Lynched by Lao Leeches

9/28/2006

Today was the first of 2 days trekking in Luang Nam Tha, which is the town in northern Laos that we arrived in yesterday. We split up into 3 groups, and my group was going to a small village called Ban Nalan where an ethnic minority called the Khmu people live. The first part of the trek was uphill, which was making me breathe pretty hard since we haven't done much active stuff. I got used to it though, and then we learned that there were other things to worry about, leeches. The leeches in Laos live on land rather than the more common aquatic species in the US. They look a lot like inchworms, which some people had mistaken them for yesterday. The leeches would try to stick to your shoes, climb up to your legs or towards your shoes, and try to suck your blood. I tried to flick off as many leeches from my shoes as I could, but I found out at lunch that I missed one that had gotten my middle toe. They really weren't that bad, however.

We had two guides named Xay and Tong. They spoke pretty good English, and they frequently stopped to pick up different fruits and nuts that we could eat. It was amazing how much they knew about the plants and trees and their practical uses, such as using one type of tree leaf as an antidiarrheal medication. Fortunately, I had no use for that. Another interesting thing we learned was how to eat Lao style. The guides had packed a traditional Lao meal that we stopped to eat along the way (see left). Basically they put out several banana leaves on which they placed the food. We had bamboo shoots with meat, chili paste (called jeow), eggs, bananas, and sticky rice (the Lao staple food). The Lao use their hands to eat by grabbing some sticky rice, forming it into a ball, and then grasping some other dish to eat with the rice. It was very tasty and fun.

After a few more hours of trekking, we made it to the Ban Nalan village. This village had a population of 97. We cooled off by swimming in a river. There was a bamboo bridge over the river that the guides, Travis, and I jumped off into the water. It wasn't very deep, and the bridge was pretty high. I definitely hit my butt on the bottom when I jumped, but it didn't hurt. It was a good thing there wasn't anything sharp there. After swimming we waited for dinner to be prepared. We were having duck, and we even got to see the live bird before cooking (the vegetarians weren't too enthused by that). We ate dinner with the village deputy chief and several other villagers watching. The deputy chief kept pouring everybody Lao whiskey in these cool bamboo shot glasses. I didn't want any since I don't like to drink, but ended up being pressured into having 3 shots. Pretty nasty stuff. But when in Rome...