Ever since I was planning this trip, Laos was the place I had been looking forward to the most. This stint of the journey was slightly more off the beaten track than the rest of our journey had been, which is something I was really looking forward to, and it was going to be a taster session for the longer trip I’m sure I will end up doing back in Laos in the future.
Our first stop was to the Elephant Observation Tower at Ban Na. Ollie had managed 3 months in SE Asia without seeing any elephants, and regular readers will be acutely aware of my love of elephants, so the Naational Park seemed an obvious choice.
We just about made it onto a local bus heading in that direction, and bought ourselves some dry baguettes for breakfast (what we would have done for a Laughing Cow cheese triangle, I can tell you). We jumped off the bus at the 80km marker point, and hoiked our backpacks on for the 2 click walk to the village of Ban Na. After being thoroughly fleeced, we headed off into the jungle to the tower.
Despite plenty of signs that elephants had been through recently (I.e. mass destruction of bamboo) we had no look in seeing them. Still, it was a great experience to sleep in a tower under a mosquito net in the jungle on a full moon night with the jungle noises all around. Ollie woke to a rustling underneath the tower at about 3.30, but it turned out to be Water Buffalo. Dammit.
(Ollie, please note that I have made no mention at all of the complete drubbing I gave you at cards…)
