Having crashed early on Sunday night, we were up early on Monday morning. We set off to find a place for breakfast and stumbled upon a vibrant morning/vegetable market. Organized on a small street, people had set up their wares on straw mats on either side of the street. The variety and colors of the goods available was quite impressive. From the market we wandered a bit more eventually settling in at a cafe on the Mekong.
After a quick bite, we headed back to the guesthouse, where we were to be picked up for our trek. On the way back, we stopped at a small wicker shop that had small rattan balls that are popular for soccer. Though we didn't buy anything, the wrinkled old men behind the counter were extremely friendly. If we hadn't already booked the trek we certainly would have accepted their invitation to visit their village and drink "lao-lao" (homemade whiskey).
Catching a van at the guesthouse, we left Luang Prabang town and headed for the countryside. The scenery changed dramatically within a few kilometers: we were suddenly in the midst of lush green limestone hills. After a beautiful and winding drive of half an hour, we were dropped off in a village, where we were greeted by a group of smiling kids in the cab of a truck. A short walk through some tall grasses later and we ended up on the banks of a small but swift river, which we crossed via wooden longboat. Once on the other side, we started our ascent, first to a Hmong village and eventually to a Kmu village.
On the way, our guide pointed out unusual insects and a plant that you could use to blow bubbles. It worked even better than most bubble wands that you buy for that purpose (believe me, I liked bubbles as a kid). Despite the heat, and the climb, the scenery was beautiful. Everything was incredibly lush, save the plots of land that were being stripped and burned for farming.
Side note: throughout the trip it was weird to see deforestation in the context that we did. Usually, when I think deforestation, I think of the big and powerful logging companies or individuals, and not the farmers who are just trying to eke out a living. As tough as it was to see so much barren land, it was hard not to feel at least a bit of sympathy for the people who worked tirelessly to clear it just for the sake of self-sufficiency and without realizing the negative impact that it has.
Just before reaching the Hmong village, we stopped for a delicious lunch: fresh spring rolls, sticky rice, steamed fish wrapped in banana leaves, and a good mixture of things that tasted a bit like salsa which we ate with the sticky rice. The Hmong village was very small and quite poor though nestled in a beautiful area of the mountains. We stopped at a stand where they were selling handicrafts, bought a few things, and chatted with the villagers a bit through our guide.
Moving on toward the Kmu village, we spent quite a bit of time hiking through dense, damp bamboo forests. At several points, we had to walk through the mud on rods of bamboo and, of course, I had a misstep which covered half of my shoe in my mud. Though unfortunate, I was far luckier than Shanti, who slipped off a piece of bamboo and got her entire shoe stuck in the mud.
Shortly thereafter we got to the Kmu village, a fairly large village with about eighty stilted wood and thatch huts in an incredibly serene setting. After wandering around the village, playing with some cute kids, we crashed in our stilted wooden hut with mattresses on the floor, mosquito net around us. I woke up before Shanti, so I took a journal outside and half started to write an entry and half played with the kids around me: a young girl in particular, who was shy but enjoyed playing hide and seek, and a baby boy, who was pudgy and adorable, especially as he splashed around in his wash bin. He was incredibly content in my arms.
We had a decent dinner of sticky rice and vegetable soup (definitely too many veggies for my liking) and then things got a bit weird. Our guide got a big jug of lao-lao (whiskey) and started passing shots around with a handful of the village watching, not unlike one would drink rice wine in rural Cambodia. Nothing too unusual about that. But when young boys, who looked like they were six or seven, were lured to the table with candy and all but forced to drink some whiskey, it made Shanti and I quite uncomfortable. At first, we thought it might be a cultural thing, so we didn't say anything. As a second round of shots started to go around and as our guide was calling on these young boys to sing we had had enough. We told our guide that we didn't think the children should drink, but he didn't seem to pay attention. I grabbed the glass after he placed it in front of one of the boys, taking the shot myself (I feat I repeated a few times), before I tried to offer some to our guide. He just looked at me, smiled and said "No drink, no smoke." At that, Shanti and I went to bed, assuming (rightly so), that without us around, the party would end.
Back in bed we talked about how uncomfortable we both were, how terrible it was that alcohol that was probably paid for with our money was going to children, and what we could have done differently and what we could do the next day. After a long, frustrating conversation, we went to sleep.
The village in the morning was beautiful, as the sun rose over the limestone cliffs in the distance and piglets ran about. We had a quiet, beautiful, and uneventful two-hour hike to a river where we caught a longboat back to where we were dropped off the day before. Our captains were both cute, toothless, cigarette-smoking old men who guided us down the river for another hour and a half or so.
As we caught a van back to Luang Prabang, I confronted our guide about the night before, asking him why he "No drink, no smoke." We also tried to explain that the happenings had made us very uncomfortable but our efforts were fruitless, largely because of the guide's mediocre English. Unsure if our experience was typical, we thought it prudent to talk to the travel agency we booked through (assuming that if it was unusual, they would want to know).
Our experience there, however, was one of the most frustrating imaginable. As we recounted our experience to the person we booked through and another guy, we got blank stares. We explained that the event made us very uncomfortable, that we abhorred the fact that our money went to purchase alcohol for children, and that this was in no way the kind of tourism we wanted to support. The guy we were talking to could see absolutely nothing wrong with our trip, even defending the actions of the guide and explaining that this was "part of their program." If it was part of their program, who enjoyed it? Were people just too timid to speak up about it? Angry, frustrated, and understanding that we weren't going to get anywhere, we stormed off resolving to do the only things we could: tell Shanti's influential friend in Vientiane, Jacqui, what happened, and encourage all of our friends that go to Luang Prabang to spend a few extra dollars on going to a travel agency that focuses on eco-tourism or community development. Though the bulk of our trip was quite lovely, we certainly would have shelled out a bit more money to have avoided the experience of the night before.
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