It's still uncomfortably cold in the mornings, and I'm in the back of a 'Sǎwngthǎew' truck with a group made up of four Germans, two Swiss girls, one Spaniard and two Hmong men who are to be our guides on a one-day trek in the mountains outside Luang Prabang.
When I arrived in Luang Prabang I had already booked, and paid for, a two-day overnight hike. I had been thoroughly excited about the prospect of home-staying with a Hmong family in a village with no electricity in the cold Laos mountains, but yesterday the two others in the group pulled out, leaving me with the option of either joining a three-day two-night trek, or this one day affair. Three days would be too expensive and would kick my plans out of whack and make it difficult for me to make it to Thailand when I want to.
So, a one-dayer it is. And my disappointment is dispelled once we're winding up through the misty jungle-covered mountains. We're overtaken by Hmong girls dressed in colourfel traditional costumes on their scooters, mountain peaks are intermittently seen through gaps in the mist, logging trucks rumble down past us, and we all have goosebumps.
We're dropped off in a small village of bamboo huts, and our guides inform us we are in a Khmu village. The Khmu people are the indigenous inhabitants of Northern Laos, and our guides, who also speak Khmu, show us through the village.
We continue on up the road, through a school and into a Hmong settlement. As we turn the corner to enter the village we see young boys and girls dressed in elaborate, ornate, colourful dress, no two the same. Our Hmong guides, with their pleasant, happy faces, tell us this is the Hmong New Year celebration. There are two lines, facing each other, and the young Hmong, dressed ever so wonderfully, throw and catch balls to each other in pairs. This, I'm told, is Hmong courtship, and the balls are tossed back and forth for days.
My, we've been lucky to come here at this time of year.
"You want wife?", one guide asks me, with a grin.
"Very many pretty girl. Wanna throw the ball?", he continues, cheekily.
Sometimes I wish it were that simple. Go to a village dance, pick a girl you fancy, throw a ball back and forth for a couple of days, get married. Actually, I guess we actually do something along those lines already.
We admire the event, and the vibrant costumes, for a little while, and continue on up through the village, past some men training their fighting cocks, and into the jungle and further up into the mist-shrouded mountains.
I'm feeling more ill today - my throat is sore, my glands are swollen, I have a cough, a slight fever, and my nose is blocked so I'm denied the pleasure of smelling the mountain air. The guide I'm talking to up the front (the Germans are lagging ridiculously far behind, seemingly struck by a desire to photograph every square inch of the environment) picks a green fruit from a tree and tells me to chew on it.
"Forest sour fruit. Good for cold".
I chew on it as I walk on, and he tells me about the animals of the forest, and how when he was a child he ate bear, and monkey, and tiger. He also tells me of a group of Hmong living near where his village is, deep in the jungle near the Thai border, who, he claims, live a hunter gatherer lifestyle naked in the wild.
"One boy from my village saw a naked girl when he was hunting far far away from village. He stole her and took her for wife. They gave her sticky rice...haha...only after one month did she learn to eat it..haha", he tells me as we trek on through the dappled jungle light.
Just stealing a wife. Now, that's much easier than throwing a ball for days.
After a track-side lunch we descend the hill we just climbed and past a turquoise spring, then down into more open country and eventually reach the shallow limestone pools at the top of the Kuang Si Falls. The others swim in the gorgeous pools at the bottom of the falls, joining in with the crazy dare-devil macho Australians back-flipping and swinging off a rope-swing into the cold water. But I opt out of a swim - something rare for me - as I'm feeling even more ill now.
Is a little part of this choice not to swim, I query myself, not down to your body issues and insecurities when faced with the machismo of those Aussie jocks? Yeah, probably.
We drive back down into town after waiting too long for the Germans to finish taking more photographs, and I decide on turning in early. Not, of course, before one more noodle soup with plenty of chili.
I talk briefly to the lovely guest-house owner and her son before retiring to my bamboo enclosure.
Today's trek through villages of minority tribes makes me want to travel to the old Latvian communities in Siberia. I really must do that train journey soon.
I feel I want to see more of Laos than I have already planned, but it's not going to be possible. Wherever I've been I've been one of many tourists, always in comfortable situations. Does that make me unadventurous? Maybe. But then I remember I'm travelling for the sake of travelling, taking the long way home, participating in a self-created rite-of-passage, a transition, a two-month therapy session. And yes, I am thinking a lot, and questioning and facing some demons. To do that I don't need to be out in places with no electricity and no tourists. It suffices to be moving, going through the motions, changing my environment, breezing through, relaxing, being gentle on myself yet firm at the same time.
Tomorrow time for another change of scenery. Up the Mekong by boat.
 |
| Our Hmong guides |
 |
| A traditional Khmu house |
 |
| Even the Hmong play Petanque |
 |
| Dressed to play ball |
 |
| Hmong courtship |
 |
| Fighting roosters |
 |
| Traditional Hmong house |
 |
| I don't know what this is, but I was told to chew it to help my sore throat |
 |
| My bamboo room |
No comments:
Post a Comment