots. Kaow showed us all sorts of things along the way, beetles, frogs and grasshoppers. He told us about farm life and what it's like to live in Muang Ngoi and how he hopes they'll get electricity soon. He explained that the little huts we'd seen scattered across the hills were resting places for the workers and the miniature houses outside peoples homes were for the spirits.
Paddy fields around Muang Ngoi
Now whenever we've been anywhere near a waterfall, Theo and I agreed, the one thing our parents always drummed into us was; don't climb on the rocks! However, the jungle around the waterfall was so dense our trek turned out to be a nice stroll up a river. For a good half hour we waded and slipped and scrambled up stream. At one point we ascended a minor waterfall with the aid of a bamboo railing and Theo almost went back over it again in pursuit of a runaway flip flop. Kaow seemed to find it sufficient to simply shout "careful" every time we fell.
The waterfall was spectacular and after our hard climb we were grateful to swim in the freezing cold pool at its foot. Unfortunately, when we got out we both had our first taste of that glorious jungle hazard, leeches. Not only are they stealthy little scamps but no matter how hard you smush them with a rock they just won't die.
Kaow laid out our lunch by spreading out a huge banana leaf and opening up the takeway boxes he'd brought all the way upstream, although he did manage to dunk them in the river at one point. We had fried bamboo, noodles and sticky rice not to mention the most delicious, sweetest pineapple I have ever encountered. The strange thing about fried bamboo is, as Theo pointed out, though delicious everything else in this country is made from it, being strong yet supple, so you do feel as though you may as well stand up and start eating your chair when you want seconds.
Theo sensibly took it slow on the way back down the waterfall, so I was bounding on ahead with Kaow when I stupidly stepped down into a bit of river bed I couldn't see and disappeared up to the thigh in a large hole. Still we made it down and then home in one piece, feeling very pleased that we had managed to walk up and down a river without sustaining any injuries and convinced of what we had suspected before, that we were in one of the most beautiful spots in Laos.
The Waterfall close to Muang Ngoi
Spiders and Heights and Leeches, Oh My!
The next day we decided to do a trek on our own and set off in search of the nearby cave. Following the signs instead of the guide book we came to what turned out to be a different cave and much harder to access. The ascent was unbelievably steep and there were barely even steps. What's more the earth footholds had been mostly turned to mud by the recent rain and were covered in damp slippery leaves. We were drenched in sweat and covered in bugs by the time we climbed some precarious wooden ladders to the cave entrance. We wandered into the dark, me clutching Theo, Theo clutching the weak headlight we'd been given. After seeing a massive and poisonous-looking spider we didn't hang around. It took us ages to traverse the steep, slippery, slope back down and I was freaking out (spiders in a high place is probably my worst nightmare). Eventually we got back sweaty and tired, thinking the worst was over, only to discover a massive leach lurking in between Theo's toes. From its size it must have been there for a while and it squirmed repulsively around the bathroom floor refusing to disappear down the drain. I panicked and did the worst thing possible. If you ever encounter a full leech, never do this. I whacked it with a shoe. Mud and blood sprayed everywhere. The leech was alive. Theo was bleeding. I was screaming. Now bamboo bungalows have very thin walls, so I'd imagine every single one of our neighbours heard the following:
"Leech!" "Get rid of it!" "It won't go!" "Leech!" "Die leech, die!!" (Whack, another whack, another whack) "Fuck's sake Emma stop hitting it!" "You get rid of it then!"
Stressed out and creeped out we tried our best to relax and recuperate out front in our hammocks, which went fine until Theo's promptly fell from the ceiling leaving him sprawled on the decking. "Too much fried rice" Kaow would have said.
Our second attempt at seeing the cave went slightly better. Taking a different route out of town the track took us past bamboo homes and scraggy pieces of farmland full of chickens. As the path wound out of town it began to meander up and down past the Resting Lady mountain. Long stretches of paddy fields could be seen between the dense hedgerows that lined the path. On the way we picked up a stray canine companion, as you do. Reaching the fork in the river we visited the cave, a vast craggy place from which one part of the stream springs, and crossed a perilous bamboo bridge to the restaurant. A long time later a round, smiling lady brought us our fried rice then we ate our meal in the company of three cats and four chickens. We ventured slightly further afield down tracks similarly pretty to those we'd walked to the waterfall before heading home.
Tham Pha Kaew cave
Lao-st in Translation
Of course the main draw of a village like this one is the interaction with the locals. From day one we had young men walking up to us in the street, shaking our hands and asking our names saying "pleased to meet you" over and over again. They seem keen to practice their English (obviously it the young men who are in possession of a decent education here, which is a shame because men talk to men in these countries meaning most conversations tend to go through Theo) and they offer to take us on treks to their friends' village. Our first experience of this was in first attempt at getting food. We placed an order with the teenage girl left in charge and she promptly walked out of the restaurant. Confused we waited and she came back with a BeerLao. That was a start, so we repeated the rest of our order and off she went returning with a man called Noi. A skinny, friendly youth with appalling teeth he sorted out the language problems and then sat down at our table with us as the girl left again. The near-silent minutes ticked by as conversation with Noi faltered and died, still he seemed content enough just to sit. Ten minutes later the girl located the cook and our food eventually came Lao style in dribs and drabs, though I never did get my rice or a drink.
Nam Ou river at sunset from Muang Ngoi
Generally speaking the restaurants in Muang Ngoi could be bit hit and miss, like the time we went the one owned by our guesthouse, which looked more like a shed full of children's shoes and toys than a restaurant and waited over half an hour to get fried rice. Not that you can blame Nicksa, the nice lady that owned the place, she seemed completely snowed under, running the guesthouse and the restaurant, doing DIY, laundry, cooking, hacking down the occasional banana tree and chasing after more small children than we could count. One afternoon we somehow got left with two of her toddlers, who seemed content enough to stay with us. They proceeded to beg for crisps, throw leaves everywhere and take all the empty water bottles out of our bin. All our interactions with kids were a little like being attacked by the touts in the cities. They would run after us down the street giggling and shouting in Lao. One little boy attached himself to the bag and followed Theo down the street. It was with great sadness that we waved goodbye to the hammocks and the view and the dusty street and the chickens and finally, the Resting Lady.
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