keep on trekkin'

This is a story about six trusty trekkers, the lady boy song, and why I WILL NEVER DRINK LAO LAO AGAIN.

The facts:
3 days/2 nights trek with green discovery. New trail.
One night jungle camp.
One night tribal village.
$86 USD
Meals included.

The players:
Pon (Lao), Chris (Ireland), Malko (Belgium), J.B. (France), Lise (Norway)

They told us it would be one of the more difficult treks. I flexed my biceps and said "sign me up!" We left Luang Namtha in northern Laos and traveled by sawngthaew (a flatbed truck with two rows of seats in the bed) down a dirt road for about an hour into the Nam Ha National Park Area. The first part of the trek took us through some rice paddy fields and on into the forest. After a couple of hours, we stopped in a shady area for lunch where our local guides fashioned a table for us out of banana leaves, then dumped out little mounds of spicy eggplant, friend green beans, fern, and beef with ginger. We were each handed a leaf-wrapped bundle of sticky rice and we dug in. All of our meals were amazingly delicious, but this would prove to be my favorite of the trip. Especially that spicy eggplant. My first taste of traditional Laos food. Spicy food is a natural mosquito repellent and i have been careful to learn "I like it hot and spicy" in the native tongue (mak phet in Laos). We topped our lunch off with a cute little banana and headed up what would prove to be a very steep mountain, with bricks of scrumptious sticky rice expanding in our bellies.

What goes up, must come down and by the time we reached our jungle camp I was pretty sure I had let my leg muscles know that I mean business. No more fat, lazy, relaxing holiday--we are on an ADVENTURE!

Along the way our trekking company guide Pon pointed out some fun and useful edible plants--sour plant stems for hangovers and cow shit tree bark for diarrhea. Pon proved to be an excellent guide and friend who had a penchant for singing while hiking and also playfully flirting with Lise the Norwegian.

Dinner was AWESOME (and I do mean that literally). I had no idea bamboo could be so versatile. You can eat it and turn it into floors and cutting boards—this I know—but with the use of a machete and some ingenuity, you can boil tea, make sticky rice, construct a water pipe, and build an entire camp out of it, as our local guides proved to us with impressive speed and skill. Pon made J.B. a bamboo shotglass and the Lao Lao was passed around the table. This was my first experience with Lao La, a rice liquor... not too bad... not too good... ok, kind of bad. Pretty bad. Mostly just tastes like rubbing alcohol and they drink it everywhere in Laos.

Lise let us in on the fact that Pon wrote a song about Lady Boys which set off a campaign to get Pon to sing the Lady Boy song. "Not enough Lao Lao," he said.

We retired to our bamboo sleeping quarters relatively early and as I passed out I was convinced I was listening to the "Sounds of the Forest" CD from Target.

DAY TWO. Caffe a letto! My sister and I discovered the bliss that coffee in bed can bring while we were traveling together in Italy. Pon must have known that this is the way to my heart because he brought me my coffee in bed–and in a handmade bamboo cup, no less! Sticky rice with egg was on the menu. Make us strong for a day that Pon described as "Not steep. Mostly flat, but longer than the first day." Lise and I would spend the rest of the day pondering Pon's concept of "steep," but the man hikes these trails in flip-flops so we already knew his level of bad-assedness far exceeded our own.

It wasn't too long of a day and I enjoyed hearing Pon repeating my phrases, trying to master the California accent. It has come to my attention that I say "great" far too often.

I think now is a good time to mention the sheer volume of sweat that we were able to produce on this trek. It was shocking. I've never seen anything like it. When we dragged our salty-browed white asses into the village, we walked straight past all of the ridiculously adorable piglets and chicklets, past the colorful hanging laundry photo-ops and right into the river for a bath.

The Lenten tribe children were splashing about, convincing me beyond all doubt something that Angelina Jolie has known for years, white babies are the ugliest of all babies. My favorite pictures of the trip thus far are of these expressive little cuties. Lise let one of the girls borrow her SLR to take pictures of the girl's family. The results are shaky at best but Lise gained a fast friend. This little girl loved both sides of the camera and shows promise of being Laos' Next Top Model.

That evening we were served a candle-lit dinner with a few of the tribe elders. Perhaps you have heard me refer to myself as an "opportunivore." Staying true to my diet, I could not pass up the opportunity to try duck liver, heart and skin in a spicy raw duck blood concoction. It was the least I could do after witnessing the sacrifice and slow bleeding out of the poor little duck. I'm going to go ahead and say it was tasty. Green pumpkin soup, fried bamboo and sticky rice constituted the rest of our meal. This delicious dinner would make an appearance later.

In Laos it is considered rude to refuse if someone offers you a drink. This becomes a problem of epic proportions when bottle after bottle after yes, bottle (one. two. THREE bottles, 'a 'a 'aaa) of Lao Lao shots are being passed around the table. The good news is that we finally got to hear the Lady Boy song. The bad news is obvious.

If I ever wake up with a hangover again, I will be overjoyed knowing that I do not have to climb a mountain. It is absurd to go trekking hungover, but 4 out of 6 of us have done it. I was so miserable the only way to deal with it was humor and I haven't felt this kind of amusement since that one time I accidentally sold art for the Scientologists.

We made it up and over what Pon teasingly called "Farang Hill" (Farang is Lao and Thai for "tourist", and you hear it A LOT), it was a long hot journey, but the trek remains one of the highlights of the trip and i now know that I AM NEVER DRINKING LAO LAO AGAIN.