L

The capital of the Luang Nam Tha region is the town of Luang Nam Tha. As befits the capital of the poorest region of this poor country, the town was rather like a frontier town in the American West. Only the main street is paved and only through town. As soon as you leave the city boundaries, the road reverts to a dirt road.

Roads are not the only part of the infrastructure that leaves things to be desired. The 'best' hotel in town had no hot water and such poor voltage that Gerry thought he had damaged his computer by trying to plug it into their system. A positive by-product of the lack of electricity was a rather romantic dinner by candlelight in the hotel's garden. We would have been deprived of that had not Gerry suggested it.

We didn't spend very long in LNT as we wanted to make our way up to Muang Sing near the Chinese border. Gerry wanted to see more hill tribes and LP suggested that Muang Sing was the place to do it. Once in Muang Sing we were quickly recruited by the Adima Guesthouse to stay in their A-frame cabins. In spite of encounters with leeches, a leaky roof and an inability the first night to find the master switch for the electricity supply, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay here. We were about as far from civilization as we ever would wish to be, were surrounded by lovely countryside, and yet had good food for the eating and no lack of books to read or people to talk to. What more could one ask?

The answer to that is perhaps better weather, although the rainy season is probably quite a bit cooler than the dry season, it is also wetter!  Indomitable as ever, Gerry was not about to let a bit of rain dampen his spirits and so off we went for walks along muddy paths and waterlogged rice paddies. On one excursion, Jan abandoned the 'ship' so-to-speak when confronted with the necessity of tromping through calf-high mud. As it was, by the time she got back to Adima, there were tell-tale rivulets of blood on her ankle showing where leeches had drunk their fill. Mercifully they had already dropped off.

Our second stay in Luang Nam Tha we headed for the Boat Landing Guesthouse . A truly lovely place to stay by any standard. From the guesthouse we wandered off into the hinterland and even let ourselves be convinced to take a tour offered by a sixty-something French-speaking Lao. We visited nearby villages, were honored guests in several traditional Lao homes, drank too much Lao whisky, looked at and bought Lao silk, and generally had a great time.

We had planned to leave LNT by river, spending two days going down the Nam Tha to the Mekong and then up the Mekong to Huay Xai and so back to Thailand. However, two days before our scheduled departure, Jan got very sick and was so worried about having caught something nasty like Malaria (we were not taking anti-malarials) that we decided it was best to take the next bus back to Huay Xai. The journey was not the most comfortable and because of recent rains took 11 hours rather than the expected 8. By the time we got to Huay Xai, the Thai border had closed and so we had to stay over. Jan took a shower, went to bed and didn't wake up for 14 hours. The next day we made it back to Thailand and by the end of the day were ensconced in one of the best hotels in Chiang Rai and Jan had been tested and given the all-clear for Malaria and a course of anit-biotics to help her fight whatever infection it was that she had caught.

If we didn't still have half the world to see, I think we would go back to LNT right away.