Jungle Trekking & Kayaking

Today we headed off jungle trekking, there was 8 of us in the group, 4 Americans, 2 Sweedish, 1 French and me so a good mix, but unusual to have so many Americans in one group.  The trek was for a days walking through the jungle to a small village where we would stay the night and then the next day kayak down the river back to Luang Nam Tha.  The trek went through the Nam Tha national park which has lots of different tribes living there and is protected by the government, villages are only supposed to be visited once or twice a week but I think most villages get more as the tour companys can make more money that way. 


Once we had all grabbed our parcle of banana leaves and sticky rice we set off in a tuk tuk up to the village where we picked up our local guide and set off into the jungle.  Apparently there are tigers and lots of other wildlife living in the jungle but we didn't see much, I think it might have been due to all the noise we were making!  We only walked about 10k the first day but we had to cross a large hill, so the morning was all up hill and the afternoon all down hill, and it was incredibly hot so we were glad it wasn't a fast pace!

We stopped for lunch in a bamboo hut where the guide set out a table of banana leaves and some cooked vegis and fish to have with our sticky rice.  The vegis were good and there was a lovely spicy aubergine salsa to go with it.  Once we had all stuffed ourselves we set off down the jungle to visit a small village.  None of the villages were accessible by road so the villagers had to walk for about 2hours to the town if they needed any supplies and then carry it all back.  The village we visited was empty apart from a few kids running around as most of the people were out working in the fields.


We set off again to the village that we were staying in for the night, the village was very small and quite a poor village, but the government and the money from us tourists coming to visit was enabling them to  build a new village down stream a bit with another tribe living near buy to create a larger community.  We stayed in our own big bamboo hut just at the end of the village and the villagers took turns in cooking dinner for the groups which was a way of sharing out the wealth.


The dinner that evening was great, some pumpkin soup, sticky rice, spicy tomato sauce with a very hot red salsa to go with it, and of course some Lao Lao moonshine to wash it all down!  The chief and an elder from the village joined us for dinner along with the guides and we got to chat with them for a while which was really interesting.  After dinner we all sat aroudn the fire for a while before sleeping in our shack.  I dont think any of us realised quite how cold it got in the jungle as it was freezing that night and not many of us slept!


The next morning we got up and de-frosted ourselves around the fire before having a breakfast of omlettes with sticky rice (by this time I was sick of sticky rice and not looking forward to more meals!) and then heading out on our Kayaks.