Jungle Trekking Through Laos

As my first post indicates, I've spent a good part of the last 6 months in search of something that is at the same time authentic and exclusively local. And as my first post also indicates, this desire has gone largely unfulfilled, as experiences that on paper promised to be awe-inspiring or better, have inevitably left me wanting.

When I arrived in Luang Prabang, the old capital city in the north of Laos, and was invited by two British acquaintances on a 4 day trek to the country's northwestern highlands, where, they beamed, we would be the first white people to visit a handful of minority villages, I was immediately skeptical. 'How credulous,' I thought, 'could these guys possibly be?' And anyway, the first white people to see these villages? even if it was true, what would that mean? Should I be thrilled about the prospect, or utterly horrified? Without committing to anything, I told them I might be interested in tagging along and to get back to me once the details had been settled. A few hours later Donnelly came to see me in the internet shop and with the same glowing enthusiasm as the Brits before him, pronounced that the Trek was officially a go; $80 a head for 4 days of backpacking through uncharted mountain range and the promise of being the first white-folk to step foot in any of several regional villages. Now, for those who don't know Mr. Donnelly, Ryan is a seasoned skeptic, a stone of a man, someone I have been lucky to stand behind in the grueling battle against the army of scammers, schemers, manipulators, and the battalions of smooth-talking tour guides that takes arms in this part of the world. So, if D was convinced, I was convinced. Convinced, at least, that the details of the trip were true. Our boat would leave the following morning at 8:30am. Pack your sneakers, a towel, a few extra shirts, and bring your game face.

I'd be lying though, if I didn't say that all along, until the moment actually arrived, I still had my doubts.

Day 1: The first day was just supposed to be one of acclimation, warming our muscles up to the long hikes, getting our shoulders used to the extra weight on our backs, getting a small taste of typical village life to whet our pallets for the more remote areas of the days ahead, sampling the scenery, getting to know the two guides, etc., all of it kicked off with a leisurely 5 hour boat ride west up the Mekong. Except for that last part, and a pleasant boat ride it was, there would be no time for acclimation. The 6 of us – Ryan, myself, the 2 Brits, Andy and Fergus, and the 2 guides, Kong and Gao – would be in the thick of it from the word go.


Stepping off the boat onto a sandbar-qua-village, we were greeted with some token hellos, a handful of odd-stares, and then rather briskly ushered by our guides to a footpath running adjacent to a small, bending creek and leading to god knows where. We walked heel-to-toe for several hours, the flat creek bed eventually giving way to steep and then very steep hills. The buffalo, the lone sling-shot toting child, the makeshift bamboo huts, the discarded wash rag, and all other outward signs of human life were soon far behind us. Laos northern wilderness is not the tropical jungle that blankets the south, but it's composed of the same steamy, verdant brushstrokes, and can be every bit as claustrophobic and threatening as the most uninviting terrain – cobras, wild cats, scorpions, leeches, and all. It was only a 4 day trek, and I knew as much going in, but once out there in the thick, I found it hard not to imagine myself in the shoes of some bygone notion of an adventurer, some intrepid 19th century French explorer donning a pith helmet, hacking at the brush with a machete, and traveling for the pure motive of discovery, of what or where as a distant afterthought.

After several hours of some intense hiking we came upon an abandoned hut with no godly reason for being where it stood. We were all tired by now, our neck muscles strung like taught wire, the two smokers among us wheezing to catch our breath, and our legs wobbling under our unnatural weight. It was just after 3pm. From our perch on the flatland of a dried out rice paddy, we watched the sun dip below the western ridgeline. The scene had a temporary analgesic effect, and we assumed that with darkness just an hour or so away that we couldn't be far from the first village and that we'd be sipping whiskey and grinding on some sticky-rice in no time. Our guides talked amongst themselves while we irreverently speculated on why any rational human-being would choose this place for a farm. We were happy for the rest and paid little mind to our guides' dialogue. But as their voices grew louder and their hand waving and head-shaking more confrontational, it soon became obvious that our guides had come upon a major disagreement in regards to our current location. It was getting darker. This was the 3rd time in our first day of trekking that we'd been forced to double-back on our initial route. The 4 travelers, though tired and more than a bit perturbed at our guides' latest fuckup, were still buoyed by the excitement of the idea of our adventure, and as the guides turned us around and informed us that we'd taken the completely wrong path and would have to return to the first village, we all puckered up and continued without caution.

We stumbled back near the initial riverside village and without any evident consideration of the waning daylight, started back up again along a new path, this one even heavier with undergrowth than the one we had come from and as steep as one could climb without crawling on all fours. It was nearly 5pm. The fireflies and night creatures were emerging from their daytime hideouts. Fergus was beginning to cramp and it was soon discovered that I was the only one with a flashlight, and it would be a few hours still until we learned that our guides had no better idea of where we were than we did. When it got dark at 6:30pm, dark enough that the guides could no longer hide the fact that they weren't entirely sure where we were going or how long it would take to get there, it was decided that I, with my flashlight, and Gao, 20 years old and on his first guided expedition since he'd left his village more than 2 years prior ("information that would've been helpful yesterday!"), would continue up the mountain and send help when and if we found the village we were looking for. All of a sudden the mood turned from jovial to somber. The thought that we might be resigned to spending the night huddled together on a mountainside in northern Laos, was sort of, well, unappealing. Kong, the older and more experienced of the two guides, who at the beginning of the trip was a stalwart of optimism, admitted that he had never done this trek before, that he was as lost as the rest of us, and that if it was up to him we would turn around once again and return to the Mekong where things were safe and familiar. So much for inauthentic.

Gao and I soldiered upward. Poor Gao. On the first day of his first professional guide he had fucked up 3 times in broad daylight and now had us all scrambling in the pitch dark. Surely in an attempt to prove himself worthy to his new boss, Gao had insisted on carrying all the group's extra supplies, but after 6 hours of traversing the unforgiving mountainside, Gao's tiny frame was finally giving way to this heavy burden. After roughly 40 minutes of Gao and I hiking together, the guy collapsed to the ground. "I am not a man," he kept saying. "You all think I am just a boy because I am so small and I make mistake." As he tried to catch his breath, I fed Gao some crackers and let him vent, trying not to laugh. "They will be so angry. It is my fault. Do not be angry, Mr. Jo. I am sorry." I tried to offer Gao words of encouragement. "It's cool, Gao. No problem. Once we all get to the village, no one will even remember all this." After Gao promised to have me for dinner and to meet his family (one of those, 'if we ever make it outta here alive' things, that is now quite hilarious, but at the time was sort of moving), we switched packs and kept climbing. It would be another hour of the steepest hiking we had endured to date, and several more stops in which Gao reiterated his failure to be a man, until the path would flatten out and the sweet stench of buffalo shit would indicate that we had finally reached the village.

Meanwhile, down at the rest point where Gao and I had left the the group hours earlier, things were getting desperate. Kong was completely flustered and couldn't decide whether to stay put, turn around, or marshal his boys up the mountain and just hope that they would find the village. Fergus was a mess, cramping up every few meters they attempted to hike. Andy, a Scotsman, and Donnelly, an Irishman, would have been totally fine just building a fire and spending the night where they lay, but to their near horror they realized that all the whiskey was in Gao's supply pack. Motivated by the booze as much as anything, the 4 of them crawled slowly upward, guided by a torch fashioned from Kong's rubber flip-flop and around 8:45pm they were intercepted by a search party Gao had sent down from the village.

By 9:30pm the 6 of us were reunited in the village elder's hut, laughing at what had just transpired. Already full from my supper of rat soup (seriously, I wish I was joking), I just grazed on some sticky rice as the others devoured their feast of boiled chicken. We were all much too tired and wrapped up in our own day's odyssey to notice that at some point the whole village had congregated outside of the hut and were taking turns peering into the doorway at the large, loud, laughing "farangs". After eating, a few of the village's young men offered us some of their rice-wine, a kind of semi-sweet whiskey made from fermented rice and cantaloupe-ish melon, a drink we would become all to familiar with over the next few days. The concoction is served from a huge communal clay jar, over which drinkers, 2 or 3 at a time, kneel and imbibe from very long, thin bamboo straws. Each serving consist of anywhere from 3-10 cups per drinker and once the drinking commences there is no rest, just continuous sucking. It's something like taking a keg-stand with sake. These guys are serious about their booze. We drank for a while, some of us longer than others, but we were all soon bedded on the bamboo floor, and despite the discomfort, all fast asleep. The next morning we would wake early to find throngs of children climbing over each other in the doorway, trying to get a peak at the hairy, white, giants that lay sleeping before them. We had finally arrived.