Trekking

After looking around various booking agents we decided to go for a 3 day 2 night trek in Luang Namtha. We had bumped into an American couple who decided to join us to make 6 in our group. The trek started from a school on the edge of the jungle where loads of excited children came to see us off. Most of our porters where from the village we started from and spoke no english. We met one of their sons at the school who I gave my glasses to, and who was amazed by my GoPro. We set out with one English speaking guide and 4 porters, who were carrying the food and water for our trek.

The trek was difficult to begin with, climbing continuous uphill on a ridge, in

the boiling, humid heat. The path wasn't well trodden at all and we had thick jungle on both sides for majority of the two days. We stopped for lunch where we were served sticky rice, and an assortment of different Laos foods. We ate off banana leaves with our hands, a cool experience we continued every meal of the trek. We got to know the American couple, Andrew and Jess better. They were newly engaged and really lovely people. I got on great with both of them the whole three days and by the end it felt like we had known them for weeks.

After lunch we were shown some rat traps that had been made, and continued on our way. Unfortunately, about 30 minutes later Kirsty fell down the slope and badly sprained her ankle. Unable to go back, we bandaged it best we could and she did very well to make it to the end of the day. Along the trek our guide would stop and give us wild fruits and leaves that you could eat, taught

us about some medicinal, or poisonous plants, and generally explained about life in the jungle. We arrived at camp after around 5 hours of trekking, although camp didn't mean anything yet. The porters went about clearing an area with their machetes, while some of us helped to cut down lengths of bamboo and banana leaves to build camp with. Obviously us guys couldn't get enough of the machetes and tried to find the biggest banana tree we could to chop down.

The building of the camp was amazing. We helped best we could but the locals constructed the shelter with only materials from the jungle. They didn't even use string or rope. After the shelter was built they started cooking our dinner over the fire in bamboo shoots. We begun drinking loa loa that Andrew, and our guide and brought. Kirsty trying to drown her pain, drank too much and was suddenly completely smashed to all our surprise. She kept us entertained until the food was ready, which was unbelievably good. It was one of the best meals I ate in Asia, and it was cooked in the jungle. After we headed out on a night trek, which was fun but rather uneventful. The guide did catch some frogs which we cooked and ate when we got back. They were surprisingly nice. We slept on bamboo leaves that night, and some how I slept longer than I have done since I left England.

Waking up refreshed me and Andrew went out to the river to help our guide collect his fishing nets. He caught 7 fish which we ate later for lunch. After breakfast we trekked another 5 hours back

to our start point. We took a tuk tuk to a local village where we were staying for the night in a homestay. It wasn't quite the secluded mountain village we had expected, as some of the people had newer iPhones than me. Even so we played football with the local boys and had a great night drinking beer and lao lao. The family did let me have one of their cooking knives as a souvenir of the trip which was very sweet. Our final day was kayaking which was also a good laugh. Poppy and Amy were horrendously bad at it and couldn't stay in a straight line for longer than a minute. There was some small rapids, but in all it was just a nice relaxing day on the river.

We returned to Luang Namtha, exchanged details and said goodbye to Jess and Andrew. Kirsty and I booked a 2am bus to Chiang Mai and said goodbye to the other girls who were flying there the next day.