First Day

You arrive in the late afternoon from Thassouang boat landing to Hongsa. A multicourse meal is waiting for you. Monica and your tour guide for the next days are going to tell you some specifics for your next days. And try to answer your questions.

Second Day

Our trek starts, after a continental breakfast. You mount the elephant at the garden of JUMBO GUESTHOUSE and walk into the forest, crossing little streams, up and down little sloops. You will have the chance to see a variety of different landscapes on the back from your elephant. Little waterfalls, rice fields, solid huts in between, primary forest and teak plantations and clearings sometimes you see villagers walking by or starring at you on top of the elephant. In a little hut we have lunch on tour – eating what the local mahouts prepared for you. After a break you mount again the elephant and walk uphill to the Khmu-village Kewsala.

The Khamu is the largest ethnic group in Laos. And is one of the several hill tribes of this country. Their language is related to the Khmer-language. The biggest difference is that the have a rolling “r” in there spelling, what is totally unknown in the Laotian language. Khamu believes that there live is controlled by the spirit world. We could say that they are Animist with some Buddhist influences. They like to sit in a ring together and drink fermented rice alcohol sucked by long straws. You are going to make this experience too. 

At the head of the village house we stop. This is the only concrete house in Kewsala. At the attic floor we prepared for you sleeping mattresses. The bathroom is basic and we provide you with hot water. The house where you are going to stay is the only house in the whole village that has electricity run by a generator.

Before you have an evening meal, the villagers welcome you with a Bacci Ceremony.

Briefly the Baci is a ceremony to celebrate a special event, whether a marriage, a homecoming, a welcome, a birth, or one of the annual festivals. The Baci ceremony can take place any day of the week and all year long, preferably before noon or before sunset. The Baci Ceremony is uniquely Laos and is of animist origin.

It is bases on the ancient Laos belief that the human being is a union of 32 organs, each protected by a spirit. The ceremony recalls the spirit back to the body and is usually performed by monks or a respected elder.

The centerpiece is a “tree” usually made from banana leaves and flowers and surrounded by symbolic foods such as eggs and rice. After prayers, the person being honored has cotton threads tied around the wrist, followed by the guests.

The strings must not be removed for three days.

 

Part of the ceremony is to drink Lao-Lao. The villagers of Kewsala make the so called Lao Whisky by themselves. So you can’t avoid not drinking it …

During the whole treck a cook prepares all the meals. If you like you can watch them how they make the sticky rice. Please tell us if you are vegetarian or if you are on a special diet. Please accept that the cook don’t know how to cook Western food and cuisine. She try to host you as good as she can. We like to invite you to make a unique experience.

Nornlapfandee – Sleep well!!!

Third day

In the early morning, after breakfast we start to continue our elephant trekking tour. We pass a high altitude trail with a tremendous panorama view surrounded by pine trees. The mist is hanging over the mountain, sometimes you see the Mekong river deep in the valley. Quite moderate you go up and down like a roller coaster through this landscape. After lunch on tour we continue are trekking on the elephant. If you like and are courage enough you can sit on the back of your elephant and the Mahout sit in the “howdah”. Suddenly we come to a pass where we walk through little streams. The elephant will guide you over stones, to lie about logs and you can experience how gentle this giant moves through all those handicaps. During sunset you see again breathtaking panorama. On our way we pass hill rice fields, Hmong-villages until we come to Ban Pak Ngeum, laying on the Mekong river bench.

At Pak Ngeum the Lao Loum (the Lowland Laotians) and the White Hmongs are living. Their ethnic dress, what they were for special occasions are black trousers, a skirt out of embroideries with flashy colors and a blue turban on the head. The women are well-known for their colorful cross stitch embroideries. The women comb the hair to a bun and are compare to the Lao Loum quite thin and smaller.

The ethnic roots of the Hmongs or Miao go up to 4000 years ago.  Many centuries ago the came from Siberia and the Mongolia – scientist give this as a proof, because some of them has fair hair. The language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language. During 18th and 19th century they came from China to Laos where they have got oppressed by the dominant Han-Chinese, so that they left and moved to the mountainous areas of Laos. The expression Hmong means "free people”. In Laos they count 2005 450.000 Hmongs. They build several subgroups among them, like Blue Hmong, Green Hmong, Black Hmong and White Hmongs. Each subgroup has there one dialect.

You can easily recognize a village of the Hmongs. Because their houses are on the ground, and the floor is out tamped bottom, the walls are out of bamboo or planks. The roofs out of grass and nowadays out of corrugated top roof.

The most important thing in live of a Hmong is the family. “To have a family means you are happy. Without a family you are lost”.  Pak Ngeum has 474 inhabitants.

Four Day

After breakfast you continue your traveling either to Luang Prabang or to Pakbeng. The tourist boat from Pakbeng to Luang Prabang is going to land at the shore of the Mekong River at Pak Ngeum. We provide you a lunch package.

Do’s and Don’t’s

We are going to provide the villages where you stay with drinkable water; you can refill in your bottles. So you don’t need to use plastic bottles. That we have to burn afterwards.

During cold season (December to March) is quite chilly during morning and in the evening. So please make sure, that you have warm clothes with you. Villagers like to sit around a fire place – so sit with them and warm you up.                       At day time it can be quite warm.

We also don’t want that the villagers wear ethnic dresses just because you visit them, otherwise it turns out to be a circus, what we don’t want to promote. They are exotic enough.

Please ask the villagers if they don’t mind that you take pictures of them and please accept a NO. We have good experience when you bring those utensils what they can’t afford, like soap, toothbrushes and other hygienic articles or for the children pencils, pen and notebooks are always welcome and needed - as a sort of compensation. The tour guide can give it to the responsible person at the village, so no jealousy occurs among them.  It should be always an eye to eye relation. Or you bring some pictures from your home and show it.