**Good bye Laos is soon coming**

A little boy digging a hole in the Akha village

One of the grandmas in the Akha village, cross stitching under a shaded grass hut

The water fall in the NPA "Nam Tha protected area", our guide made a food offering to the waterfall spirit before we ate our lunch.

Me having a shot of freshly distilled rice whisky at 9 am ... Yuk ;-)

Kieran 150 meters up from the bottom of the NPA waterfall



Kieran and I sitting in the center of the bus on the ride back to Luang Nam Tha

Well Muang Sing was definitely off the beaten track. Farther north of Laos, it was only 3 km from the China border crossing and closely skirting Burma.

We hit the beat right away to try and find a guesthouse after getting off the local bus. Viewing most of what Muang Sing had to offer, we dropped our preference scale and booked in to Phu OI guesthouse, a cute rattan bungalow set up.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent looking for a decent, cheapish trek company to take us into the Jungle and show us some of the local villages. After some trial and error, we settled with our guesthouses company and booked a more expensive trek for just the two of us. (it was hard to find other travelers to join up with too make it cheaper)

The evening started with a quiet mis-ordered dinner and was finished at the local club where we shared a beer Laos and chatted with a couple local young men. (Kieran now has facebook buddies from Laos ;-p lol)

We awoke the next morning yearning for another hour of sleep, but after a cup of sweet milk and tea we headed off (chicken sandwiches in hand) to start our day. Our guide was ready and waiting for us, so after loading into our tuk tuk, we checked out the whiskey village straight off the bat.

Apparently whiskey is made in every house hold here, thus the name whiskey village. The set up was rustic; Big wok like pans boiling the rice into mash, bamboo mats on which mash was drying, forementting vats of mash in one corner and large vats distilling in another corner.

Back into the tuk tuk we were dropped off on the side of the road forty minutes out of town. The trek started intense off the bat, hiking forty minutes to the top of the first mountain (1,020 meters above sea level). Caring on from there, we decended into the valley to take in the water fall and eat lunch. After lunch we hiked to the next mountain top, 1640 meters above sea water, before making our way down through the desiccated burnt jungle below.

On our way down we past local villagers plaining wood and farming gum tree and sugar cane fields. In the villages, Kieran and I felt uncomfortable, almost as if we were at home on one of the poor local Indian reserves.... but with bamboo/grass huts. We quickly walked through, not stopping to take many pictures and waited to go back into town in our tuk tuk.

The hike was amazing, around 10-11 km in alot of steep terrain, for about 6 hours. We were pooped by the end of it. On the way back in to town, we were doused with buckets of water by the town kids.... the Laos New Year water festival is just starting to begin. LUCKILY we were able to dry Kier's camera quick enough. We went for a quick beer with our guide before settling in for a sloth like night. (We couldn't get out of dodge that day, so we were forced to spend another night.)

Despite posted bus schedules in Muang Sing, we made it to the local bus depot at two minutes to eleven to see our 11:30am bus starting to roll away. After some quick negotiation, and my savvy skills, we hopped on to the over crowded bus just before its departure.

Amusing, needless to say, because we had too maneuver our backpacks in between jute bags of farmer "stuff?", to find a place to sit in the center aisle. (.... FINALLY our first real locals experience) After finding a direction to sit and put our feet the bus ride chugged along smoothly until our brakes started to go on the hillside down from over heating.

After a hellish local bus ride, but overly amusing at the same time ;-p, we made it back from further north, to Luang Nam Tha, in one whole piece. (or rather two ;-)

So we are settled in at a new guest house now and have already booked our tickets out for tomorrow to Luang Prabang. Four more days to go until we say goodbye to Laos ;-)

Cheers and take care,

Charissa and K

P.S. "Jennifer", Kieran wants me to note that its hard to be gramatically correct and spell words in the appropriate manner when your three big beer Laos in, That's like 2 lts of beer!! ;-p