The first week in October was China's National Day, the anniversary of the Liberation, or Communist takeover depending on your perspective. This year was especially noteworthy because it was the 60th anniversary. Most people have a few days off of work and school for this holiday, and I figured by skipping a few days of school, I could actually have 10 days off in a row. In recent years, shopping and travel have been heavily promoted as vacation activities here (to increase domestic consumption), and since Kunming is a nice place to go in China, it seemed like a good time to beat the rush and leave town.
But where to go? Going anyplace in the country was sure to be a transportation nightmare. I wasn't really in the mood to "plan" a trip and seriously considered staying home and studying (boring), but then in late September on a local website I saw a post from someone looking for a travel partner to South Asia. She was open about destination and even better, was a native Mandarin speaker. Mira and I met and decided to go to Laos, a country I didn't know much about and hadn't seriously considered visiting. It borders China, though, and it's easy to get a visa at the border, so it was the perfect choice for a no-plan trip. For the next week, we emailed back and forth about details. From some friends, Mira had heard of a place in Laos with treehouses called the GibbonExperience and as soon as I read about it on their website, I really wanted to go too. I also wanted to see Plain of Jars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_of_Jars) so we decided to try to see those two places to start, and then play it by ear.
We met for the second time at the bus stop and then headed downtown to take the night bus to the border. We bought tickets from the driver for the 7pm bus, and he said he would drop us at a crossroads a few miles across the border at a town that had a bus station and lots of transport to the town we were hoping to reach by the first night. He claimed we would be there by 10 am. This sounded rather fishy to me. In my brief research, I’d never heard of the crossroads town. It wasn’t even on the Google map I’d printed, so it seemed unlikely there was a bus station there. And, it seemed impossible to get that far in only 15 hours. I was skeptical, but Mira felt sure that the driver wouldn’t lie to us and so we paid a bit extra to be taken the extra distance. I should mention that Mira is 25 and had never been out of China.
The 7pm bus finally left at 8:30 and we were off. About 4 hours south of Kunming, the road started to get a little rough. There were long stretches of bumpiness interspersed with prolonged periods of violent jostling. The overnight bus is also known as the sleeper bus, since there are no seats, only bunk bed-type enclosures. Each one is perhaps 18 inches wide, and if I laid out flat my feet pressed against the bottom (remember, I’m short). Of course, I got no sleep.
We finally got to the Chinese side of the border at about 9 am. Mira decided she needed some more money before we crossed, so we headed back through town on foot to get to the only ATM. I mentioned several times that we should hurry because the bus might leave us, but she was sure they wouldn’t since the other people on the bus knew we’d be back. Of course, when we got back in sight of where we’d left the bus, it was nowhere to be seen. Mira was shocked. I wouldn’t have minded too much but our bags were on the bus. Fortunately the border was less than half a mile up the road and so I started running. Mira followed me and we caught the bus at the Chinese border.
It took awhile for the border police to unload all the bags and inspect them, but by 10am, we were heading to the Laos border. Since this was the second day of the Chinese holiday, the border was crawling with Chinese travelers. The Chinese are not known for forming lines, and so every window of the sleepy little Laos government building was overrun with disorderly mobs of people trying to get forms, trying to get visas, trying to get through. It was complete insanity. It took us 3 hours to get across. Reports that I’ve read say it typically takes maybe 30 minutes tops.
But, finally we were in Laos. Wow, what a difference. Laos is poor. Really poor. And very quiet compared to China. There aren’t too many cars, people don’t honk every 30 seconds, and there is very little development, at least in Northern Laos. The mountains are green and beautiful, but it’s easy to see that there isn’t much forest remaining, a few small patches here and there, but most of the trees have been cut down. It was a little depressing.
Finally at 3pm, we arrived at the crossroads. Of course, there was no bus station. I figured we could hitchhike since it was only about 20 miles to the town, but there were practically no cars. We stood around for about an hour and finally got a guy to drive us out there for more than we wanted to pay, but he wouldn’t budge. We didn’t really have any other options, so we piled into the truck and headed down the road.
We got to Louang Namtha about 5 pm. It’s a small town with seemingly more chickens than people. Tourism is just starting to discover this place, so it’s still laid back, friendly and cheap. We found a very nice guesthouse for $3 a night, spotlessly clean, very well decorated, very friendly (Zuela’s Guesthouse). After exploring for a while, we went to the night market to sample some food and watch the town.
The small outdoor market has an endless variety of food, tables of local women selling little piles of leaves and fruits and veggies and who knows what all stewed together in different spicy combinations with bags of sticky rice to go with it. No chopsticks. In Laos, you eat with your fingers. We got some food and sat down on some old wooden tables to relax and eat. We met a funny woman from Thailand and spent the rest of the night laughing with her over BeerLao, which is the local brew. I’m not a big beer drinker, but Laos beer is excellent and it was a perfect chaser to the spicy food. The local vendors came by repeatedly to try to get us to buy their handcrafted trinkets, and the multitude of terminally pregnant market dogs circled constantly looking for bones and scraps. We had to catch the early bus to the next town in the morning, so after a few hours, we said goodbye and headed back to the room and, at last, some sleep.
The next day, we got on the bus for Houay xia on the Mekong River. The bus was oldish, but not too bad. Every seat was full, but no livestock in the bus, and only a few people sitting on stools in the aisle. People were quiet, calm and orderly. The road was constructed within the past few years and is reportedly now one of the best roads in Laos. There are occasional washouts and bare rock patches, also some serious potholes, but basically a good road. It took about 4 hours to get to the town, and on the way we passed through many villages with bamboo huts on stilts and half naked children running on the side of the highway. All flat land was covered with rice paddies (Laotians eat 350 pounds of rice per person per year), so there was green everywhere, and still no real forest left on the mountains.
When we got to the town, we went to check in at the Gibbon Experience office first.
The trip is quite expensive, 160 Euros, or about $240 (at the time). I saw it as a contribution to maintaining forest habitat rather than paying for accommodations, and that’s basically what it turned out to be. While waiting in the office, we saw a group of Westerners returning from their stay in the forest, and I was really struck by how incredibly big Westerners are. How does this happen? I guess Corn Flakes really are fortified with 8 essential vitamins and iron. After paying, we found a nearby guesthouse to spend the night and then explored the town a bit.
The town is right on the Mekong, and since the other side of the river is Thailand, it’s a border town. Like most border towns, it’s not terribly charming. Many tourists pass through here, and that’s about the extent of it. Apparently the Chinese are planning a big gambling complex up the river, so the whole area is soon to change dramatically. Lots of jobs for locals, but since most of the population is Buddhist and very reserved and conservative, I’m not sure how well this is going to turn out. Not so well I suspect.
The next morning we piled into a truck with four others for the several hour trip to the base village. The first hour was on mostly paved road, and then we drove across a river to the next leg, all dirt and ruts as we headed into the mountains. It was more rural, more beautiful, and much poorer.
The village where we started our hike was full of naked children, chickens, turkeys, donkeys, waterbuffalo and locals who seemed pretty accustomed to truckloads of foreigners shuttling through their village. I’m not sure it that’s a good thing but I’m sure they can use the work since their lives seem pretty hard so it’s difficult to say.
The six of us headed out with our two local guides who spoke very little English and were really shepherds rather than guides. Besides Mira and me, there was a British couple who were decided eco-tourists, just off a trekking trip to Borneo and they seemed to talk about little else. The other two were a young Israeli couple who seemed pretty friendly and had decent English. The weather was hot, and even though I’d been sweating since I got to Laos, hiking made me sweat even more. The trail was pretty minimal in places, but there was so much to see, new plants and an endless variety of huge butterflies I several times mistook for birds. We hiked fast up and down the hills, since stopping invited mosquitoes, leeches and more sweat.
After an hour or so, we got to a hut, had some water and put on our harnesses. Soon, we came to our first zipline. I thought it would be slightly scary and exciting, but it wasn’t scary at all. The harness is just like a rock-climbing harness, and basically clips onto a little wheeled apparatus with a piece of tire for a brake. You fit the wheels over the line and jump off and then fly through the trees on a wire line. The forest below is so beautiful, and the cool wind is great, but it goes by so fast there isn’t time to be scared. I was almost never able to make it to the end of the line and so had to pull myself to the end every time. The heavier folks had no problem and always had to brake to avoid hitting the tree on the landing platform. There were many lines to cross, so it was hike/zip/hike/zip etc., for about 3 hours until we got to the first treehouse where we spent the night.
The treehouses can only be reached by ziplining because they are all high in the trees, maybe 50-80 feet up. They have water, which includes a shower and a Chinese-style toilet that opens onto the forest floor below (fertilizer), a stove to heat water, and mattresses on the floor with mosquito netting. Nothing fancy, but adequate and the view is spectacular. Local people brought rice and vegetables three times a day via ziplines. The food was pretty basic and bland and everyone was totally sick of rice by the third day. The coffee was great though, so I was happy.
That night was a full moon, and the forest was really beautiful in the moonlight. The forest was pretty quiet, but I heard what I’m pretty sure were gibbons most of the night. They have a throat pouch that inflates when they call so they make a really loud, really bizarre, mechanical sound. In the middle of the night, one started calling from the tree right next to ours. It went on for 20 minutes and it was really strange. I managed to record it, but unfortunately the recording is not very good.
The next day was pretty much the same as the first, hiking through the heat and leeches and mosquitos to the next treehouse. We stopped to swim at a waterfall with a swim hole and it felt so good to be wet and cool but as soon as I got out I started sweating again. I also discovered a leech that had eaten through my sock to enjoy a tasty meal on my foot. The anticoagulant they inject is really powerful. My foot bled freely for two hours and nothing I tried would stop the bleeding. No pain though.
The second treehouse was a little smaller than the first one, and there were also lots of ants and some alarmingly huge spiders. But, it was by a river and the sound of the water was very relaxing. No gibbons that night, and I actually fell asleep for awhile. I’d hoped to see lots of birds, but the mornings were always very misty and foggy and that’s when the birds were feeding in the trees, so although I heard a lot of birds, I saw almost none.
On the third day, after a big bowl of…rice…we hiked out of the forest, across a few rivers and past several tiny hill villages. We finally reached the base village and piled into the truck for the ride back. Mira and I had to ride in the back of the mini pickup, and since there wasn’t room to sit down, I stood up and held onto the back of the cab. This was actually the most exciting part of the trip, since we drove under a number of low-hanging trees and vines, so I really had to hang on and pay attention. It was a great view too, but after two hours, I was very sunburned and very exhausted. We stopped for a lunch of…rice…and then finally made it back to the town. We wasted no time in finding a room and getting out of the sun.
The next day, we took another bus back to Louang Namtha. I’d considered instead taking a boat down the Mekong to another town I’d heard about and then several long bus rides to get to Plain of Jars, but since that would mean two days on the river, and ultimately a more than 24-hour bus ride back to Kunming, I decided I was too tired. Next time. We relaxed in town and again went to the colorful night market and met some other travelers, and the next day Mira took the bus to Kunming. I decided to stay another day to see the surrounding area. For just over $1, I rented a very decent mountain bike for the day and went exploring. There are some Buddhist temples in the hills, and also some waterfalls and a number of villages.
The next day, I decided to take the bus back to China, and spend the night in Jinghong to see the botanical garden, then take the night bus back to Kunming. It took about 7 hours to get to Jinghong, and when I got off the bus, it was definitely not Laos anymore. It seemed even hotter and there was lots of noise, honking traffic, and the typical chaos of a booming Chinese city. I hiked through town in search of a guesthouse I’d read about, but I got there only to find it had been torn down to make way for yet another luxury high-rise. Although I could easily have found another place to stay, I decided right then to return to the bus station and get on the next bus to Kunming, a louder, more bustling city that is at least much cooler and more familiar. After a bumpy sleepless night on the sleeper bus, I got to Kunming about 6 am and after a few more local bus rides, I was home and happily rediscovered the inexpressible pleasure of not being bitten by insects. The next day, I was back in school.
To see pictures, you can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/melindacorrell. I can upload pictures, but the site is blocked, so I can’t see or modify the layout. I also can’t get to my blog anymore. I’d hoped that after the 60th anniversary celebration, the government would lighten up a little and loosen the restrictions, but instead, they’ve added features to the firewall so that proxy servers no longer work and even VPNs have trouble. And, more sites are blocked. It’s a little spooky. So, this is the last post. If you want to receive updates by email, send me an email and I’ll put you on the list. Otherwise, thanks for reading!
