Thursday 6th March
After a particularly muddled breakfast (the food coming out in the most chaotic order), we got on the road with our guide for the trek, a young fellow by the name of Kamli. We stopped off briefly at another cave, although it was a less impressive than those we had explored the day before. This too had housed local people back in the 1960s. We were told that the villagers were in danger if ever they left the caves, and remained inside for most of the time for fear of attracting Yankee bombs. I had also read that farming could only be done at night, and this was a daily practice for the local people for a number of years.
The trek was a lot easier than the one I had done the week before, and a little indication of this was the fact that our guide had chosen to wear flipflops on this particular walk, so not a great sign. Nonetheless, the countryside – made up laregly of rice paddy – was very nice, and the sounds of small streams babbling in the silence of the fields created a very pleasant atmosphere.
We stopped for lunch at a village, eating in the house of the chief. On the menu was more sticky rice and vegetables. The chief and his wife were particularly friendly and welcoming, even giving us a gift of a spoon made from bamboo that these people used before metal spoons came on the scene. It's pretty cool, and you can get a right old mouthful out of it, so I look forward to trying it out on a big bowl of stew when I get home.
We got to the village where we were to stay the night at 15.30. It was, in fact, two villages connected together, with two different ethnic groups living side by side (we were told that one difference between them was that one group was more shy than the other – how cute!). We were welcomed warmly by the chief of the Hmong village, and the local children gathered round to gawk at the foreingers, as usual.
Later in the evening, we took a walk about the village and Kamli explained some of the culture and rituals that the people hold on to. One of them includes their new year celebration where single people indicate whether they like a member of the opposite sex by throwing an orange to them. How different this was to our own courting rituals back home!
For dinner we were treated to some fish, chicken, rice and vegetables, and we had a good old laugh before turning in for the night at 22.00, having exhausted all of our chat and starting to feel the pinch of the cold.
