Nong Kiau and Muang Ngoi

After the hustle & bustle of Vientiane and Vang Vieng, we decided to stay put in L.P. for a while to recharge the batteries although we did take a two day trip up into the Hmong neck of the woods to a town called Nong Kiau on the Nam Ou river (one of the major tributaries to the Mekong) about 4-5 hours (120 Kms) from Luang Prabang.  For some reason Google Maps calls the place (Nong Kiau) Hat Sao so I put that into the location tag but everyone calls the place Nong Kiau.  Anyway, we made like the Clampetts and packed up our stuff and moved to Nong Kiau (actually left most of our gear at our old Guesthouse in Luang Prabang and took our day packs).

On the trip up, we took a local minivan and had a good ride up with about 8 other backbackers from all over the world.  We had a bit of a fight with the driver and the bus company as they wanted to shove another 2 people into the van (to make it 15) but we quickly banded together as a ground and said..  12 seats and 12 seat belts... 12 passengers - no more.  Then the rest of the minivans had similar mutinies so they had to get one more minivan to carry the overflow (and left one poor guy standing at the bus stop wondering how the hell to get to to Nong Kiau - there was another trip scheduled for another hour later so we didn't feel too badly for him - especially as he showed up late from his hotel).  We've discovered that these minivans are the backpackers way around the country and we enjoyed the experience of getting 9 of us into a tuk-tuk as it raced from one hotel to the next picking up folks to drop us off at the minivan where they'd pile all the packs on the roof and then try to jam as many people in as possible - til they ran into Cameron Ahab...  :-)

It was a pretty drive up to Nong Kiau on fairly good roads and our driver was driving quickly to make up for lost time so we arrived at the bus station in Nong Kiau about 2kms from town in good time (4 hours for 120kms).  Then a bunch of us piled into an even more beat up minivan taxi for the short ride into town across the bridge.  We hadn't had a place booked and nicely enough were dropped off right at our eventual location on the other side of the bridge.

Nong Kiau (the north east side) from the southwest side

Our new home

 We spent the night in our new guesthouse which was fine although surprisingly cold!  The beds came with 3" thick duvet comforters and they were needed!  The days were also much hotter than in Luang Prabang.  Never did figure out the reason.  I suspect it was to do with an inversion in the mountain valley we were in.  Didn't have to worry about the mossies though!

The next am, we took a boat up the river to see Muang Ngoi which we'd been told was one of the prettiest river trips in Laos.

Das Boat...  love the chair he's on.  Ours were seats from a car... complete with the ability to recline (although you were taking a chance if you did as they were held to the floor with wire and rusty bolts!)

Albino Water Buffalo... we saw lots of these in Laos... along with 4 horned versions (two on either side right behind one another).  I suspect there is some serious inbreeding going on here... da daling, ding, ding, ding, ding...ding.

We also got to do some light class 2 whitewater in Das Boat but it isn't so exciting when you simply power through  it -  although on the way down, we did manage to get a good rate of knots going with the current!

Pulling into Muang Noi... that red one is like the one we're on.

Wild Boar now... didn't seem too shy either.  Barely looked up at us.

The ever present smog haze... (and stupid camera spots!)

Local fishermen.  We saw one of the catch... it had to be 3.5 feet long and looked like a cross between a catfish and an eel except it was very wide.  I suspect they are what the menu calls Mekong Fish.  I googled it and the closest thing I saw was the Giant Mekong Catfish which has been recorded to grow to over 9' long and 646 lbs!  I'm not telling Shawn that these things live in the Mekong or we'll never get him to within 20 miles of it.  I don't think it was that particular fish though because it has a regular tail whereas the one we saw had a tail more like an eel.  It still looked like it would feed 50 people though!

Catching shrimp

It gets clearer the closer you get (except for those damn spots)

The forest grows right down to the river... although you can see that they are deforesting the place at a terrific rate (they burn it for firewood)

Main Street in Muang Ngoi

But they have a great temple!

See what I mean?

The boat from Luang Prabang up to Nong Kiau.  This is the same as what we'd chartered.  They move along pretty well but bank alarmingly in sharp turns!

It was a beautiful trip

Swimming au natural

Adds to the fun

They spend their lives on the river

Home, sweet home back in Nong Kiau.  Nope it wasn't raining... that's just the smog again.

Looking back up the river from the bridge in Nong Kiau towards Muang Ngoi (30 kms up the river)

From our balcony

We didn't have as much time here as we'd have liked.  Jen would have really liked to have spent a night in Muang Ngoi but we only really had an hour or so (after the 1.5 hour trip up and back).  We had originally showed up to take the 9:30am boat up planning on taking the 2pm boat back but found out they don't run the 2pm boat anymore so were left with chartering our own boat up to Muang Ngoi so we could get back for the room we'd already booked in Nong Kiau.  They had a hike up the mountain to some cave but we didn't have time (which really got under Jen's skin as she loves to climb mountains!).  The kids and I were happy enough to stroll the street of Muang Ngoi and grab some lunch.  We compromised and walked about half way to the caves and back.

Then it was back into the boat for the trip back down the river to our bungalow on stilts at Nong Kiau.  Our "captain" asked us if we minded carrying a local man back to Nong Kiau on our charter and of course we didn't refuse.  It turned out to be a good thing as he was a local that worked with a Canadian to setup a local school.  His English was quite good and we (more specifically Jen) got some good local colour from him.

After that, it was time for dinner so we marched back to a nice little restaurant we'd found the night before on the other side of the bridge (place was filled with unexploded - but dearmed) bombs and communist flags, etc.  They played Forest Gump while we had dinner and we met some interesting characters.  Unforunately the place decided to close that night (after advertising the daily movies that morning) so back across the bridge we went and had dinner at a place across the road and watched the stars.  We had a very good view of the 1/4 waxing moon and Jupiter and Venus all in a nice line on the ecliptic.  Uranus was there as well but it was so smoggy that we couldn't see it.  (The PlayBook has a great astronomy app where you just point it at the sky and it tells you what you are seeing - yes, I know the iPad had it first... but the PlayBook is small enough to carry around with you when you actually want to be out looking at stuff!)

The next am, we decided to try the local bus again to go back as we'd seen a boat heading from Muang Ngoi and they didn't have nice seats but low wooden benches with no backs and we couldn't imagine being cramped in with our knees up around our ears for 6-7 hours with 20 other backbackers.  When we showed up at the bus station, it turned out that our minibus was going to be a big local bus and they managed to fill that to the brim too (we still didn't let them put any more people than seats in it).  This trip was a bit of a disaster however as the top two gears on the bus seem to have been broken so we never got out of second and had to stop half way to fix a flat tire.  This turned it into a 5.5 hour ride and we were all wishing for the boat as you could walk up some of the hills faster than we were going!

Evidence of the inversion

That's mostly smoke from the wood fires

Our bus from hell.

Back at the bus station in Luang Prabang, we piled into a tuk-tuk with some other backbackers and headed off to our new guesthouse (we'd found a more rustic place at half the price). More later.