lot to catch up on... lets see.
back in luang probang. its just so good here its difficult to pull ourselves away. anyone looking for a good, cheap vacation idea would be well suited to come here. but enough about you.
ashley and i did pry ourselves away from this fine city for the last three days, heading north to nong khiaow (incidentally, for those of you following along on a map or globe, if you notice discrepencies in city spellings, i am not to blame. every city here has 100 different spellings, so i usually go with the most phonetically appropriate). we decided on nong khiaow after a day trip to tad sae waterfalls, another absurdly gorgeous set of falls that pour turquoise water over wide limestone steps into various pools filled with bathing elephants. its like something you would find in wisconsin dells, but without the fat people. after climbing to a cave above the pools, and hiking through mountaintop jungles surrounded by, literally, hundreds of butterflies, ash and i decided to postpone our trip to vang vieng, a town reknowned for its innertubing and beer consumption, and head to the quiet and isolated north.
arrive in nong khiaow on thursday, after a uniquely laotian day of travel. our tuk-tuk to the bus station got a flat tire just blocks before the actual station. at the ticket counter we learned that our "bus" was actually more of a huge covered pickup truck with benches along either side. it was on this ride that ashley pointed out to me that many of the women of laos have huge feet, almost like a hobbit's. it was about this time that two men tried to maneuvre an obviously disgruntled, cow-tied goat into the truck next to ash. three and a half hours later...

nong khiaow is something to be seen. its a tiny town, one dirt road, no more than a thousand people living there, set on the nam ou river, surrounded on all sides by towering cliffs topped with lush green jungle. a huge bridge crosses the river giving the best place to watch a sunset or just marvel at the cliffs. our plan was to spend one night in town, and in the morning, take a boat one hour north to a town that has do-it-yourself hiking trails. earlier in the day we had stopped into a movie house (literally someone's house where you can pay to watch dvds) and chatted up the owner, a friendly local named tia, so after having dinner with a polish guy we met on the bus, we decided to head over to tia's to take in a film before calling it a night. at 9:00 when we arrived, the place was locked up, no sign of tia. now, he had told us that he was going to a party that night, but that he would be back by 7:oo, so when we didn't find him in the movie house, we decided to head up the town's only street and search out the party. after approximately 17 seconds of searching, we came upon tia as he stumbled out a front door to go pee in the street (not really unusual here). i called out his name, and badda boom, five minutes later, we're sitting in someone's living room drinking beer, dancing, and trying to keep up in a conversation with four lao people, only one of whom speaks english. five beers later, we start talking about our plans to head up river the next day, tia starts talking about how his friends just discovered a waterfall and were planning on opening a trekking company in town, one thing leads to another, and ashley and i, at midnight, sign up for a tour that's never been done, by a guide who's never guided, along a trail he has taken just once before, leaving at 8:00 the next morning. smart.
so... ashley and i wake up early, pack our bags and head over to le cinema, wondering aloud if tia will be awake, if he will remember our plans, and if we havent just made the biggest mistake of our trip. our fears increased when we arrived to find him unpacked and obviously hungover, but our curiousity took precedent, and against all odds, and an hour and a half of waiting for him to get ready, we set out in his jeep for what would turn out to be one of the most magical experiences of our trip.
forty minute drive out of town, we pull up to a hmong village and hike towards the mountains. walking through rice paddies, passing farmers hauling huge bags of rice or bundles of bamboo, every step we took got us further and further from any remnant of civilization. after two hours hike, we stopped for a break in a tiny village where kids fearfully ran into thatch huts. two more hours and we came into a larger hmong village where we would spend the night. we had lunch in the house of one family, with an audience of children giggling constantly just from looking at us, while the adults went on with their work. after lunch we walked an hour to a waterfall that, according to tia, has been seen only once before by a westerner, and that was a month earlier when it was discovered. this is entirely believable given the fact that there was no sign of a trail in or out as we bushwacked our way down a steep slope to reach it. after a couple hours exploring and washing off, we headed back to the village where ash and i laid back in awe at life in the village. we had dinner that night with a villager, who sold and then killed a duck to tia, who made an amazing meal (ashley had eggs). the conversation was predictably sparse, but entertaining. after dinner, the man and his two children curled up in one corner of the room, tia in another, and ashley and i in a third where we slept on a lifted bamboo mat to the sound of babies crying, pigs, ducks, goats, etc.

after breakfast we set out on a grueling hike, higher up into the mountain, along a practically nonexistant trail that links two villages who rarely visit one another. we past a few locals, mainly water buffalo, stopping frequently to rip leeches off out feet and stare at the views that changed every five minutes. we stopped for lunch in the next village, washed down with warm beer mixed with coke (not as bad as it sounds), and convinced a man from the village to play the ken, a bagpipe-like instrument we saw hanging on his wall. one more hour of hiking, meeting farmers along the way, some who spoke only hmong, before arriving in our last village where we hired a boat to take us home, for the most beautiful 45 minute ride of my life. on either side of the river were massive rock walls, hanging over tiny riverside huts with mothers bathing little kids and men throwing nets from their canoes. by the time we made it back to nong khiaow, it was just getting dark and ashley and i congratulated ourselves on making the right choice, as stupid as it may have seemed at the time.
since we spent all of our money on the trek, and no atms within 100 miles, tia had told us before we set out that we could spend our last night at his place, so when we got back, i took what little money we had left to buy beers for he and his wife, who cooked for the four of us a giant helping of lao style barbeque. we stayed up late talking about the trek and drinking beer while his friends from town came in and out to talk to us and practice their english.
this morning we planned on buying a couple bananas to tide us over for the bus ride to luang probang, but when we came out of our room, found tia's wife setting out plates of eggs and sausages and fries for us. it was all just so much to take in, the generosity and openness of a family that makes so little compared to a family in the u.s.
the bus ride back was quiet. i think we both wanted to let the past few days sink in. every time our truck would pass a group of kids walking down the street, more often than not they would wave, and when i wave back, they smile, and dont stop until the truck is out of sight. we saw a traditional hmong wedding party as we passed through a village when we were about half way home. this country just seems to have something incredible waiting around every turn, and i know i've probably sounded spectacularly cheesy for this entire entry, but theres no other way i can explain it all. what ive written can't even begfin to do it justice.
and that brings us to right now. we'll have dinner tonight at the night market, i think, and go buy a thank you gift for tia. along the trail, when we needed to hack our way through the brush, he pulled out a swiss army knife and started slashing away, so we found a place here that sells machetes, and a guy who can carve tia's name into the handle.
then i think we'll lay low and look into catching a bus first thing tomorrow to vang vieng.