Time is going by so fast. I'm about to enter week 5 of my travels (in SE Asia and week six in all)and every day is a new and crazy adventure. Every day we are learning more and more about the Lao culture and we have been so lucky to see the country side as we go along.

The bus rides are always intertaining. We are going usually no more that 200 Kilometer and yet they take about 4 to 5 hours to get somewhere. The buses are anything but comfortable and AC is just a funny thought over here (some places have it but it's not worth the extra money to pay for it). Once you get on the bus you are usually bound for 4 or so hours (yes no stopping and if you know me, I have to pee all the time). The drives have been through the mountains on windy dirt roads that are practicaly washed out. It's hrad to catch a nap on these rides or even read a book, but luckly the scenery is amazing and the kids of the villages that we pass always come out running after the bus to say "Sa Ba Dee" (hello in Lao). Most of the time the bus driver plays really laod music that I'm assuming is in Lao, if not Thai. And after about an hour in the bus the music starts to blend together and sound the same (sometimes not to plesent after a 9 hours bus ride). And when they do play English speaking music is usually is one of the old boy bands. (good for a laugh!)

Sticky rice and veggies have become my main staple over here. With banana shakes and fresh mango and pineapple to snack on in the inbetween time. Getting food usually takes several hours, because unlike in America they have at most two cooks cooking away in the kitchens here. So our food comes out individually and usually by the time the last person gets their meal the first person is hungry again. Due to the French influence here we are lucky to bagets and creps, that has given us a little varity to our diet.

Barganing is always a task. They throw down one price and we start at the lowest price that we can, knowing that it is unreasonable, until we work our way to a cost that is good on both ends. But in the end we know that they are still taking advantage of us.

Laung Namtha, Lao

We just got done with a three day two night trek in the northern hills (or I guess you could argue that they are mountains) of Lao. As we started our trek we were all singing "In the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight." We lucked out that there were no lions, but rather tons of spiders (huge, about as big as my palm) and leeches. (We had a running count going of all the leeches that were on us (1 point for on the skin and 0.5 point for on the clothes). I lucked out with only having two but others had up to five.)

On our way to Laung Namtha (where we started our trek from) we met a boy from New Zealand and adopted him into our group. So the six of us signed up for a trek hoping that we would come across two more to bring down the price of the over all trek. Eight in all (5 Americans, 1 Kiwi, 1 English Lad and 1 Korean Kid) plus two guides (who were both Lao) and two cooks (2 people from the first tribe for the first night and 2 people from the second tribe for the second night)

We started our trek with exploring an indigenous tribe called Kahamu. And then headed off into the jungle (the mighty jungle). Along the way we learned about different herbs that the tribes use to make tea, and some fresh fruit, and we stopped and ate a lunch that was made from the Kahamu people under a bamboo hut. We had our fair share of rain along the way and we were slipping and sliding in the mud down the trail (I pretended that I was skiing). When we got to our first destination we couldn't (or I guess didn't want to) do much exploring because we were finally in dry clothes and didn't really care to get wet and muddy again. That night the guides, Pon and Jai, brought out a bottle of Lao Lao (the alcohol made from sticky rice) and a freshly made bamboo shot glass and we started drinking (for me though Lao Lao doesn't go down very smoothly and apparently my after face after drinking it is rather entertaining).

The second day of hiking was long, muddy and yet again rainy, but so enjoyable. We were all so amazed by everything that we saw and the guides kept mocking us along the way with our oohh's and aaww's. We ended the trek on the third day by having tea and lunch with the Akha tribe and their Chief. The chief brought out 3 bottles of Lao Lao and by the end of the lunch we were barley able to walk out of there (I think we had about 7 shots of Lao Lao and there was 12 of us to a bottle).

We were able to interact with the Akha tribe more, although they didn't speak much Lao (and it's not like we were suddenly fluent) and defiantly not English, but we bought necklaces and bracelets that they hand made and when we took pictures of the kids they were all fascinated by seeing themselves. I was pleased to see that there was a school in the village, even if it was a one room school house. But three of us went in on buying them books that were in Lao and in English.

More adventures still to come...

(PS I couldn't get the spell check to work, so sorry for all the spelling mistakes, oops)