Boats, Malaria and Waterfalls

The morning started off at a way too early 6:30am. After showering and breakfast Kelly and I made our way downstairs to meet our tour guide from Green Lao (a super amazing eco-tourism company here). After an hour and 40 minutes in the truck on route to the National Protected Area at Pho Khua Khuay (that may or may not be spelled correctly), we made our way down to the river where we met our other tour guide - a spindly old Lao man who was native to the area.

I looked over the bank to see them dragging the 'small boat' out of the water. It was about 3 feet wide at its widest and about 12 feet long. The second tour guide was swinging it from side to side to get all of the water out of it while also rigging up the outboard motor. Since most of my boating (and subsequent capsizing) fears were overcome last year in Thailand, I figured this would be nothing.

All started out well as we raced down the river with lush greenery surrounding on each side. A few tree branches had to be dodged but everything was going well until we started hitting the upstream currents. And then we hit rock. And then the next thing I know guide number 1 is telling us to take off our shoes because we're going to be walking through the shallow rapids.

As the founding member of the falling up stairs club, this was excellent news. Fortunately, the guides were excellent and literally held my hand the entire time. Unfortunately, I managed to cut the bottom of my foot (small but deep).

After traversing the rapids, shoes were retied and we hiked an hour through the forest. This was the point where I sincerely regretted not taking my malaria meds and tried to figure out how they could medivac me back to Canada once I came down with the malaria.

The hour of trekking was met with a fantastic waterfall, swimming and lunch made by our guides. When we returned to the village after lunch, a group of old Lao men (who were already drunk) tried to get Kelly and I drunk on BeerLao and some kind of clear spirit from a Pepsi bottle. We politely declined.

Tomorrow off to VangVieng for tubing down the Mekong River!