Luang Prabang, Laos - Day 2

So I decided to do a two day trek with an overnight stay in village. This would have been one of the highlights of the trip if it wasn’t pouring both days. Now I’d been traveling during the rainy season in South East Asia so I figured I would get stuck in the rain sometime but so far I had been lucky. The only rain that I got was a little bit in Sapa for a couple hours. It also had to happen on the days that I decided to do a trek. I was trekking with two girls from Italy and one from Spain along with our guide. We first took a boat that looked about as sturdy as one of those paper boats that I made when I was 10 and floated in my sink until it sank. If you leaned a little the entire boat rocked, so you tried to do your best to mimic a statue while one of the guys on the boat was bailing water. The water was extremely fast and viscous as it was engorged with the past monsoons. We were crossing the river to a point perpendicular to where we were starting, but the water was so fast that we had to go up stream a bit then boat down across the river. The combo of the fast water, preposterously paper thin boat, and the bailer only having two arms and one small bucket didn’t lead me to have much faith in this trip. And of course safety regulations like life jackets are nonexistent in the interior of a third world country. And if there were life jackets they were probably pillaged a long time ago to be made into pillows or something more ingenious and practical than a life saving device.

Somehow we managed to skitter across the river and hiked up the mountain in the rain - luckily I had a poncho from my Sapa trip. I only had flip flops and because of the rainy and muddy conditions sliding a bit on the way up. But it was better than the girls who had sneakers. As we had to cross a couple rivers, they had to keep taking them off and putting them on. After an hour or so they were soaked and covered in mud. Sandals were cleaner and more convenient; you just a little less traction when climbing…which isn’t the problem…going down in where lies the issue. So we climbed for 4 hours, made it to the top and then got a small bowl of fried rice to eat. I’m trying to remember the last time I ate so little fried rice in one sitting when rice was the only available food item, especially after a grueling 4 hour hike…I’ll let you know when I think of it.

Luang Prabang, Laos - Day 2