The first thing that struck me about Luang Prabang was how friendly the locals were; they seemed a lot less jaded by tourism than some of their Thai neighbours, and were genuinely pleased to see me. This was particularly the case when I took a bike ride to the near-by Kung Si waterfall. The waterfall is located 32km outside Luang Prabang, and the bike ride took me through gorgeous countryside, sleepy villages and bright green rice paddies. I passed lots of local people on the way to the falls, who all beamed when they saw me, calling out 'Sabaidee' (hello) as I passed by. The kids were particularly excited to see me, and wanted to hi-five me as I cycled past...it was strategically difficult but great fun. It was such a lovely ride, if a little strenuous at times, and I easily found my way to Kung Si.
The waterfall itself was absolutely gorgeous and poured into turquoise-blue pools, perfect for a little swim. I spent the whole afternoon at the falls, hiking to the top, eating a french-baguette pic-nic and taking photos; before hitting the road again for round-two of hi-fives!
Back in the city I soon noticed that Luang Prabang has a lovely relaxed pace and so I spent a few days just pottering around admiring the architecture, shopping for beautiful handicrafts and soaking up the atmosphere. There are also lots of little cafes/eateries and so I spent a fair bit of time munching on croissants and watching the world go by! The city is famous for it's fabulous temples and is a centre for novice monks to study Buddhism, and so I made time to check out a few temples as well. I particularly enjoyed visiting Phu Si temple as it is perched on top of a big hill in the centre of town, which provides lovely views of the huge Mekong river, and the surrounding mountains. I timed my visit to coincide with sunset and so got to enjoy the views in the fabulous light of the setting sun.
In an attempt to be a little more constructive, I also decided to spend a morning volunteering to teach English. It was a very informal drop-in lesson organised by 'Big Brother Mouse' which is a Lao-owned project supporting the education of Lao children. I went along to the morning session and was assigned to a group of young Laotian teenagers. There weren't enough volunteers that morning, and so my group kept increasing in size until I was chatting with around 8 kids at once. The idea of the session is to help kids learn English by talking and listening to someone who speaks it as a native language. Some of the kids have been attending the sessions for months and are very keen to improve, a few even brought along questions for me, and so I found myself explaining the concept of past, present and future tense, translating text from the Internet and explaining what snow is! The session started off slowly and I found myself constantly having to make conversation, but in the end everyone got more confident and I started learning as much about Lao culture from them as they learnt English from me.
While I was in the north, I was also keen to trek to visit the indigenous hill-tribes living in the surrounding mountains, and so I joined a 2-day trek with 'White Elephant Tours' to visit both Hmong and Khmu villages. I was in a group of five, with four fellow French backpackers (there are LOTS of French tourists in Laos) and we had two local guides, one had grown up in a Hmong village, the other a Khmu village before they moved to Luang Prabang to seek their 'fortune'.
The villages we visited were very isolated from busy Luang Prabang; we first had to drive for an hour into the mountains and then trekked for 3 hours before we reached the first village. The village was Hmong and is inhabited by around 40 families, all of whom are farmers in the surrounding countryside. Life for the villagers is very simple; they live in small wooden huts, which are usually just one room housing bamboo beds, a fire pit for cooking, and lots of bags of rice. Some of the houses have a single light bulb to light their hut when the evening draws in, although there was little evidence of any other electricity. There are no bathrooms, or even outhouses, and so villagers relieve themselves in the woods, and shower (fully clothed) in the spickets outside their houses. The villagers mainly eat rice and vegetables, only getting to eat meat once a month. It all seems far too rustic to be pleasant, but everyone we met seemed to be really happy, particularly the children. In all three villages we visited we were followed around by the children, who were just as fascinated by us as we were them. I spent a lot of time playing games with the kids, ranging from drawing in the dirt with our fingers, to pushing around old bicycle tyres.
I mused that to a western outsider these kids dressed in ragged clothing, playing in the dirt would seem in dire poverty, but I realised that the fact that their clothes were ragged and their toys were make-shift didn't matter, they were so happy and they were healthy and really it was only material possessions that they were lacking, and from where I was standing it didn't seem that having more possessions could make these kids any happier than they already were.
After spending time in the first village and checking out the village school, we trekked for another hour until we reached a second Hmong village, where we would be spending the night. We stayed in one of our guide's grandmother's house, which was so exiting and made it feel like such an authentic experience. Grandma is 99 years old, and still going strong, she didn't speak English, but seemed very keen to make sure that we were comfortable. Our guides made us a dinner of vegetables, sticky rice and buffalo, while we played petanque and chatted around a campfire. After dinner we went to bed, it was only around 8.30PM but there was nothing else to do, and it was the best way to stay warm.
In the morning we had a breakfast of toast and omelette (not too authentic) before we continued our trek to visit the Khmu village. The Khmu village was probably my favourite, as it was buzzing with activity and had a real village feel. The kids saw us coming as we trekked down the hill into their village, and excitedly stared shouting 'bye-bye' and waving to us. Again we spent time interacting with the villagers, I taught the kids how to limbo, and they showed me the snake they had found and killed; it was speared by a stick and dripping with blood, and they were about to cut off it's head so they could make it into soup for lunch -seriously-.
All too soon it was time to leave, and we spent the rest of the day trekking through the fields, and then the jungle back to the pick-up truck which would take us back to Luang Prabang. It was really hard to believe how far the villagers are from civilisation, and how trekking through the jungle is the only way to access proper amenities. On our way, we came across a group of villagers who had been into Luang Prabang to buy Beer Lao for a wedding that was happening the next day. It took around 15 of them to carry it back along the trails and family members of all ages were helping to get the beer back into the hills!
It was such an amazing experience being able to visit the hill tribes, and as nearly 40% of the population live that way I felt like I had seen a little of the 'real' Laos which is nothing like life in the bigger towns and cities.
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