Nam Ngum Lake - twice in one week!

We (Nick, our friend Wes, and I) went to Nam Ngum last Sunday and yesterday (Saturday)- twice in one week. Which was pretty fun, as there are worse places to be than out on the lake when it's 90 degrees (F) outside.

On Sunday we stopped at a food market right before the bridge to get to the lake. It had a ton of live animals caged or tied down: frogs, lizards, ducks, chickens. There was even a snake, though that one was dead (Thank God). 

And we finally saw the prison island for the first time! Non-authorized boats aren't allowed near the islands, which house non-dangerous criminals like drug users and prostitutes (there is one island for women, one for men). The prisons sometimes make handicrafts, which are sold in little markets around the perimeter of the lake.

From last Sunday: renting the boat to take us to the beach cost 400,000kip ($50) for 4 hours. Great chance to take a nap.

On Saturday (yesterday) our boss organized a cool trip for the group to go out on the boat with an organized lunch. Lots and lots of food (which was good, because I sat with the biggest eaters of the group, so I was able to steal extra food from other parts of the table).

Leaving on the lake

I didn't take a lot of pictures (using my phone on the boat makes me nervous about dropping it overboard) but our office admin insisted that Nick and I take "Titanic pictures".

(at this point, I realized that there was a weird sepia filter on my camera, which had been there for weeks)

The guys drinking Beerlao. Lots and lots of Beerlao.

I also grabbed a bunch of packs of green mango for the boating trip. This is my favorite snack when we're doing outdoorsy things- the sweet tartness (plus the weird taste of the salt/sugar/chili dip) is awesome when you're drinking beer out in the sun all day.

Fun day with a fun group.

Animals in Laos

Oh my gosh, Laos is the hardest place for an animal-lover to live. 

First of all, there are tons- TONS- of street animals.  The concept of spaying/ neutering an animal is completely foreign to the Lao population. This results in a lot of the animals being killed, or a lot of animals that come out looking like this: (Starved, and with bodies haggard from having so many litters)

And on Monday, the hairdressing salon next door to the office had these two TINY, adorable kittens. 

When I went up to pet them, the black one snuggled against my ankle, and then I realized that its eyes were so infected it couldn't see.  When I asked (in what little Lao I know) what it's name was, the owners said it had no name, and asked if wanted to have it. (I can't, as (a) our apartment doesn't allow cats + has maid who would notice if I snuck one in, and (b) getting animals back into the States requires a ton of time and $). I sadly said no, but convinced Nick that we could take the cat to the vet, get it some shots/ medicine, and nurse it back to health before finding it a real owner... but by the time we went back to get it, the kittens were gone. I haven't seen them since, and I'm too scared to ask the owners of the salon what happened to them.

Lucky animals are sometimes "adopted" by restaurants, in that the restaurants don't actually care for the animals, but don't shoo them away when they beg from restaurant customers. So the animals (typically cats) snuggle up to you in hope that you will feed them. Which, of course, Nick and I do.

Last week it was particularly rough, as Nick and I were waiting at a stop sign and a scooter came up with a tiny cage holding a bunch of adolescent puppies, way too many to fit in a cage. Nick and I just looked at each other and new exactly where those animals were headed: to be killed for food. Before we came to Laos, we had thought that if we ever saw people caging dogs for food that we would intervene... but when you can't adopt the animals yourself, there are no animal rescue groups and already the city is overpopulated with street dogs, there isn't much you can do. 

European Food Festival

On Saturday the EU sponsored a 'European Food Festival' along the Mekong riverside. While it was an all-day event, it really didn't get busy till the live music started at 7pm 

I know this because we went twice :)

Nick and I grabbed some Stessen cider in the afternoon

Then, after dining with some work friends for dinner, all ten of us either tuk-tuked or scootered over there for some wine and dessert

Thank God for Vientiane's incredible restaurants. Also, the French community here is really active in planning things for the expat community- I love it!!

Bowling at Lao ITECC

The second bowling alley we've been to in Vientiane and it was more of the same:

1. No bowling shoes required

2. Awful bowling lanes which broke after 30-40% of the throws and had to be reset by a bowling employee

3. The sketchiest restrooms known to man

The lane we had didn't even register our bowls correctly- one broken sensor thought that the second pin was always hit on the first time. 

Also I did awful- the lane had a serious slant to the left that I just never adjusted to- I got less than 100 in all three games :/ 

Homesick

My desk faces one Lao developer's desk and every time I see his desktop background (which is a default background) I get homesick...

Hoiesay / Huay Xai / Way Sigh

Names of Lao towns are hard :( The bigger cities, like "Vientiane" or "Luang Prabang", are established enough to only have one name version in the Latin-alphabet, but this doesn't apply to smaller towns, including "Hoiesay"/ "Huay Xai" (pronounced "Way sigh"). 

This was the town where the Gibbon Experience is based, and it turns out, there's not much else going on. It had a simple hotel, the "Riverview Guesthouse", recommended by the Gibbon Experience reception, right next door.  The rooms were spartan but also cheap- Thursday night we had an "air-con" room for 130,000kip ($16), and Saturday night we had a fan room (no A/C availability) for 80,000kip ($10). 

Weird seating- there were airplane seats everywhere...

For lunch the first day (and dinner the last day, since it was so good) we found this random riverside restaurant called "Houiesay Sabai". Seriously the most delicious morning glory I've had in Laos, and the pineapple fried rice had an incredible flavor.

Walking around Houiesay, we saw some interesting signs.

One night we went to "Bar How?", mainly because it was right across the street, looked pretty, and was playing Regina Spektor. They had a ton of (super clean looking) flavored lao lao (rice whiskey). We did not partake.

We split some mango with sticky rice and coconut for dessert, and while we were eating this cat came up and cuddled. Really he just wanted some of the rice. (I obliged.)

Our last day in Houiesay we climbed the dragon staircase to the Buddhist temple.

The temple was one of the prettiest I've seen, but I think what made it so interesting was the monks who were there. In SE Asia many of the sons from poorer families are sent to monasteries to get an education, and this temple had a bunch of pre-teen and teenage monks hanging out and talking in the stairwell. They were really excited to ask us our names and where we were from, and were super friendly!

If you look at the top left, there's a cat peeking over the Buddhas. 

There was also the Daawe (spelling?) House near the temple, which was highly recommended by Trip Advisor for the restaurants and the homestay, and I got a small patterned tapestry made by some Hmong women.

Like I said- not much going on, tourism-wise, in the town of Houiesay. I'm still confused as to why there is a daily flight between Vientiane and Houiesay.

Gibbon Express

If you ever pick up a travel book to Laos, or research cool eco-tourism trips to do in this area, the name "Gibbon Experience" will tend to stand out. The program promises incredible zip-lines, beautiful deep-jungle trekking, nights in tree houses and encounters with gibbon monkeys, depending on the trip you choose. There are two 3-day, 2-night trips, the "Classic" and the "Waterfall", but since Nick and I only had two full days in Houiesay, we chose to do the 2-day, 1-night trip, the "Gibbon Express" (which guarantees great zip-lining, but warns that gibbon encounters are rare).

Most of the other people doing the Gibbon Experience, from what I could gather, were tourists or travelers taking months to travel through SE Asia, so many of them came by bus from Thailand, on the other side of the river. Having more of a time constraint, Nick and I flew to Houiesay from Vientiane on the daily flights Lao Airline operates ($240 R/T) on Thursday, and flew out Sunday. 

We checked in on Thursday, paid our (super expensive) fee of 1.4million kip ($180) per person, and spent the day in Houiesay.

On Friday we met at the Gibbon Experience office at 8:30am to meet the other people on our tour and to watch videos about the Gibbon Experience's history and the "Safety/ Zip-lining How To" instructions. This turned out to be very necessary, as the guide who accompanied us up the mountain spoke practically no English.

Nick and I have both been zip-lining before (Ecuador and Costa Rica, respectively) but it was nothing like this. Laos is a country with few safety standards, so the Gibbon Experience, in a nutshell, is this: you are given a harness (no helmet) and a guide who speaks no English, and you then spend two days flying from jungle-y mountaintop to mountaintop on zip-lines that are upwards of 700m in length and 200m above the ground. At 200m, I suppose, the helmet makes no difference, because if you fall from the zip-line, your chances of survival aren't all that great (especially when the nearest Western hospital is 5 + hrs by car).

To get to the mountains, we were driven an hour outside of Houiesay and then trekked another 2 hours.

Nick on the trekking portion, taking a break

The treks lead to a series of incredible awesome- and long- zip-lines, high above the treetops of the Bokeo Natural Reserve.

Above, Nick comes flying in.

What I look like when I take off ziplining :/ 

Haley and Emma, sisters from England, suffered minor zip-lining injuries. Luckily they were both in the medical field :) (doctor and midwife) (I felt a bit relieved when I heard we had a doctor with us)

Some of the areas we were zip-lining into were enormous bamboo groves.

There was one zip-line which caused particular confusion. Mind you, there are six of us on the trip, and only one guide (who always goes first on the ziplines).
Guide: "This one, all of you."
Me: "All of us?"
Other trekker: "Together?"
Guide: "All of you. Maybe... two."
Trekker 2: "Two at a time? Or all of us at once?"
Guide: "Yes."
Trekker 3: "Wait, yes, as in, two at once? Or all at once?"
Guide laughs a little bit, smiles, and zip-lines away. He's then 400+ m away from us and we have no idea what is going on.
Eventually, we all just went one at a time, trying to figure out how to communicate back if we're supposed to go one at a time, two at a time, or all at once. (It turns out we were SUPPOSED to go two at a time, which would have been cool, but we were trying to figure out the logistics of that and it just sounded so ill-fated.)

As part of the "Gibbon Experience", we spent the night in a treehouse 50m up a tree, surrounded by mountains and trees. 

Nick took this video zip-lining into that treehouse:

There are other places I've heard of (particularly in Washington State and BC, Canada) that have "luxury" treehouse getaways, but this one was simple and great. It had a kitchenette, very (VERY) basic bathroom, and enough room for 12 people, even though we were only 6.

The treehouse's kitchenette. 

Our bathroom had a shower (cold water only) and a squatty potty.

All the food was Lao; it was hot (prepared at the nearby village) and really good. They also served French fries, which Nick liked but I skipped.

They set us up in king sized beds with huge mosquito nets- thank GOD because the bugs were loud and annoying and I'm still terrified of getting dengue.

The rain started late at night and woke up the four girls in the treehouse (the two guys slept through it fine). Since the rooftop was metal, the rain was loud, and we were a bit concerned of lightning, but it let up by the morning. The fog, however, lasted till late morning.

(I didn't mind, because zip-lining through the fog was incredible)

Our treehouse was very close to what the guides claimed was the "biggest tree in Laos". It was covered in these massive pods- we never found out if they were seed pods or hives. (We were crossing our fingers that they were seed pods, but when we went to the bottom of the tree- which was six people around- we found a bunch of rotten honeycomb on the forest floor)

Arriving via zip-line into the bamboo grove

Taking off on ziplines

Even though the Gibbon Experience was expensive, incredibly brazen about safety standards, and a pain in the ass to get to, it was amazing, and I have no regrets about going. I understand why it's so popular in the travel books :) But definitely NOT for the faint of heart

**** UPDATE ****
After talking with a coworker about our respective weekends, he forwarded this list of Lonely Planets "Most Extraordinary Hotels". Check out which one is number 10!!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/19/travel/lonely-planet-top-hotels/