Floating Away in Laos

11-19-09 We met up with our guide Seng and took a sawngthaew to Ban Khoun Kham from where we hiked up to a nice waterfall called tat namsanam for a very, very cold swim in phu hin bun national park. Saw some elephant poo, but no elephants.

The next morning we drove to the river to set off on our kayak trip. The river was initially a bit too low, but as we sat there getting the stuff ready, the river started rising pretty quickly. This is b/c the chinese own a dam up above and begin releasing more water in the morning. The chinese are heavily invested in laos. laos doesn't have enough money to construch huge projects like dams, but china will build it for them, bring the electricity to china and then sell it for 3 times as much. Pretty crazy. But hydropower dams are being built all over laos. We kayaked all day, going through small villages, past lots of water buffaloes, and people just hanging out by the river bank. Towards the end of the day we reached phu hin bun (we were kayaking on the nam hin bun river) which was more jungle clad and had lots of big karst mountains around making the scenery quite stunning. When we reached the national park we just put the kayaks together and floated. Less than 1km from our final destination we came upon a large fallen tree in the water that we didn't see until the last minute. Conrad and Whitney's kayak was on the outside so they narrowly escaped, but Seng and I had to wait for them to get out of the way. We were able to duck the first branch but were flipped by a small branch sticking up. I was able to grab almost everything from the kayak except for our fish and meat for the night which quickly sunk. Shortly after we arrived at the village. It was a cool little village only accessible by foot or river float. Obviously no electricity or anything like that. The thing that we thought was the funniest and most interesting was how many farm animals were just running through the villages, and especially babies. It was bookoo babies: pigs, chickens, cows, waterbuffalo, dogs, cats, ducks, and humans! Babies everywhere. It was really windy and quite cold, so we huddled by a fire before curling up on blankets to sleep on the deck of the village leaders house. And by deck I mean open aired living/cooking/etc space.

Our 3rd day we kayaked most of the day to another similar village. From here though we dropped off our stuff, crossed the big river and then hiked a bit to a cave, or more like tunnel cave. It had a little stream running through it. We walked through the cave, partway in water, for 2 km's to reach the other side. The other side was a completely isolated valley surrounded on all sides by huge, towering, sharp, and completely vertical karsts. So the only way into the valley was by the tunnel. And guess what? There were some ancient angkor wat era ruins being strangled out by the jungle. AND a villege of about 6 to 8 houses. Complete with...yes, babies of all types. The cows and waterbuffalo and pigs and logs for the houses, and everything had to be carried through the cave and then the couple more kilometers through the dense jungle to the village. Pretty crazy. At that point we were feeling quite remote. Here we were in Laos, a country already quite remote with our kayaks parked at a village only accessible by two day boat ride or a very long walk, and on top of that in some hidden valley only accessible by a dark, watery 2km long cave. Of course the locals used torches to see in the cave. The village, which is in the national park had a porcupine caged up (which would shoot quills at you if you got too close apparently). This was sad to see considering it was a national park. That night was even colder and windier (conrad later referred to it as a gusthouse as opposed to the traditional guesthouse)than before, so we went to bed early and had to spoon to stay warm.

On the 4th day (Whitney's Laos Birthday!) we were to take a longtail boat 4 hours down the river to a small town that busses went through. It ended up taking quite a bit longer b/c of a cultural experience we were given...a very expensive one. Halfway down on our trip, we stopped along the river bank to pee. The dry bag with our cameras (and memory cards) was left on a little fence. We remembered we had left it about 5 mintues later. The boat had quite a small motor and had to go upstream, so 15 minutes after that we arrived at the bag had been left at. It was gone! Considering the remoteness of the village, it was quite obvious it couldn't be far. There had been one man with a little baby in a boat right there when we peed and figured he had picked it up. There were also some boys loading rice on that side of the river that may have possibly gotten it. We asked them (through Seng's interpretation) and they didn't have it, nor had they seen anyone other than the man. So we went to the other side of the river where the village was to ask if someone had picked it up. Now you have to realize we're really freaking out b/c not only are our cameras quite expensive, but also all our priceless pictures were there too. But I just knew it had to be there or in the area. But, in typical laos fashion (the full name of Laos is Lao PDR for people democratic republic or in other words lao people don't rush) seng was so frustratingly slow at asking people if they had it or had seen it. It seemed like he was just sitting and shooting the breeze and hardly trying. The man with the baby was nowhere to be found, and some people said he had gone out to tend his buffalo. This seemed a bit suspicious considering lao people don't rush and it was hard to beleive that in 15 minutes, during lunchtime no less, he would have crossed the river, put the baby away and gone rushing out to his buffalo. The village wasn't very large and we had soon asked everybody with no luck. Buffalo man's wife came home from the fields and she looked in their house and couldn't find it. We were really freaking out now, thinking the longer we waited, the less chance of getting it back we had. We sent conrad down stream with the boat driver just in case it had accidently fallen into the river and was going downstream. Whitney and I feared the buffalo man had taken it, run off towards a town to try and sell it. The nearest town with a road was 8 km away. I was ready to go try and track down buffalo man, but strangely, no one in the village knew where his heard was or where he might have gone. It was decided that whitney would stay at the village in case it showed up there and I would take a tractor towards town to try and hedge him off before he could sell the cameras if that was the case. Deep down inside I didn't think that would happen b/c first I had faith in just little village people that they would just be kind and also knew that used cameras don't fetch a whole lot in the laos markets. But before I left, we decided to put out a reward to anyone that could find the dry bag. We did this b/c the entire village was just sitting there watching us, doing nothing, but just watching the poor white people fret, and we hoped that by offering a reward, they would jump up (especially the kids) and try and find it. We asked Seng, and he said to offer 50 bucks (the equivalent of 10,000 dollars to us if you consider their average wage). Still no one really moved. A few minutes later, on the monks' loudspeaker, we heard them announce something in laos. I asked seng what they said and he said they had just talked about the reward. As soon as seng finished answering the question who do you think walked right into the village? Buffalo man with a huge smile on his face. As soon as I realized he had it, I gave him and whitney a big hug. He took us to his little grain barn and burried in the grain was the dry bag. Hmmm... Mighty suspicious if you ask me. It's hard to know if it was coincidence or not, but buffalo man seemed to appear out of the bushes at quite the right opportunity to receive the reward. So now we were in a bit of a sticky situation b/c we had offered 50 bucks to whoever found the bag, and he hadn't exactly found the bag as it had been with him the whole time. We were giving out the reward more to someone already there to go out and find it. Of course we had promised the reward, so we would honor it, but we really hated paying this guy so much money in front of all those people, especially the kids b/c what lesson did it teach them? Grab a white man's stuff and get lots and lots of money in reward! But we had no option really. We had hoped the guy would say no to the reward (as I feel any one of our neighbors would do if we offered up a reward for a lost cat or something), but he definitely wasn't going to do that, which made his whole thing even more suspicious. In the end we couldn't really be sure as to if he had just picked it up and would have given it to us or if he was waiting for a reward or how deep the whole thing went. Maybe all the villagers were involved. Even seng could have been involved. Who's to know, especially when all the conversation was in Laos. What I would have given to know laos then! But in the end we were thankful as we had retrieved everything. B/c of that fiasco and Seng being picky about what bus we took We didn't arrive into vientiane (the capital of laos) until around 1am. We were originally supposed to be in around 6 to catch the 8pm night bus to vang vieng. But while waiting for the bus to vientiane we had some beers to celebrate whitney's laos birthday.
So we spent a short night in vientiane before catching the early bus to vang vieng