Trekking in the Nam Ha National Conservation Area

We spent the next couple of days on buses travelling to Luang NamTha, which is a small town very close to where Laos borders with Burma and China.  This was once the Golden Triangle, infamous for cultivating opium and illegal drug activity.   The plan was to trek into the National Park and stay in a village or two with the locals.  Eco-tourism plays an important part of the economy and they welcome intrepid foreigners to join them on strenuous hikes through dense forest, up and down hillsides, through rivers and eat local produce with the villagers.  The sun is very hot at this time of year, which does not make it any easier.

The journey took a day and half.  It was interesting to see this part of Laos, which receives relatively few foreign travellers.  The countryside is spectacular and our fellow passengers were great fun.  Sat next to me was a 19 year youth from Vietnam whose English amounted to my Vietnamese.  He shared peanuts and other snacks and called me Witnala, another variation on my surname!  I never discovered his name or found out what he was doing.  

We sometimes walked as the bus drove through the mud.  The precarious position of housing made me wonder how they managed to keep from slipping into the water.  I would not be happy staying the night in some of them!

We arrived at Oudamaxi as the sun was sinking behind the dust clouds in the west.

Next morning we caught the mini bus for the 5 or 6 hour journey to Lumag Nam Tha.

Luang NamTha is a busy market town with a very busy bus station.  We stayed at the Bus Station Hotel, which was ok, but felt a bit grimy for its $4US per night.  There were some decent cafes and restaurants and even the internet was available (this was 2006 remember).  At one cafe, a couple of Akha women enquired in hushed tones if we were ok for ganja.  

We have never found a need for this so we did not even have to think twice about the warning posters from the Laos PDR Central Committee for Drug Control sponsored by the United Nations Narcotics Board of Control.  Instead, we opted for some fun haggling over local crafts.  We took a version of a Laos massage, which is supposed to knead out the knots, sooth the stiffness and bend out the bumps that accumulate following a week of relatively uncomfortable travel on river boats.  It was excruciating but the hot sauna brought back the blood to the body parts strangled by the sadists posing as masseurs. A great way to spend an afternoon for only 3$US.  

On the way back to the hotel I decided to have my hair cut after spotting a small barber shop.  It was not the best hair cut I have had but at 5,000 kip (30 pence), it was certainly the cheapest.

Trekking is organised by the Tourist Office and we were lucky that a trip was departing next morning exactly to the area with the stop-overs we wanted to experience.  It is very unwise to venture into the park without a guide because maps are unreliable and the tracks are constantly changing.  It is easy for a foreigner to get lost in the dense undergrowth, reading 'missing persons presumed lost' posters testified the warnings.  It is also a sobering thought that American bombing raids between 1964 and 1973 left Laos the most bombed country in the world.  We were aware that there is still a lot of unexploded ordinance, probably not so much in this region, but you do not get a second chance if you step on a land mine!  Over 260 million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos during the war; that's 210 million tons more than the combined total of bombs dropped on Iraq in 1991, 1999 and 2006, or a plane load of bombs dropped every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.  Staggering!!!  (See www.legaciesofwar.org for more info)

We joined two other trekkers, Mark and Til, students from Bonn in Germany.  Our guide was Somphone and his young assistant was Mouaxeng (pronounced Mowasing).  After stopping at the market for fresh vegetables and sticky rice, we drove to a roadside village where the track up the hillside, through the rice fields and into the forest and beyond began.  It was baking hot in the noon day sun as the mad dogs and Englishmen zig zagged up the path.  

We were soon sweating, but thankfully, we had an early lunch and a leisurely break, which gave us the opportunity to get to know each other a little better. 

Onwards and mostly upwards, we trekked for about three hours before we reached the village Bam Sam Yard.  This is home to about 200 Hmong people and it did not take long to meet our hosts.