Day 38 (Laos)

Woke up to yet more rain (surprise surprise) and to find that our rope for the raft had been stolen, now when rope is the only thing keeping you raft together that can be a big problem!!!! We managed to find some old electric cable that had been out of use for some time to replace the rope, but by this point moral was low and tempers were high. But we got back on the river and all was good again, the sun came out and with that an all round better mood.

We decided that a bamboo raft would make life even better and stopped to go and explore the jungle for bamboo (which is really easy to find in Laos). 3 hours later with nothing but a swiss army knife we had a 5 piece 5 meter long bamboo raft, after 30seconds of testing we were happy with the result and more importantly from this point onwards we would be dry!!!!!!


Our new and improved raft parked next to a Acca cannoe, near one of the villages we past during the cruise.

The raft worked like a bomb, we could actually stand on it as we cruised downriver. Steering the raft however was another matter and after knocking into two trees and later head on into the pillion of a bridge which saw us closer than ever to capsizing, yet the raft escaped with zero damage.

We stopped again numerous times to explore the surrounding jungle for food, we also found some bannana trees, however there were few ripe ones to be found, we also later discovered that we had missed many papaya's hanging right over our heads!!! We did however find plenty leeches...or they found us? By that afternoon I looked like I had chicken pox, red dots all over my legs, and mixed with all the mosquitoe bites we really looked bad.

We stopped for supper at a local boat station (no idea where). Here is were things went pear shaped we didn't continue from here, and now I will be honest with you, I am regretting that decision, there were many factor that went into it, but still I think fatique, hunger and the fact that we had done what we first set out to do seemed Ok at the time, but it would have been great to get to the Mekong (and this will scrape at me for many weeks to come!!!). This has become my main reason to return to Laos.

That night we returned to the guest house both to celebrate and ponder the decision. However this can not remove the fact that this was one of the greatest times of my life. I suppose the expression "it's not the destination but the journey" was true in this case, the three days we spent building the raft and navigating the Nam tha, the people we met, the explorations into the jungle, the highs and lows all played part in this, and although I can't really express this to you the reader, I am positive that everyone has some of these moments in there lives and when asked what they did with there lives, will look back on those experiences.