Luang Namtha

Early start to begin what ended up being a very unpleasant 4 hour "VIP Minivan" ride to Luang Namtha. As soon as we sat down and the driver turned on his engine a local child was sick and then the Mexican wave started behind us. For 4 whole hours the people behind us were sick. To add to the craziness the "VIP Minivan" then picked up any local off the street for a free ride. This was a 12 seater minivan with all 12 seats taken and 3 ladies sat on stools and rice sacks in between the seats oh and just for even more comedy value we later heard a duck! Let's just say it was an experience but we arrived on time (ish, which we now add on to all Laos timing) and we tried a strange new fruit called longan which was tasty!

Luang Namtha is very well know for its tribal villages and trekking, so we purposely decided to stay outside of the town in the hills so we didn't need transportation for trekking. We asked the owner, also an official trekking guide, whether there are any walks and he obviously said no you must have a guide,but there is a local village that we could wander to. As we were pretty shattered and queasy we decided to just wander to the village but us being us we quickly found a track and instead of having a short stroll ended up walking for 3 hours up a track which we later found out was an official track for guided tours. Wups...
We then turned back to chill out and have an early dinner of yummy beef laap and sweet and sour fish. Its interesting, everyone's perception of South East Asia is really hot, humid weather. I'm now really sick of being cold. If it was 8 degrees in England you'd be wearing layers and although I'm glad we bought the light weight coat we really need more, but are still in hope that this is just a phase! Everywhere we go we now ask for double duvets for a snuggly night.

The next morning we woke up and had a an amazing noodle soup and then moved to the town and rented bikes to see a temple and then to Nam Dee Waterfall. I'm not the most confident of bikers but I'm definitely getting more practise! This time mountain biking and it was a very very bumpy ride the whole way for about 6km. Pretty tired at the end we of course decided to carry on and do a 1 hour circular walk around the waterfall before cycling back before dark. We got back with plenty of time to spare... But I lost my phone! So we decided to take the treacherous journey back and attempt to find it. Of course this just made us both extremely tired, upset and we did not find the phone and jeez let's just say I had one sore ass! Although I was gutted I didn't want it to spoil our holiday so we decided to sign up for guided 2 day trek the next day.Read more