Gibbon Experience- Luang Namtha

I caught the bus to Luang Namtha along with several of the other gibboners. The (thankfully) paved road to Luang Namtha was steep and winding. And not just a little. Our bus was so packed that they set up plastic chairs in the aisles, and the added weight forced the driver to take the 10+% grades at about 5 miles an hour. In fact, at one point the driver's assistant was hanging out the door with a brick. When asked why in the world he was doing that, he explained that they were worried the bus would not be able to move forward up the hill anymore and would start to roll backwards, at which point he would throw the brick under the tire to keep the bus from falling downhill. I had serious doubts about whether that would work!! Luckily, we made it without incident, and when a couple of passengers disembarked the going was much easier.

We arrived in a sleepy little tourist/trade route town near the borders of Burma and China. The first night and morning was for nursing my painfully swollen feet and blisters, and just generally recouping from the Gibbon Experience.

I met a lovely Welsh girl named Hannah who became my partner in crime for a couple of days. I was determined to do some kayaking in the NamTha river while in Luang Namtha- that kind of adventure tourism, along with village treks, are the main activity up in those parts. I checked out prices for a day of kayaking- for one person it was $71!! Yikes!! But for more people it got cheaper and cheaper so I started to recruit. First I met a very sweet English/Australian couple and brought them on board, then I got Hannah to do it. Hannah and I rented motos and drove out into the countryside to see the local waterfall. Apart from a couple of shaky hours on a moto a few years ago, I've never really driven one before. The first hour or so was scary, but I mastered it by the end of the day and had great fun.The countryside is sooo beautiful this time of year!
The waterfall wasn't terribly impressive, more like a cascade over a rock face, but it was SOO hot that day and the water was cool enough to feel wonderful in the heat of the day. We met a Frech girl at the waterfall and asked her to join us the next day too. By the end of the day I had rallied 6 people together to do the kayaking trip and in the end it only cost us $19 each, very affordable!!

The kayaking trip was very well put together. At the put-in point, the guides, who spoke English very well, explained the program to us- we would kayak an hour, visit a Lenten village, kayak an hour, eat lunch, kayak an hour, visit a K'hmu village, kayak an hour, and then take out. There were enough small rapids to make it fun but the paddling was never too strenuous. The surroundings were so beautiful, with the Nam Ha Protected Area on our right the whole time, with huge Dr Seuss-like bamboo stands and HUGE leafy trees.
The village visits were cool, not nearly as strange as the Pnong village visit I did in northern Cambodia a couple of years ago. The people knew we were coming but their lives didn't stop to welcome the foreigners, and I didn't feel like there was any kind of show put on for our benefit. Our guide gave us some insight into life style and belief systems, and we took a little walk around, checking out the squealy pigs, grass roof huts, crops,etc. Then back to paddling.


The guides laid out one heck of a lunch, with a couple kinds of noodles, some fish, and more of that sticky rice.
Even though we were exhausted and sunburned, Hannah and I were really excited to get back to our guesthouse. We'd treated ourselves to a room at an ecolodge right on the Nam Tha River. It was a lovely room with a huge bathroom and refreshing shower ad I'm so glad we splurged (and that we were able to do business with a place that's bringing a little Green to Laos). It was a perfectly relaxing way to spend the last day in Luang Namtha!