Muang Ngoy

OK, I'm still on less than one hours sleep but we'll give this a shot. We left Luang Prabang after new years and took a bus (5 hour tuk tuk really!) north to a town called Na Khon where we boarded a boat for the hour long trip upriver to Muang Ngoy. The town itself can only be reached by river or a couple of day trekking through the jungle. it it a small village with about 80 families, no electricity except generators at night, no net etc. There was 9 of us when we finally reached the town, Daniel & Alex who have been traveling with us since before Hanoi & then 3 others (1 Mexican, 1 american & 1 dutch girl with a Bristol accent) who we picked up in Luang Prabang. On the boat we also met a middle aged chap called Alan who was traveling Laos by himself for 3 weeks before meeting up with his daughter. So that was our group!







We all went for dinner the first night and with no electricity pretty much everyone was in bed by 10:30pm! The next day we rented some tubes & went on a trip up river to an even more remote village. The new year was still in full swing here as the locals invited us into their huts for singing and some lao lao, which is home brewed rice wine they all drink. 50% alcohol and burns the stomach, we all politely had one shot then tried to avoid having any more! The rest of the day was spent floating down the river, we had met two other Irish people who had some great stories to exchange on the lazy 3 hour drift. It was pretty much the same story with bed that night, all tucked up at 11pm. The roasters had no problem waking us at 4:30am every morning so going to bed early became important. Teh kid in the picture below was our landlords son, 3 years old and he knew how to ask my name in English. I spent about 40 minutes playing with him and his brother, probably the best time I had in the village. Great kids!





The third and last day we spent trekking to some caves about 5k away, I don't really have any pictures as my battery was dead for most of the time we were at the village. Hopefully Colm & Alan can provide some in the future. The caves were pretty deep and connected by a river, I had to admit I chickened out to a certain extent as I didn't want to explore too far in with the touches we had. No fun getting stuck in there! On the way out we met a German couple who had swam up one side of the cave, he had pretty much the same touch as me and it was not water proof! If his head had dropped below the water it was bye bye light! Brave or stupid I dunno.

So that was our Muang Ngoy experience, we have since spent the time traveling from there to the 4 thousand islands in the very south of Laos. Yesterday was a long day, 1 hour boat, 5 hour tuk tuk and 12 hour bus. We have a 12 hour lay over in the capital Vientiane and then its onto another bus for 13 hours. In fact I better get heading to that so I'll leave you all with some pictures I took of a fire in the city today. Was pretty crazy, the locals all joined in fighting it to try and save their own shops. The heat from it was so bad other locals were spraying water on everyone within 25 feet and I saw on car had its side melted!