TrekPhongsali.com

“We had a beautiful view over the valley and the endless banks of clouds for about ten minutes before we descended into clouds and I had my last glimpse of blue sky for three days.” - Peter Keusgen describes his trekking tour in Phongsali.

December 16th 2006

On the first morning of my trek I met my guide, Sook, at my hotel for breakfast. He was a good guy, very earnest, and just passable in English. More importantly, he was trilingual in Lao, Punoi, and Laosang, which would cover most of the areas in which we would be trekking. He also had a most irritating habit of laughing if he didn’t understand me and laughing again whenever I rephrased the question in simpler terms. We got along well though, and I avoided strangling him because he was such a nice guy.

After breakfast we walked to the market where I picked up the two necessities of trekking - a flashlight for finding a convenient place for night time ablutions (toilets don’t exist in mountain villages, or any Lao villages for that matter) and toilet roll because such a thing doesn’t exist in the villages.

Fifty meters from the market we began our trek. One moment we were in the provincial capital with cars, shops, hotels, paved roads, and brick buildings, the next moment we were headed down a narrow track which was the main route for villagers brining their produce to market. It was wide enough for a small 4×4 but constant wash away ensured that the government’s efforts to introduce infrastructure stopped short of actually allowing development in the area, not a bad thing from my point of view.

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