Our trekking group got on so well
that we decided to meet up the next day for breakfast at 9am. 2 hrs later we had eaten almost
everything on the menu, with the lady who owned the place laughing at us in amazement! (I don't think our bodies realised yet that the trek was over) With the skies raining off and on we
settled on a rest day and found out about hiring a scooter for the following
day. The following day dawned with
scattered showers, but we decided to go for it anyway. 100,000 kip ($16 AUS) later, no
instructions and no licence needed, and we were scooting on our way to Muang
Sing, a small town close to China and 60km northwest of Luang Nam Tha. We still couldn’t leave the great
friends we made on the trek so met up with Tash, Adam, Martin, and Klaus who
had taken the bus up there too.
The town was very small and quite poor, but filled with the friendly Laos
locals we had become accustomed to.
We ate all our meals at an excellent guesthouse with an animated old
lady that cooked some of the best food we had eaten in Laos. The Peanut Jeow was delicious! Our ride back the next day was in fine
and sunny weather and we cruised around the surrounding towns to use up the
rest of our fuel. The next day was
our last and the kind lady at the coffee house we been eating breakfast at said
goodbye and gave us 2 woven table mats.
This act summed up our time in Lao perfectly - - the local people have
so little yet are happy and generous.
After that we headed to for the Thailand
border at Huay Xai - - we were originally going to take the local bus but got
offered a minibus ride instead for the same price, which turned out to be an
interesting experience!! The
minibus was almost full when we left Luang Nam Tha, and got even fuller as we
drove by picking up more people (4 adults plus 2 kids to a seat that would
normally take 3!). Luckily Abe,
myself and Madeleine (a Swedish girl who we met that morning) had grabbed the
backseat and there ain’t no way we were moving aside for anyone!! We were also subjected to loud Laos
music for the entire 3 hour trip… also lucky for us that the road is
exceptionally good now as it was recently upgraded from a very windy dirt road
that used to take several hours longer.
After crossing the border Madeleine, Abe and I got straight on a bus to
Chiang Rai and stayed the night there.
