i'm sure this old fisherman is asking himself why he took these farang (foreigners) with him fishing. with this old fisherman and 2 younger laos, we went net fishing one day in muang ngoi. the nets are incredibly long but only about 3 feet tall. and they have weights tied to the bottom.
they have a pretty elegant method for net fishing... they drop someone in holding one end of the long net near an upstream bank of the river, then the boat arcs downstream towards the opposite bank. the boat continues its huge arc back to the first bank, about 50 meters downstream from the starting point, casting the net along the way. the fishermen reel in the net as they close the distance between the two ends. this traps any fish in the ~50 meter diameter half-circle, and corrals them into the shrinking net space.
we casted about 6 times during the day. its mad hard work, especially for the person who gets dropped off in the river and has to swim to the shore towing a huge net in the current. it was exhilarating to do it twice... but i imagine it gets old fast.
its getting to be the dry season, so the take is diminishing... we only caught 3 fish. this is jay - our entrepreneurial young lao guide - with our first catch. below that is our lunch spread.
2 days later, we attempted a 2-day, 1-night self-guided trek from muang ngoi. we talked to a few guides about tours and decided we could do the trek ourselves for about 1/10th of the price they were charging. so we took a picture of this map below and decided the route: boat from m. ngoy (on the L) to ban soupkong, hike to the waterfall, then boat over the nam om river and hike to talden ban to spend the night before trekking home. we packed light, got some food & water and set out.
the hike from ban soupkong to the waterfall was not as straightforward as the sharpie-drawn map suggested. 100 meters out of the village, the trail started forking. we stayed on the major trail, but really had no idea where we were headed. got some great views though... so we were happy to keep hiking.
after ~1 hour hiking through rice fields and streams, we ran into a young girl tugging a huge water buffalo behind her. the only english she knew was "waterfall" and she pointed us back the way we came, as she probably had done countless times before to other farang. back in fields we ran into a dude with a machete who mimed that he could take us to the falls for about $2. we liked the idea of a guide with a machete, so we agreed. we hiked from dry rice fields into the jungle, up a cascading stream and many levels of small waterfalls. we got to the big waterfall and swam around for a while.
on the walk out, we ran into this guy hunting birds. he had an old tyme musket and had shot a few little birds. also ran into some kids and found a small scale hydro power unit. lots of the villages have these.
from ban soupkong we boated across the river and headed to another village to spend the night. unfortunately we had no idea how far away it was, and again the trail started splitting. after hiking for a long while we realized we had no idea where we were going. and then we remembered that laos still has loads of landmines throughout its wilderness. so we turned around and hiked out. this is laura tired and lost.
hitchhiked on a boat back to muang ngoi. never found the our overnight village, but we did hike a good long way in beautiful surroundings. one of my favorite days traveling yet.
