One of the most striking things about travelling in
Laos was it’s wild, untamed beauty. There was a certain rawness about it that
suggested that this is the way that things had been for thousands of years and
there was no real hurry or need to change it.
Exploring this untouched terrain was refreshing in a
way that at first I couldn’t pinpoint but on thinking about it realised that it
was the very essence of this ‘rawness’ that made it so….exciting.
In England we are so used to being nannied and
molicoddled: “Mind the Step”, “Hold onto
the handrail” etc that we have forgotten to use our brains so that when
presented with a route that isn’t signposted every step of the way, we dither
and question, forgetting that there is usually clearly only one way to go!
Without signposts or ‘helpful hints’ cluttering up the
scenery, I found I suddenly became more aware of the surrounding landscape and
terrain. It was eye-opening and it meant that a simple walk could turn into a
scree scramble up a less-travelled path and into the mouth of cave, where it's impossible to even see a hand right in front of you, unless you had had the foresight to bring a torch….or their was an enterprising
local lad ready to lend you his torch if you would help him fund his studies!
Our unstructured travels, with a very unreliable local
map(!) brought us more fun and engagement than more of the better planned trips
as they smacked of adventure and discovery – on a well-travalled trail this is
very hard to find! And nothing beats finding a little lagoon at the end of a
long bike ride, which is just begging you to jump in!
Where else but Laos could a lazy river be turned into
an adult water park, where you are happily cajoled into downing a bucket of Laos
Whiskey before being propelled across a make-shift pulley system of fraying
ropes and death-defying heights before being flung into the river below? - no
health and safety manual here! The danger is real, but then again so is the
excitement! The manufactured predictable thrill of the Lightwater Valley
rollercoaster seems just that, whilst who knows the outcome of an unceromonious
face dive in the nam song!
Another jaunt, in Nong Kiaw, took us on a virgin trek
up a waterfall. Yes, that’s right, not to
a waterfall but up it! It won’t
surprise you to know that waterfalls in Laos are the same as waterfalls
anywhere in the world, that’s to say that they are wet and the stones up them
are slippy, not to mention they can suck the flip flops clean off your feet.
But why would we let something as trivial as that get in the way of something
so enticingly called “the 100 waterfalls trek”? As it turns out, a little bit of care and
attention meant that we eluded being washed off down stream and we got to see a
waterfall as it had never been seen before, however what we weren’t prepared
for were the leeches sucking our ankles dry or the big snake doing his rounds of
the surrounding jungle. This was a newly cleared route and as such nature was
as it uncensored best! Not many travellers had yet done this route and let’s
face it, that’s what every traveller wants to hear! We have all had fantasies
about “The Beach!”
Laos has a spectacular array of waterfalls all across
the country and another self-imposed mission saw us trekking up 100m steep
incline, with the promise of seeing the waterfall from a birds eye perspective
and a secluded lagoon where mutli-coloured butterflies were your only company.
We reached the top, sweaty and looking forward to the panoramic payback but…nothing!
Aforementioned lack of signage meant that the trail went cold and we had no
option but to skulk back down, telling everyone on the way not to bother as
there wasn’t anything to see! But this game of hide and seek wasn’t over and we had another attempt to reach the promised land of the butterflies! This
time instead of seeing an impassable knee-deep walk over the top of a 100m
waterfall without any real barrier to stop a sharp tumble turning into deadly
plunge, we saw, what I would now call a ‘Laoation path!’ We were getting better
at this!
We scrambled
down, now satisfied, and to celebrate we jumped off the final waterfall at the
end. A 2m drop, but it feels a hell of a lot higher when you are stood at the
top! In your head, you know that the pounding of the waterfall has created a
large groove into the rock underneath, but you can never be 100% certain…
Our final frontier was the under water cave. Now, I am
not claustrophobic in the true sense of the word, but I am just not fond of
small, dark spaces, (who is?!) but when you are in a country where there is as
much adventure on the inside of the mountains, as on the outside, then I think
you just have to take a look!
We had entered the caves on foot before but this time
we had to strip off and sit in a big rubber ring in the water and pull
ourselves into the mouth of a small opening in the over-arching cave. Once
inside, there was a series of small tunnels, a sandy opening to which was so
small that we had to lie flat on our bellies and develop a sort of half-wriggling,
half-scuttling motion in order to negotiate our way round. Add to this that it
was pitch black and the only light we had was from a beam from our headlamps…and
mine wasn’t working! Was this fun? Yes! It most definitely was. I had a new
found appreciation of what fun moles
must get up to!
Off the beaten track, rough and ready – whatever you
want to call it, Laos had it in spades! And we loved every exciting, thrilling,
‘dangerous’ minute of it!
