Trekking in the Nam Ha NPA

We left around 8:30 in the morning on January 2nd for our trek. We found the trekking company because they had a little office right next to the guesthouse. They had a specific 3 day/2 night trek which sounded pretty good to us so we decided to do it. It was a bit expensive but it turned out to be well worth it. Our two guides, Khong and Chang, were very nice. Khong’s English was pretty good and Chang didn’t know much English but always had a smile on his face.

We chose this trek because we wanted to have some time in the jungle/forest of Laos but also wanted to see a bit of the ethnic hill tribes. Laos has a very high number of ethnic minorities including Akha, Black Tai, and (probably the most famous) Hmong. Many of the tribes immigrated from southern China or Tibet through Myanmar and Thailand and some continued further south or into Vietnam. The hill tribes have a history of being subjugated by the governments of all these countries and consequently keep mostly to themselves.

The trekking company drove us out for about a half hour into the Nam Ha National Protected Area and then dropped us off at an Akha village. There was a marriage about to happen and the bride and groom were in different houses and dressed in traditional marriage clothing. That consisted of black fabric with many different colored embroidery going horizontally with mini mirrors and glass beads interlaced in it. Pretty cool stuff.

We took off and had a pretty good hike that day. It was described as “moderate” in the brochure so we weren’t expecting anything too strenuous but at a few points the hike got pretty difficult and we wondered what a “difficult” hike would have been like. The views were amazing, though. We had a pretty good lunch before the first big climb. The presentation was pretty cool as Khong got a banana leaf from a nearby tree, rinsed and wiped it off, and then put out the various greens and meats in little piles. Finally he portioned out a bit of sticky rice for each one of us. Again, the meal was fantastic.

We came down around 3ish to a Black Tai town which would be our resting spot for the night. The place turned out to be Khong’s village and we stayed at his uncle’s house. He made a joke when we got there about it being the “hotel” of the town. Well, the house was built on stilts (like every house in the village) and consisted of one room when you enter where they cooked and ate and in the other, much bigger room were a long line of mattresses on floors with mosquito nets above them. In one corner, shielded from view by some sheets that were hung up, was the family’s alter to their ancestors and the spirits. We were told not to go over there out of respect for their tradition.

Showering wasn’t really high on our priority list because we were just hiking and knew we’d get just as dirty the next day. We weren’t sure, however, if not showering and walking around smelly would offend them, so we opted to be on the safe side and shower. Well, Patrick went first and it turned out the way you shower there is strip down to your underwear and then stand near the faucet in the middle of the village where everyone gets their water. We found it pretty hilarious because as Patrick was showering people kept coming and taking some water from the spigot. Well, the other three of us just filled up a bucket after that and went and had a bucket bath in the latrine so we could have a little privacy.

We had another great meal that night and after dinner we also got our first taste of lao-lao, the traditional rice whiskey which we’d heard a lot about. Well, it’s essentially moonshine but didn’t taste nearly as bad as I thought it would. It was quite strong, though, and had a kick to it. Khong poured everyone a drink and there’s a lot of ceremony around it such as toasting to the spirits, tapping the glass on the table and then downing it. Then you pour another glass for everyone, toast to friendship, tap it on the table and down it again. After that, you were free to have as much or as little as you wanted.

We went to bed pretty soon after dinner and woke up early to get started again. The previous night it had rained which was unheard of because it was the dry season. And some people don’t believe in climate change. We had a nice cup of lemongrass tea and then some more greens and fish with sticky rice. Needless to say, it was delicious. We set out for that day’s hike which was also very beautiful. At one point we hiked down a bit into a mini canyon to see a waterfall. The waterfall was pretty small and unimpressive and after a few minutes down there Khong said, “okay, let’s go back up!” Um, excuse me? It was an incredibly steep descent and we had assumed that we’d be continuing on by some other route and that the measly waterfall was just on the route, not an attraction in itself. Not the case. We had to walk back out the way we came. Well, we decided to have lunch at the waterfall and then continue on afterwards.

That night, we stayed in an Akha town that was built along a river and the scenery was stunning. Little mountains popping up everywhere and the town was built up against a very steep mountain. We all took “showers” in the river which was cold but surprisingly refreshing. After this, we walked around the village a little bit which, to our surprise, had a couple pool tables. Due to language barriers we weren’t able to tell any of the villagers that we wanted to play so we just settled down and had a BeerLao instead, the national beer of Laos. Later, we went back to the house and just lounged around for a little while playing some cards and relaxing.

That night’s dinner was very similar to the previous night’s except there was one more dish that was a bit unsettling. Throughout the day, Khong and Chang had been picking these orchids that were along the paths and it turned out that they made a dish with those that was incredibly bitter. The taste wasn’t bad, mind you, but it wasn’t something you wanted to eat a lot of. During and after dinner we again had some more lao-lao and poor Chang had to go to sleep right after dinner because I think he had one glass too many. Khong, though, was having a fun time chatting with us and trying to learn our game of euchre.

The next day we had some leftovers from the night before and then headed out a little after 8. It had rained again the night before and had soaked some of the clothes we’d left out on the clothesline to air out. After about a half an hour it started to rain a little bit. Just a drizzle at first but then it started to pour. Khong put on a pancho and when he found out we didn’t have any rain jackets with us he cut down some big banana leaves for us to hold over our head. They actually worked out pretty well at first but then when it really started coming down we all pretty much just ditched them as we were thoroughly soaked. We put the few electronics we had on us in Khong’s bag under his pancho and just set out through the rain. It was a pretty miserable day of walking and we had to cross some streams and rivers at least a half a dozen times. By the end we had stopped even trying to walk on the stepping stones and just walked straight through the ice cold water. It’s not like we were going to be getting any wetter. A few times Khong tried to get us to stop for lunch but we were pretty cold and miserable so we decided to just push on. We arrived back at the main road in a Hmong village around noon, having done the estimated 7 hour hike in under 4.

A covered pickup was waiting for us and we changed our shirts to some dry-ish ones from our bags and hopped in for the freezing half-hour drive back to Luang Namtha. Once we arrived, we got a couple more rooms from our previous guesthouse and then ate our pre-prepared lunch with Khong, Chang, and the tour organizer. We ended up spending another day in Luang Namtha where we had our guesthouse do our laundry and tried to dry out a lot of our things. Patrick, Henry and I ended up leaving our shoes there as they were already in pretty poor condition and showed no signs of drying out. I ended up ditching the Paul Theroux book I’d bought in Chiang Mai a few days later because it also showed no signs of drying out and had even started getting a bit moldy.

The last day of the trek was pretty cold and miserable but we still had a great time overall and it was nice to get some physical activity after almost a month of very little exercise and too much Thai food. Have I mentioned yet that we were all noticing how much weight we’d but on in Thailand? Well, since the portions were so small there we were eating around 5 or 6 meals a day. We had become master sport eaters there and were well on our way to doing the same in Laos. The next couple places we went to proved to be a bit more difficult to find food at any hour of the day.