DAY 4: Nutritious & Delicious (27/2/19)
As I came back from the jungle, I had to replenish my energies. So while I was planning on how to get to the northern villages of Laos, I bought a 0.5kg bucket of nutritious oreo ice cream Perfect snack that I finished in less than 5 min, as it was melting with the crazy heat and I couldn’t keep it for later.
I decided that my next destination would be Luang Namtha. When the bus came, after several hours waiting for it, and I stepped inside… No seats. What? It was a sleeping bus, the ‘best’ part is that the beds are quite small, and on top of that you have to share them, so much fun!! Apart from that, the views during the long ride were astonishing. Sadly, I couldn’t recover any of those pictures. I could recover something better tho. I don’t usually share pictures of food, but I know you all will be jealous of my nutritious bowl of silkworms pupae. Yummy!😋
Until that point, I thought I was the only foreigner on the bus, but a French guy, Baptiste, joined me for the silkworm feast.
Hours later we arrived at Luang Namtha bus station, which is several kilometers away from the town. And at those later hours, we were just fresh meat for the tuk-tuk hyenas trying to rip us off to take us to town.
The next day, we agreed on booking a 2day survival experience package together that would start early the next morning. For the rest of the day, I rented a bicycle and rode South. I remember how I started the ride with a feeling of solitude, but after a few minutes of riding the bike🚴, I wouldn’t stop meeting kids with big smiles surprised by seeing a European in their small poor villages.
I ended up chilling with a few of them for sunset next to a river where a fisherman was trying to catch something for dinner. I couldn’t communicate with them at all, but they seemed to enjoy my company. Riding back to the guesthouse the feeling of solicitude had flipped to one of the most vibrant and emotionally filling moments of my trip🥰
Note: I couldn’t recover the pictures of these days so I include photos that resemble my memories of what happened.
##DAY 6: Survival Experience (01/03/19)
To become a real Tarzan I had to learn how to survive in the jungle. I couldn’t be more excited about the experience that was about to come.
We would spend the next couple of days hiking through the protected jungle of Nam Ha, learning about edible plants🌱, collecting food🍱, and building our own tent to sleep under🏕️. Of the two guides that came with us, only one spoke English, but both were extremely amazing and complemented each other with their skills.
One of them would tell us stories, teach us about their religion (animism) based on the existence of spirits in all our surroundings, and gave us to try different stuff to eat from whatever we found around. That was my first time to eat a handful of giant red ants🐜 (they taste like lemon).
The other one was very skilled at building stuff, most of them using bamboo🎍🐼. Apparently, there are many kinds. With one kind, he helped us building walking sticks, another type you can eat it, and with others, you can for example build a ‘bong'🤣. From all the jungles I have visited so far, Nam Ha has been the one that brought me the closest feeling of being inside Jurassic Park.
It would not have surprised me to find a T-Rex randomly walking around🦖. When the sunset was getting close it was time to start building our tents. As you can guess the main components were bamboo for the structure but also cut in very thin slices we used it as strings. And the final touch a couple of banana leaves for the roof and the floor. After the tent was finished, we got some thicker bamboo and used it as pots for cooking and plates to serve the meal. And for dessert, the guides went to the river and got us crabs and small fish using only a machete.
The experience was great, but the night was horrible. I could have never expected that sleeping on the floor of a jungle would be so cold and uncomfortable 🙄
Back in Luang Namtha one of the guides came for dinner with Batiste and me. We played petanque (Lao favorite sport), sang in a karaoke, and he told us more stories about how he built his own house by himself, and about how Lao people don’t care much about the physical appearance but the feelings of the heart. It would have been a beautiful message if it wasn’t that he was getting completely wasted with two strangers while his wife was alone at home taking care of their baby. Unfortunately, Lao culture is still very male dominant.