With a multitude of guest houses lining the banks on either side of the river we hadn't made reservations in advance and hauled our bags around for some time before finding the bridge. I was settled with the bags at a restaurant on the far side of the bridge from the bus station. Unencumbered, it only took my parents fifteen minutes or so to fill out a survey from a park ranger and find a river view bungalow.
Of the three river towns we went to, Nong Khiaw was by far the most beautiful. Green carsts rose up from the river on all sides, and though the town was small and the one main street mainly filled with restaurants it didn't feel purely commercial because of the lack of divide between business and home.
We had a late lunch at a fantastic Indian restaurant, and went back for tapioca pudding for dinner which my dad actually sampled. That night everybody from our bus except one girl was at the restaurant, and we shared a table with English Denise, sat across from Swiss Roger and Jael, and in the general vicinity of the unnamed French couple. Denise has a very interesting life--for the past ten years she has been travelling almost continuously, going home only once or twice a year for a month or two with her mom. She's a writer, but explained that it was mostly boring citation-editing stuff that she kept up to fund her travelling. She mentioned that Bangkok was much nicer than she expected and though the drunk man at the computer nearby loudly demurred we are now considering spending an extra day or two there.
From various people we got conflicting information about the boat to Muong Khua but in the end it didn't matter because we stayed an extra day for the food. For a one-street town it sure had a lot of enticing restaurants!
My parents roused themselves at the crack of dawn for some hike to some caves which, apparently, was beautiful though the caves were closed. Breakfast was up the path at Alex's, where the food was salty but plentiful and lived up to the expectations. The morning was spent sitting on the porch of our bungalow soaking in the scenery before our only disappointing meal in town. My mom had breakfast leftovers and only went to keep us company, but my dad and I ordered a salad and bland, sweet pasta respectively.
In the evening my parents retraced their steps for a half a kilometer or so to let me see their walk, and we ended up at a cafe for iced Lao coffees. The family who ran it were smiling and chatty, and we communicated names and nationalities through pointing and smiles. The black-and-white puppy Ee Um couldn't believe my betrayal when I went to sit at the table, but was quickly distracted when she saw a bug in a corner of the room. The family's youngest daughter Nam Lin came over and began systematically removing everything from the table. We caught her before she started ripping pages out of the book but not before she realized how fun it was to lift the big waterbottle as high as she could to make a loud noise.
As we sipped our iced coffees the sun slipped down behind the rocks and we walked home a little briskly so as to still have some light. The dark didn't prevent us from going out later, back to Alex's, for a banana split to share. She (the owner) told us that she expected to see us again for breakfast so after packing up and sleeping in the next morning we had to sneak by to go look for bagels. Many places advertised them but most were either out or closed, so we were about to give up when we found a little restaurant. I guess it shouldn't have been surprising that the bagel was just thick toast and the creamcheese regular cheese--spreadable, but incomparable.
Or bags were dragged to the boat with perfect timing. We were the last people to get seats and didn't have to wait long before it pulled away. Of course they had to compensate for the peaceful, isolated river with blaring Laotian pop music but it was still a peaceful enough ride because the music was mostly drowned out in the noise of the engine. It's the dry season, and at one point most of the passengers had to get out and walk for twenty minutes or so. Both Denise and the Swiss couple were on the boat and we chatted as we followed the old-seeming but quickly-moving woman who knew the way.
At the villages along the way we passed people bathing and washing clothes in the rivers. Kids scrambled in and out of half-sunken canoes, women beat their sarongs with sticks. A few looked for things to shoot with miniature spearguns, and many people had their heads covered in a lather of shampoo. Makeshift generators worked nearby.
Muong Ngoi was smaller, dingier, and even noisier than Nong Khiaw. If we hadn't spent the extra night in the first village we would have really regretted moving on so quickly. Even at noon the Laotian new year was going strong with people standing by the road with buckets of water and the trademark drunk karaoke blaring.
I wasn't parked at a restaurant for long before my parents found a place with a double bungalow and a single next door. Lunch was at one of the few open restaurant and the best that could be said for it was that we could get enough chilis to mask the taste.
A few hours later none of us were hungry but after my parents napped we went out to get iced coffees. There was another Indian restaurant in this town and we were just settling down and keeping an eye out for somebody who could take our order when three women walked in, followed by the man from Traditions. I didn't recognize him at all and I don't think he recognized us (well, why would he) but it was crazy meeting a family of Olympians in a tiny frontier-esque town in Lao. They said that they had eaten there already and it was amazing, but when we returned that evening it was tasteless mush. They were heading back to Nong Khiaw but the two adult daughters would be returning to continue up river and we discussed sharing a boat. They expected to be back in Muong Ngoi the morning two days after we talked and that was when we left too, but we missed eachother.
My mom was feeling restless after we got Indian food and we wandered down the various side streets of the town but most petered out or ended up at somebody's house.
Despite the repellent mosquito nets, sinks that drained onto the floor, and half-eaten caterpillar in the bathroom it wasn't an unpleasant room. Near Muong Ngoi there are a few villages within walking distance and we woke up early to go visit them. There used to be only a path but very recently a dirt road has been built that detracts from the landscape. After about an hour of hiking it started getting really hot and we turned off the road onto a path. Forty five minutes later we crossed a small river and arrived in Huay Sen, the most authentic of the three. There is a guest house here where we sat for breakfast, but no stores and the stilt houses were rustic and well-kept. It felt intrusive to walk around the village so apart from a quick loop we left not long after eating. The walk home seemed to be much quicker but it was nearing the heat of the day when we arrived back at the caves we had bought tickets near.
A woman from new of the other villages, a weaving village, had a stall set up on the side of the road and we stopped in before entering the cave. Near the entrance we crossed paths with Denise.
An underground river flour through most of it and we walked in the water. When the flashlight shone straight down on the water it ws perfectly clear, but change the beam to the slightest angle and you appeared to be standing in pure black ink. We didn't go in that far.
In the last twenty five minutes back to the village we saw a couple of groups of people just setting out and didn't envy them the long hike at noon.
My mom was coming down with a cold and had had a much more substantial breakfast than either my dad or I so we left her behind and walked to a restaurant just a few hundred feet from our bungalows. Same old service, options, etcetera, but even despite the insistent karaoke we had a very pleasant lunch and lingered. We were just beginning to look for the waitress when it began to rain and within minutes it turned into a hailing lighting-and-thunder storm, with rain lashing in horizontally and napkins whipped off the table. The fifteen feet of the openair restaurant nearest the river were soaked within seconds, and we took refuge in the back near the counter where only the occasional drop came. A man came running in and wrote up our check for us, and we dashed for home.
Almost as quickly as it had started the rain let up and the karaoke resumed.
In Lao most people have at best a rudimentary grasp of English--I'm not complaining; it's not like I speak Laotian-- but the cue phrases they know are misleading. Either people will repeat back a couple words to you and then agree (kettle in the room? Yes, yes, very soon) or they just agree. Pizza with no pineapple or green peppers? Yes. Thirty minutes later-- Excuse me, this has pineapple and green peppers. Yes. We asked for this without pineapples and green peppers. Yes? OK. (Leaves).
The pizza was fine. My parents just got more than their fair share of green peppers and the chickens got more than theirs of pineapple.
The Olympians had planned to be back in Muong Ngoi by nine thirty in the morning but didn't make it. Instead we fought our way through the tangle of people trying to sell us boat tickets and met up with our Swiss friends. The boat was empty except for us and had airplane-style seats and it was shaping up to be a very survivable trip when, an hour and a half in, we stopped at a village and filled up with half a dozen villagers. They quickly crowded my mother and I out of our seats, and we moved back to the one empty seat and the floor at the back of the boat. The rumbling motor made sitting in the back a recipe for a headache, and though my mother started back there we traded out quickly. Luckily all the villagers got off after only forty minutes or so.
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