(Daniel) Having spent yesterday setting up the vehicle for the drive to Luang Nam Tha today, Nii and I were ready to go at 7am this morning.  There was no hot water in the Bathroom, but I vaguely remember the guesthouse owners telling us about a power cut across the city today.  The Lady in charge of our guesthouse had actually alluded to some kind of underhand dealings in the government that had caused the power to be switched off for some reason.

We drove across to Mum’s hotel, hoping to get an early start.  Mum was sat outside when we arrived, but told us straight away that the Hotel were unable to process her credit card as the machine was down.  They had the option to phone the bank directly, but the person who knew what to do was not due in until 9am.  We resigned ourselves to having a slightly later departure and walked across the road for some breakfast, after all, this is Laos!  Over a breakfast of Eggs on toast, pastries and fruit juice, we discussed the possibilities in Muang Sing.  Mum was a little worried about trekking in the famous Golden Triangle, but I reminded her that these days were almost gone, the areas having now undergone several schemes to cease the production of Opium and with it the growth of the white poppies which I had seen everywhere on my last visit.  I explained that my ideal would be to find the guides who took me six years ago and arrange a private deal with them whereby we combined an off road trip into the jungles with a tree or four day trek to some of the more remote villages.  My intention being to find a village which has never been visited by a tourist or possibly a foreigner of any kind.

After breakfast we returned to the Hotel, where they had managed to get their act in gear, telephoning the bank and arranging payment from Mum’s card for the room.  We loaded her huge bag into the back and headed north for the road to Luang Nam Tha and the North of Laos.  

The road was beautiful starting out along a valley it eventually began to gain altitude climbing high into the mountains past villages of tribal settlements with huts built from bamboo and grass, animals roaming around the roads foraging for food.  Along the way we stopped to stock up on food and drinks, filling the ice box with Ice to keep everything cool and fresh.  As we drove through the mountainous areas and villages, I found myself reminiscing on how special my last trip to Laos had been, especially the crowning glory of the trekking in Muang Sing.  

After a few hours on the road everyone agreed that it was time to stop for a quick lunch, I pulled over at a shelter at the side of the road, built by the farm workers to take shelter from the heavy rains or midday sun whilst working in the remote fields.  Nii opened the trailer kitchen, putting some water on to boil while I chopped some vegetables to supplement the noodle soup that would be our lunch on the road.  While the water boiled we sat down to relax.  On first impression it appeared that we were all alone in the area, but voices that came across on the wind told us that this was not the case.  In the distance we spotted some children playing in the hills, and on closer observation workers bending down in the long grass planting or picking whatever crops were in season.

The noodles were ready in a few minutes, although the Tom Yam flavour instant noodles were possibly a bit spicy for Mum, she didn’t seem to mind too much as we ate the hot food, crunching cucumber to cool the burn from the spices and washing the whole lot down with ice cold drinks from the cool box.  Back on the road, I felt hot and sweaty, I needed a shower, but where would I find one here in the mountains?  As if by magic we suddenly passed a sign to a waterfall just a hundred meters off the road.  I slammed on the brakes, and we grabbed towels heading back to the path to the waterfall.

The fall was more of a trickle than a fall, but this was more than enough to shower in, as Nii and I changed into our shower clothes.  In Laos most people shower in the river or under shared water sources in the village.  Thus the majority of people shower in groups or in plain sight of the other people, and usually the road too.  Hence Laos people are used to showering in public, retaining their decency through the use of shorts and sarongs and in the case of women a special sarong that is sealed at the ends, creating a tube of material that can be held or tied in place to form a kind of wet tent around the user.  Having been on the road for a long time now, I have become quite proficient at using shorts and sarongs to shower in front of other people.  Whether in a river, waterfall or using the bucket from a water container as is the traditional style of South East Asia.

After our shower we returned to the vehicle, carrying on along winding hill roads that offered breathtaking views of the countryside and jungles.  The roads were far from ideal with sections of tarmac missing entirely, the tarmac sections that did exist were uneven and strewn with rocks or animals crossing, forcing the driver to concentrate hard to avoid accidentally hitting either obstacle.

Eventually the poor road conditions improved, indicating the close proximity of a major city, although when we arrived at Luang Nam Tha that was hardly the words which I would have used to describe the town.  It was pretty much as I remember it, a one street town with a few banks and restaurants lying in a row along a road that eventually leads to a small airport and past it to the Thai border a good 200kms away.  We found a guesthouse that allowed us to park the Wolf under their awning and close enough to the room for me to hear any one attempting to break in.

After checking in, showering and changing, we decided top go to a restaurant outside town called the Boathouse.  In the Lonely planet they named it as one of the top five restaurants in Laos, although, with the size of the country and minute scale of it towns and cities, I wondered just how much competition they had been up against?

We started out walking to the place, along the road huge loudspeakers played news and weather reports to the town at large, even outside of the heavily populated area.  We walked on down the road towards the airport but after 30 minutes the sun went down, leaving us walking in the dark,  Eventually Nii managed to flag down a tuc tuc who took is to the restaurant and agreed to pick us up again at 10.30pm. 

Inside, the restaurant was fairly basic, they had a good menu of traditional Laos and tribal cuisine, although my experiences of tribal food were that they ate anything they could get hold of and couldn’t be less interested in how it was prepared so long as it didn’t kill them!  We chose various selections of dishes meant to represent the cuisines of Thai Dam and Thai Lu peoples.  The food was interesting and the sticky rice beer that I tried went down extremely well tasting a bit like a Chimay blue label.

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