Laos… not a lot to say about this country yet as we spent (unfortunately) most of our time in the jungle!

You might have heard about our crazy experience into the Lao jungle… but let start from the beginning again… it is worth to spend some time explaining to you what really happened!

After crossing the Mekong to come to Laos, we took a bus up North to reach Luang Nam Tha, a village into the mountains. This village is well-known to start a trekking into the jungle. You can find there a lot of agencies proposing one, two or three days treks into the jungle.

We subscribed for a GUIDED 2 days trek where we had to walk about 6h the first day in order to arrive to a remote village, spent the night into the village and walk about 4h on the second day in order to come back to civilization. Until there everything seems to be under control…

We left at 8:30AM and went first to the local market in order to grab some food for our trek… cabbage, tomatoes, chicken, rice, bananas,… We left the civilization around 10AM!  We walked for 6 hours before our guide turned to us and announced us that we were lost into the jungle. He lost the path and could not find it back…  Knowing that it is dark at 6PM, there was only 2 hours left to find our way! At that point he told us that the river that we were seeing far away at the bottom of the valley was next to the village we had to go… we then decided to follow his advice and cut through the jungle in order to get as fast as possible to the village… Problem is that after 2 hours walking, no sign of the river nor the village at all… and no daylight anymore… The guide kindly proposes us to continue walking with our flashlights into the dark (as he didn’t had one of course)… But we told him this was just crazy and that we would better quickly build a shelter with the last ray of lights… and spent the night where we were.  Of course, no need to mention that there was no phone connection at all in the jungle so no way that we could talk to anyone!

We spent the night completely wet squeezed to each other in order to try to keep warm … Daylight only came back around 6:30AM… so we spent a 12h night in our shelter.  We didn’t sleep at all… jungle is quite scary at night… a lot of strange and unidentified noise…

At 7:15AM we decided to start the walking again… problem was we were in the middle of nowhere so what was the best option… going back and try to find back the point we got lost… meaning at least 3h walk going back up through the jungle OR continuing going down hoping the river that we saw the day before will appeared at some point… The guide convinced us to continue walking down! But again, around 10AM, still no sign of any village nor river L and we were even further into the jungle…. No way to contact anyone and that anyone could find us!

So at that point, we shouted at the guide and told him, the only way to get out of this sh*** was to come back on our paces…. Meaning about 5 hours of walk up the hill again! I still don’t know how we did it but WE DID IT!  We reached the summit of a hill (we didn’t know which one yet) around 2PM! (Oh yes I also forgot to tell you that we had 2 tomatoes as food that day… as all the rest had to be cooked or had been lost the day before due to the difficult walk into the jungle…).

At that point, we asked our guide to put on his mobile… but of course, just to make the story a little bit more spicy… his mobile was empty! Grrr… Fortunately, we had our Belgian mobiles with us and we could put his SIM card in our mobile… The connection was really limited but existing J Our goal was to call the office of the agency we booked at in order to let them know we were completely lost. Problem is all phone numbers were stored on the mobile of the guide and not his SIM card… But you know, when the situation starts to be completely desperate, something always happens… and for us, the guy of the agency tried to call us J YOUHOU we could talk to him … but of course we could not tell him where we were as we didn’t know…

How did we find our way back? We found back on the way 2 tomatoes that we lost the day before and the sticker of my backpack that I lost the day before falling in a big whole…. (falling is good sometimes ;-) )! So we walked until 6PM (meaning 11h of walk)… where we met the guy from the agency who came to us with some food!

From there, we still had to walk 3 hours in the dark… with our mobiles as light in order to reach a remote village in the mountains where they could offer us a bed, a fire and some food!

We spent a great night even if sleeping between the pigs and the dogs… Thanks to all these local tribes that really helped us!

The day after, around 11AM, we took our backpack again to walk the last 2 hours to reach civilization again!

So as a summary, we walked 24 hours from which 22h on two days… with as food one lunch, some bananas and 2 tomatoes and a night in the jungle! A bit tough isn’t it?...

We are currently recovering from our wounds, bites, fever,… at the hostel: ZUELA Guesthouse in Luang Nam Tha (an address to definitely recommend!).  The people here are really nice and helped us a lot!

Tomorrow, it is time to take our backpacks again and leave the jungle for Luang Prabang! J

See you there…

15-01-2011 om 10:21 geschreven door Marjan & Isa  

It is for sure time to update our blog again… sorry for the small delay ;-)

After leaving the South islands we head to the North of Thailand by bus… passing by Bangkok again! Our first stop in the North was a city called Sukothai… it is a historical city from the 13-14^th century. We spent two days over there and visited the ruins of the old city by bicycle J Really nice to discover Asia with another transport again ;-)

We then took the bus to Chiang Mai, a city located 7 hours drive North of Sukothai. Chiang Mai is a  bigger city again where you have all the common  international facilities. We enjoyed the night bazaar (night market) – really colorful and amazing –, the city temples… more than 350 all together from which, one located on top of a hill called Suthep, and a Thai cooking course.

We spent one day learning how to cook 7 different Thai dishes…. Fried rice with chicken, Pad Thai, spring rolls, chicken with cashew nuts, sticky rice with mango, prawn soup, … ! It was a great experience with lovely people! We just need to find back the right ingredients when back to Belgium and we will be able to cook a Thai meal for you! J

After our positive Chiang Mai experience, we took a local bus up North to Chiang Rai… a city located next to the Myanmar border. In Chiang Rai itself, there is not a lot of things to see but it is a good starting point to go to rural villages/tribes and to the Golden Triangle region.

The Golden Triangle is the intersection between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. From a view point you can admire the famous Mekong being the natural border between Laos and Thailand.

In order to go to Laos, we took a boat crossing the Mekong … the customs and passport control is an experience on its own ;-) Really basic checks and you queue with the monks…. So funny!

See you in Laos !!!!!

15-01-2011 om 08:39 geschreven door Marjan & Isa