We Go Trekking. And Survive. (Just).

After the party-time of New Year, we bid farewell to fun Vientiene - The Capital, and headed a bit further north to a place called Vang Vieng. A small town in the middle of nowhere, that inexplicably has grown to a size that feels all wrong - like a small village trying to pretend it’s a town. Nestled in the middle of the mountains, it is a strip of restaurants and bars, guesthouses and shops. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were in a sort of Western frontier town, although that might have something to do with the book I was reading at the time - a story about English settlers in America’s Wild West. I’m very suggestible.

So anyway, we were feeling a bit antsy and up for an adventure, so we stayed for just one a night and booked ourselves on a overnight trek for the following day. The man promised that it wouldn’t be too arduous. We believed him. There’s a lesson there.

In the morning, we turned up to the office to meet our guide for the next two days. Mr Tang - our age, married with 2 kids, grew up in a village near to where we were going to trek. He knows the mountains and the jungle, so we were in safe hands. There were another 4 people going in the same direction, although they were doing just a 1 day trek, so our paths diverged at about lunchtime.

We hadn’t even started into the jungle when we came to the first obstacle. A bamboo bridge to cross over the river. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. I have been shuffling across many small, rickety bridges over the past couple of months, gradually learning to control the flutters of panic in my head. The problem with this bridge, however, is that it had broken at some point in the past. The people on the bridge at that time all fell into the river and broke their legs. A story relayed to us by our guide just before we had to cross this same bridge. That has not been fixed since.

It is made of a skeleton of steel cables, running across like railway tracks - 2 long side cables with struts across at regular intervals. The skeleton is the support for long tubes of bamboo which are meant to form the platform of the bridge. The thing is, after the previous accident, there wasn’t very much bamboo left. We had to shuffle across, balancing on strips of cable about an inch thick. Even in the places where there still was some bamboo to walk across, the thickness was only 4 bamboo strips wide, and they creaked and cracked ominously underfoot. But, you sign up for an adventure, so you have to go along with it. That’s the unwritten rule, and quite simply, there’s no room for fear or refusal when everyone else is doing it. What I learned was the literal value of ‘take it one step at a time’. If I looked ahead at how much bridge was left and how unstable the whole structure was, I could have frozen halfway across and had to be helicoptered out. I studiously kept my eyes down, placing one foot after another, and reminded myself to just breathe. One step, breathe. One step, breathe.

It wasn’t even too far to fall, maybe 5 metres. Or ten. I’m not good at estimating distance through a fog of fear. The problem was that there’s not much water in the river at the moment, just enough to cover the bed of rocks all along it’s length. If I fell I wouldn’t have died, but I really didn’t want a broken leg. That really would have been a bummer.

It only took about 45 minutes for the 6 of us to get across. It was like watching a group of really old people trying to cross the road. I wondered to myself what else was in store for us on this trek, as the guides seemed to think there was nothing scary or dangerous about the bridge. Just part of the adventure, after all.

We walked into the jungle, and for a while, actually, it was fine. Then, we came to the cave - a natural walkway through the mountain - which required us to scramble down steep rocks and slippery limestone. Of course, no-one had brought a torch (imagine being organised…THAT would be a miracle!), and so we stumbled through by candle light - an experience which is not as romantic as it sounds. The cave wasn’t very long, but I was grateful to see daylight again ahead of us. I have been reading stories in the Lonely Planet about travellers who have gone off exploring on their own in this area, gotten lost in labyrinthine caves, and died. We had our guide, and so I was sure we weren’t going to get lost, but that knowledge stills sits there, quietly camping out in the back of your mind. Especially when inside a dark cave, the only light to show you where to place your foot being very feeble candlelight. As I said, very suggestible.

Through the cave, we started off again. After a quick stop for lunch, we headed up into the mountain. It wasn’t too steep, we made good progress, and apart from the snake that Mr Tang stepped on, it was incident free. Yes, that’s right, our guide stepped on a snake. He yelped, Mr Tang, when he stood on that snake. Not unlike a screech that I might make if it had been me who had stepped on a snake. When your local guide who was brought up in the mountains and knows the place and all the animals, yelps like that in front of you, it gives you a bit of a fright. I didn’t see the snake properly, but I saw something slithering away under the leaves at high speed. And we were going to be camping in this forest, remember.

Onwards we marched, and finally reached the waterfall where we were going to be spending the night. Mr Tang took us around the corner, and then started scaling what looked to me like a sheer wall. Dutifully, I followed. It was steep, but there were steps and rocks, so it really wasn’t too bad. We reached the top, and stopped for a well-deserved swim in the pool of the waterfall. There was a small patch of pebbles, about a metre square, and Mr Tang announced that this was where we were to camp for the night. I looked at Mat, he shrugged his shoulders. Where were we going to fit 2 tents? And how was I going to be able to sleep on top of rocks?

Luckily, we were saved by the bees. Now there’s a sentence that I doubt I’ll ever use again, but that’s exactly what happened. Within half an hour, there were a swarm of bees in our vicinity; crawling over our bags, buzzing around our heads. I don’t like bees, and it turns out Mr Tang feels the same way.

‘We can’t sleep here. Too dangerous. Too many bees.’

Damn tooting, Mr Tang! Let’s get out of here. He told us to wait for a minute while he found a path for us through the steep, impossibly steep, incline next to the waterfall. After waiting for an interminable time, Mr Tang reappeared at the bottom of the slope.

‘I found path. Beautiful view. Great photo.’

And so we continued, placing our faith and our limbs in Mr Tang’s hands. So to speak. Actually, at times we placed our limbs literally in Mr Tang’s hands. I managed to crawl up to the top of the hill (yes, it was a beautiful view) and Mat was practically chased up by the bees who decided they quite liked him. Getting down the other side, however, was slightly more problematic. At some point, the nimble people who live in this area, had used the side of the hill for farming; as a result there are no rocks, no properly rooted trees, nothing to hang onto. Just shifting, sliding dirt on an angle of about 80 degrees. That’s right, practically vertical.

Leading the way, Mr Tang got us about half way down. There were a couple of times where I lost my footing and started to slide down. Have you ever been clinging to the side of a hill and started to feel yourself slipping? I tried grabbing onto the trees or grasses, but everything just came out into my hands. Mr Tang was there though, and he managed to stop my slide, and I was able to get some purchase somehow. We continued like this all the way down. I did most of it on my bum - low centre of gravity, that’s the trick. Mr Tang hacked steps into part of the hill, and kept me from going arse over tit into the river at the bottom, sometimes by using his hand as a brake for my wayward feet. Again, a fall wouldn’t have been fatal, but it sure would have hurt. Of course, we made it. Covered in dirt, and so grateful to be down on flat ground.

Grinning at us, Mr Tang said, ‘I find different path for next time. That one no good!’

Yep, at least for city folk like us who decide to throw ourselves right out of our comfort zone. For him, it was easy. Of course.

We wandered around for a bit longer, trying to find the path back to the hut where we had lunch. For a little while it seemed that we might have been a little bit lost, but eventually Mr Tang found the way. We spent the night in a simple hut, surrounded by cows, buffalos and pigs and just the one man who lives there to make sure no-one steals the cows. The Old Man, that’s what Mr Tang called him. We had dinner, washed up in the river, and were in bed asleep by about 8 o’clock. It sure was a tiring day!

The following morning, we bid farewell to The Old Man, and headed off. We had to walk for a little bit again, but there were no vertical mountains to scale, a comparative doddle. We reached a part of the river where the trekking company was meeting us for kayaking. Mr Tang, Mat and I got into kayaks, and spent the next few hours floating/paddling down the river, to eventually arrive back in Vang Vieng. In one piece.

So, there it is. Broken bridges, snakes, impossibly steep hills, and a night sleeping in the forest with no-one around. As Mr Tang kept saying to us, ‘Good adventure! No?’

Yes, Mr Tang, it really was. I swore the next day to never do anything like that again, but I’m feeling recovered now, so who knows. Laos offers lots of treks and adventures, I might almost be ready for another one soon.