Muong Ngoi

4 hours north of Luang Prabang and 1 hour by boat is the small and lazy village Muong Ngoi. We met John the Canadian veteran, Dale the English English teacher and damn I've forgotten the name of the Portugese advertiser. We were neighbours for 5 days, staying with a crazy, funny landlady that poured us unlimited lao lao and when Kae caught a chicaca she put it in her mouth and let it buzz and rattle behind her teeth just to show off. When I chased off a spider the size of a cowpat from our room she told us forlornly that she would have had it for dinner.

The 5 of us took a days fishing trip with the landlady's brother Kao and his 2 amigos. First they showed us how they catch fish with their bare hands by speading a long vertical net like a fence and then pulling net to fence in the fish, then they dive around trying to grab it. They caught 5 fish and we tried to help by pulling the net a bit. A great days fishing because they told us that sometimes they catch nothing. We even caught the really big one that got away.

As 2 of the guys made a fire by the river we explored a long cave, and came back to a great picnic lunch and a hell of a lot of lao lao. 2 of the guides were plastered and couldn't stop laughing at some daft song, and the other guy who was driving the boat was only a bit smashed. We carried on with the drinking and eating of spicy cabbage while floating back on tractor inner tubes, paddling over to the boat whenever it was our turn to have a shot.
The laos guys invited us to a local party, where we were given non stop free shots of more lao lao by the most solemn man at the party, danced different versions of the hokey kokey and macarena but laos style with cow bells, and ate (were force fed) really dodgy spicy crab and cabbage that put dale in bed for the next few days. Kae was paraded around by the most drunk of our guides, a tiny man that the locals call ''baby'', who apparently told people Kae was his girlfriend when I wasn't around.

The next afternoon I played football with the local lads, it was about 20 a side on a pitch made of cowpats and ankle twisting bumps. The very solemn man from last night turned up and was an absolute laughing stock for over an hour. Charlie Chaplin couldn't have been better, nor half as serious.

The 5 of us foreigners went on a long walk and found a cave that you swim through to explore. John had a waterproof headlight on and after I had swam ahead I went back to get him. The fact that the man had fought in Afganistan for 7 months made his scream when a bat flew at his head even funnier. In fairness it was a really big bat, and I might have screamed a bit too.
We carried on walking for a couple of hours and played laos' favourite game boules with a man in a tiny village, ate cabbage soup and walked back hungry and defeated.

Another game of football, and time to move on to Nong Khiaw where Laos new year starts early.