9. Nov 6. Goodbye jungle. Hello Nam Ou River

We’re up early today.  A 6:00 am start to have breakfast and be on the water again to return to the starting point at Ban Son Koua.  I’m ready in two minutes because I’m already fully dressed having slept in my clothes.  We have a good breakfast consisting of rice cooked in banana leaves.  It’s a little sweet and there are cooked read beans mixed in with the rice.  It’s almost too hot to hold, but I unwrap the banana leaf and use a metal spoon to eat it.  We also have hard boiled eggs and some those delicious bananas.  And coffee.  It’s hot and dark and strong.  

As we prepare for our jungle walk, one of the villagers comes over with leech socks.  These are an oversized cloth knee high bootie that you wear in your hiking boots and go over your pant legs and tied below your knee.  It is to prevent leeches from crawling into your boot attaching onto your leg.  Instead, I tuck my pant legs into my socks and Judith says her pant legs are long enough for the trek.   We start off on our jungle walk and Sum Lee.  He shows us a variety of plants; many are used for medicinal purposes, such as curing malaria.  The thing I will remember most from the walk are the brown leeches.  They are on the ground and very adept at attaching to your shoe or flip flops that the village boat operators were wearing.  Every five minutes we stopped to do a leech check where we inspected our boots and the offenders were flipped off with a stick.  I did make the mistake of picking one off with my fingers, but I wasn’t able to flick it off.  They must have some sucker system on their many feet which allows them to stay onto a moving giant.  That leech was easily scraped off with a stick.  Judith had a guide behind her and she believes his only job was to look for leeches on her.  Fortunately these brown leeches aren’t the variety that falls from overhead plants.  That was the case the year we visited Borneo and a large wide brimmed hat was recommended apparel.  One of the villagers got leeched between his big toe and the next one.  There was a pretty good flow of blood as the leech injects an anti-coagulant to make it easier… It doesn’t hurt but can be messy.

My friend, the leech, looking for some skin.

We finished our walk without getting leeched to the best of our knowledge.  Breakfast is going to be served up soon so I wait at the table having a chat with Judith and Phonsy.  At some point during breakfast, Judith felt a bump on her shin under her pants and when she rolled up the pant leg out fell a little brown leech.  Normally they don’t fall out when they’re attached so maybe it hadn’t dug into her shin too much.  In any event both of us ended up being leeched on this trip.  

After breakfast, the village boat operators finish gathering up all the supplies, luggage and start loading the boats for the trip downriver back to the village.  We drift through the protected section on the off chance we see more wildlife.  An otter was pointed out to Judith and I but all we saw when we looked was rustling grass, so no official sighting.  After we finished going through the protected section, the engines were started and we motored back to the village.

Two travellers having a great experience through the protected section of the park.

At the village the river access was a hub of activity.  Lumber and grains were being loaded and off-loaded on a variety of boats.  The villagers were kind enough to clear their boats away from the dock so we could step off onto the shore without getting our feed muddy.  Then they moved over on the path to let us by including the two men carrying a heavy sack.  The bridge at the river was full of on-lookers checking out the action at the loading area.  It seemed most of the village had come out to watch the busy action there.  

Several boats were loading at the dock.  A large stack of lumber was being delivered up the river.  There was also bags of cement to be loaded.  

We organized ourselves for a picture taken by our driver, Noy, so he is not in the picture.

Phonsy, Victoria, Chun Pein, Pak, Alm, See Pung, Judith and Sum Lee (Park Guide).  

Judith’s comment on this picture was “One of These Things is not like the Others.” We do joke about how much she stands out in places like Laos.

We said good-bye and tipped the park crew.  They were excellent in every way.  Before we left, I filled out  a park wildlife monitoring form that identified the type and number of animals we saw on our night safari.  The village receives money based on the animal type and amount.  I didn’t do the math to see how much the village  would receive from the government but I did think this was a novel way to get them charged about the conservation efforts and the park program in general.  

We met Noy, our driver who had been looking after our large bags which we left with him to go on the park stay.  We all pile into the vehicle and leave the village.  It’s only about 10:00 am.  We’re headed for Nong Khiaw, a remote village on the banks of the Nam Ou river. (Actually Nam means river but everyone referred to it by adding River…)  Phonsy says we have a long drive ahead of because the road is bad and is very slow.  

We head off along a mountainous narrow road.  Many parts have been washed out and haven’t been repaired.  There’s potholes everywhere.  The road is still heavily used, so passing slower moving vehicles and motorbikes, and dodging oncoming motorcycles, vehicles and large trucks is required.  It’s difficult driving,  We are driving slowly, maybe 40 km per hour as a top speed and slowing to zero in other places.

I find out the distance to Nong Khaw is about 220 km, about the distance from Victoria BC to Courtney BC.  A large portion of the roads remind me of badly maintained logging roads.  Think of driving to Courtenay from Victoria at a maximum speed of 40km along a windy pitted logging road.  Here’s a sample of what the road was like in parts.

We made several pit stops along the way.  At the first bathroom break Judith notices some machinery across the street.   She goes and checks out a rice harvesting machine that cuts and picks up the rice stalks, separates the grains from the plant, drops the grains down into bags and spews the chaff out.  We see that it would be a vast improvement over the current manual methods, but most of the fields are to small to afford this type of equipment. 

A Kubota rice harvester.  The rice is dropped into the large green bags and the chaff comes out of the red chute.  

It was hard not to fall asleep on a 6 hour drive.  I know I dozed off a few times.  Sometimes when I was awake and Judith was not, I amused myself by taking selfies of us.   

I managed to capture a picture of a large truck coming towards us on a narrow section of a washed out road.  Noy pulled over and stopped at the road side.  Unfortunately the truck’s turn was too tight and he came within inches of hitting our vehicle.  Noy honked the horn to get the truck driver to stop and we backed down to another section of the road to let the truck pass.  It really was close.  

The truck that almost hit us.  

We made a stop to investigate a rice wine making operation.  The family run operation had many containers full of fermenting rice ready to go into the still and be condensed down to the alcoholic drink.  The fuel supply for the fire was dried corn husks.  We saw the alcohol dripping out of the still and into a bottle.  I declined to have any at the outset.  Judith smelled it and then decided against trying any out.  I don’t have any idea what the proof was but you could tell it was potent.  

Another stop was for the making of river weed snacks.  We saw women and children harvesting river weed (water green algae) on the Nam Et yesterday, now we could see the finished product.  Phonsy described that the river weed is cleaned and then spread thinly onto a sheet.  A stock is poured onto sheet to help flavour it.  Toppings are added and then the sheet is dried in the sun.  It reminded me of Japanese roasted seaweed snacks.   

Sheets of River Weed sheets are dried in the sun.  Phonsy purchased one sheet for $10,000 kip (.78 Canadian).  It’s rolled and placed in a bag..  

We stop for lunch (noodle soup) and Phonsy asks the owner if she would prepare the River Weed snack.  It needs to be cut and deep fried.   It arrives quickly and we discover a delicious new snack.  

This Kaipen has a topping of sesame seeds and slivers of garlic and is crispy and salty.  I think the salt is in the stock base that’s poured over the river weed and before it is dried.  

The last stop was to take a picture of a valley scene.  It was late in the day and there was a lovely warm light over a valley.  I was on the driver side and I nearly doored a motorcycle passing by at the wrong time.  I won’t do that again. 

Peaks and Valleys.  

We finally arrive at Nong Khiaw at 5:30.  It’s been a long day of tense driving for Noy and I think he’ll look forward to a nice sleep.  We check into the Nong Kiau Riverside Hotel, the only hotel in the town.  Other accommodation in the town are guesthouses which have shared bathrooms.  We have a long walk to reach our cabin overlooking the river.  

Exterior of the cabin. 

The interior.  We notice that there is a king size bed instead of twins, but we’re tired and given the extra duvets we see piled up on the side bench, we thought we would figure out a way to make do.  We later discover that the bed already had two duvets so fortunately there would be no arguments about hogging the sheets.  

We have dinner at a local restaurant overlooking the river.   Judith has a fresh vegetable sandwich and I have fried rice and a mango fruit smoothie.  We call it a night because it’s tiring sitting in the back seat of a car for most of the day.