Pretty waterfalls and at last a trek :D
Trip Start
Sep 30, 2005
1
85
129
Trip End
Sep 29, 2006
Tadlo, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, June 3, 2006
Being in LP is usually the kiss of death to quiet and secluded places. But the hordes havent found Tadlo yet, thank God! Theer is half a dozen hut themed guesthouses, a couple of restaurants and....lots of stunning scenery :D The area is very rural,the nearest town is bloody miles away, and i use the term 'town' with reservations. Its basically a market place with a few houses around it. The market serves as the regional hub for buying and selling jungle 'produce'. This unfortunately incudes anything that the locals can catch...which promptly gets flung in the cooking pot. Ill return to this point later.
Within the local vicinity there were 3 waterfalls...Tadlo was the biggest but the smaller 2 were very close by and just as pretty. Also around the area is a number of local tribes villages. The tribal people of southern Loa dont wear the brightly coloured clothing that the northern Thai tribes wear, and therefor get fewer 'gawpers'. This is a good thing. Their lives are still based on traditional farming and trade, and they dont feel 'compelled' to put on a show to please the passing herds of tourists. You see their real way of life. We did a day trek out to the waterfalls and a couple of villages. A local guide charged us $3 each.....makes you wonder where the 60 bucks were going eh ?!!
We had a great day! The village visits were slightly 'uncomfortable', as they should be. We were visiting with only an implied invitation, to watch them minding their own business. Its a bit weird really, but they were totally welcoming, even tho they didnt know a word of English , and we didnt know a word of their language (it wasnt Lao, they had their own language that the guide barely spoke)the kids followed us around, checking us out as much as we were checking them out, and the adults smiled and continued dehusking the rice.
We had a very nice lazy few days at the waterfall...drinking lots of lao beer (i bet thats a real surprise to read!) and swimming in the river.
Before we left (returning to the point as promised) the owner of our huts went to the local market and returned with a rather large monitor lizard. Limbs bound behind its back, it lay tethered to the porch as we went to check out. The owner was quite proud to tell us that it was to eat and had cost $3.50, caught from the forest. Considering the pitiful amount of meat on a lizard and the fact that you can buy a whole chicken for way less than $3.50, we can only assume there is some inherent value to eating jungle meat. There is little wildlife left in Lao, a sad fact despite vast areas of national park and a forest coverage of nearly 50% of the total land area. Forest meat is never far away.
