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Paddling down the Nam Ha River in the national park of the same name, our hearts dropped when our guides pulled their raft up to the shore. "Welcome to five star hotel!" they pronounced, and laughed at the looks on our faces. We had signed up for a 3 day, 2 night hike and kayak tour through the Nam Ha NPA where the second night was to be spent in a "jungle camp". After sweating our guts out through bamboo forest, jungle humidity and paddling our deflating, full-of-water kayak; we weren't quite prepared for just how "jungle" this campsite would be.
Let me paint you a word picture. A steep, muddy, slippery bank lead up to a small sandy clearing. Helpfully, this bank ensured you could not under any circumstance get to the campsite without wallowing through the mud like a pig. Once you get to the campsite, you are greeted by two rotting bamboo shelters and a staggering insect population. They say the population of insects on planet Earth vastly outnumbers humans: standing on that sandy embankment I could believe that statement. This place was the Tokyo of spiders, the New York of mosquitos, the Mumbai of itchy caterpillars. We were surrounded on all sides by dense, impenetrable jungle (not dissimilar to the gorilla domain we encountered in Bwindi, Uganda). Stands of bamboo, banana trees, stinging nettle, ferns, rattan, vines (the small creeping type as well as the Tarzan-swinging-through-the-jungle type). You name it, it was growing nearby. Sjane and I took stock and looked at each other and said the same thing: "Are you f***ing kidding me?". Sjane followed that up with, "I don't want to stay here tonight"... her aversion to snakes was already running full throttle.
Apparently the first port of call was re-roofing the shelter with new banana leaves, and one of our guides (Sai) invited us to help out with the job. Basically what we had to do was fight our way through the nearby jungle to find a healthy-looking banana tree with big leaves and chop it down. Then we'd use the leaves to cover the shelter and line the floor. Once I had the machete in my hand there was no stopping me. Do you know how much fun chopping s*** with a machete is? 100% pure joy! I swiped, slashed and chopped my way through a couple of trees and dragged the leaves back to camp (looking thoroughly chuffed with myself) before the others realised they were missing out on all the fun. Sjane needed a bit of coaxing and reassurance that the snakes were allergic to this area before getting involved, but once she did she was yelling "Timber!" like a regular lumberjack. In my overexcitement I accidentally felled a tree that dropped into dense foilage and we couldn't actually retrieve any of the leaves... Whoops. Not exactly sustainable eco-tourism. Oh well! It felt great regardless.
Aside from hacking down banana trees and swiping madly at the swarms of mosquitos (a.k.a. malaria / dengue devils), there wasn't really much to do but watch Tua (the other guide) in his dinner preparations. This ended up being one of the most impressive things I've seen this year. He prepared 6 different dishes having brought only one metal bowl for cooking equipment. This was the end of the road for our poor friend Ducky, but his contribution to dinner was appreciated. Tua collected his blood to make a duck-blood sauce (think blood, chillies, garlic, shallots, coriander in a bowl). Apparently this was only for men to eat, but I wasn't going near it no matter what the cultural expectations were. Ducky also supplied barbecued giblets (feet, wings, head cut in half and barbecued between two pieces of bamboo over a coal fire). We also had a spicy duck and rattan soup, tomato sauce and steamed green vegetables. All of these were cooked in a cylinder of bamboo over the fire. The larger wood is cut to lengths of about two feet, with one end open and the other closed by the bamboo segmentation. The ingredients were either brought with us or foraged from the surrounding area (rattan, vegetables, peppercorns etc.) and put into the bamboo cylinder to slowly cook over the fire. Sticky rice made an appearance as usual. To cook it, a bamboo leaf was rolled up and inserted into a smaller bamboo cylinder to line the edges. Rice and water goes in, and it's onto the fire with everything else. Sai says the trick is having the fire warm enough to cook the rice slowly without burning it. When it comes out you are left with a perfect roll of sticky rice lined with banana leaf, packaged like sushi and ready for service. Some large leaves are left hanging over the fire to wilt and make packages for tomorrow's lunch of scrambled eggs (fold up in a leaf and sit in coals; hope leaf doesnt split open) and eggplant stew. Two stalks from river weeds make chopsticks. A large cyclinder of bamboo split down the middle becomes two serving platters. Impressive stuff! A small cylinder of bamboo provides a shot glass for the compulsory two shots of Lao Lao (Laotian rice whisky), and the meal is complete.
All that's left to do now is break out the mosquito nets (finally!), and go to sleep to the sound of the river gurgling over the nearby rapids. Here the banana trees got their revenge: the tough, fibrous ridges that ran up the middle of each leaf provided some unnecessary pain as we tried to get comfortable lying on the surprisingly hard ground. Where did all that sand go?
All in all we survived one whole night in the Laotian jungle. Not everyone can say they've done that. Parts of it were fun but I'll admit, I probably wouldn't do it again. I like a good night's sleep too much, and all Sjane's hair would turn grey worrying about where all the snakes are hiding.
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Prue Prue Missing your updates Chica :) Ps. Super jealous of all the Thai food I know you are eating. Urghh YUM YUM! xx hahaha. Ps. I had to edit this message because 'off exploring' tells me it's spam. LOL!