Meeting Gil

VIENTIANE: My second day in upriver I walked out into the rice paddies to visit a couple of smaller villages. Crossing a few streams we emerged into a vista of dried rice paddies, broken up only by looming limestone mountains, as far as the eye could see. Watched by water buffalo absentmindedly chewing cud we tramped across the top of the dried dykes of rice paddies towards the first village, Ba Na. Occasionally when we thought we were getting lost we stopped to ask village kids returning from school or lone hunters and eventually we found our way to the tiny little village. There we watched the villages go about their daily lives, including a couple of guys building a bamboo enclosure for some pigs, played some games with the local kids and sipped a Coke at the restaurant attached to the tiny guesthouse in the town.

Then we tramped on to Huay Sen. This trip was much more difficult though luckily we befriended some local kids who took us all the way to the village. It probably helped that Nadine engaged one of the guys in a whistling/yodeling/blowing through grass contest. I just bought them off with cigarettes. Hey they were 17!

On the way I had one of my best experiences in Laos. We stopped to chat with some local boys who were frying their freshly caught fish on a barbecue. After some conversation and a shared packed of peanuts, which were spilt all over the riverbank, I worked my way over towards the spear and the mask they used for fishing. They were only too eager to let me dig deep into the upturned tree in the river in search of the fish. But these kids were experienced and could contort themselves into all sorts of positions, digging ever deeper underwater into the tree roots. It wasn't something I was so keen on, so despite my best, and repeated, efforts, I was unable to spear a fish. An older guy showed up later though and gave us an impromptu lesson in net fishing and later in the day we also got a chance to watch fishing with bamboo traps.

Anyhow after the fishing our guides eventually delivered us to Huay Sen where we had the chance to watch some more traditional village life, eat some food and, most importantly, meet Gil. Gil is a guesthouse owner in the third of the troika of villages fringing Muang Noi, Huay Bo. He was reclining in a hammock at the little restaurant attached to the village's guesthouse. He introduced himself then told us: "Eight o'clock, go to Muang Noi, my friend say drink lao lao. Four people, three bottle of lao lao, two beer, not good. Four people, three lao lao, maybe okay. I tell my wife, ten o'clock be home." It was now after four and we were at least two hours walk from his village.

Soon afterwards I realised I had a leach on my foot which he helped me pull off. Then he told us about the guest house he had in Huay Bo. Best guesthouse in the country, nay the world, if he was to be believed. Then he stopped talking, went to the edge of the village, threw up, came back and repeated his spiel about too much lao lao. Nevertheless Nadine and I were both intrigued and vowed to head back for a visit the following day.

We eventually made it back to Muang Noi near dark. I had enough time for a quick bathe in the river before a night of drunken revelry with a variety of new found friends.

PS: Lao lao is Laos rice wine. They call it whisky. It's not bad. But it is lethal gutrot.