Lost In Laos! (part 3) Muang Sing

Muang Sing has become a bit of a travellers' town. The main road is clustered with around a dozen guesthouses and restaurants catering for western tastes. Trekking is just starting to get organised here by a visitor's centre and eco-trekking office across the road fro the bus office. A dozen treks of 1 to 3 days cost US-11 per person per day in groups of 4-8 and the number of visitors to each village is limited to one group per week. There are a couple of minor temples to visit and the remains of a 75 year old French colonial army garrison. There are plenty of handicrafts for sale and Akha women wander the street hawking their wares. This can be annoying when you're trying to eat your meal at a roadside restaurant!

Quick Tips:

Bike hire is the way to go here! The town is little more than one street of about 2kms, but getting out of town & into the countryside to visit the hilltribe villages after an early morning stroll around the market is what Muang Sing is all about.

Best Way To Get Around:

Bike hire as has already been mentioned (and will be again!) 5,000 kip for the day from many places around town.

Run by a friendly couple, this long-running guesthouse is the cheapest in town at only 10,000 kip for a basic single room, or 15,000 for a double or twin with mozzie net and shared cold-water shower. The family provides thermos flasks of hot water for evening showers! There is a wooden annex at the front by the roadside with self-contained rooms for 25,000 kip. Downstairs in the main building is a cafe and sitting area, where tea, coffee, soft drinks, and Beerlao are served. A rooftop gives good views and is useful for drying laundry. They have a few maps of the area and the country on the walls, and can offer information about the Muang Sing area; the lady speaks some English. At the time I was there in September/October, this guesthouse was one of the few with 24-hour electricity. Power comes on in Muang Sing from 6 to 9pm, but Muang Sing Guesthouse has a waterwheel powered by the small river. However, there were quite a few Chinese businessmen in town and the lady of the guesthouse told me they were negotiating to bring 24-hour power to Muang Sing from China. It's only a matter of time before the Internet gets out here!

An Indian restaurant right in the northwest corner of Laos? It sounded a bit bizarre to me, but a family from Madras has opened the Hasina about half a kilometre from the center of town. The opaque glass door and windows made it look like it was shut when I got there, but a nudge on the door and it opened, and a figure emerged from the kitchen to greet me. Allow plenty of time for ordering your meal, as the menu is very, very extensive. Both north and south Indian dishes are served with a variety of breads: dosai, naan, paratha, chapati, etc. It took me 20 minutes to choose! For budget travelers, this is a place to try once as it's expensive compared to what you can get in town, but a meat dish (or two vegetables) with rice, naan and a fruit lassi comes to about 30,000 kip (US$3).

When I visited, the main excitement for the family was the cricket World Cup final, which had India against Sri Lanka; it was on their satellite TV next evening. I showed up to see the gap in between the innings and about half a dozen Sri Lankan overs before the game was washed out by rain! Oh yes, the food! I found it OK, but was a bit disappointed. It tasted as if some of the spices were missing. However, speaking to the others who ate there put me in a minority of one; everyone else loved the food! Maybe I was just unlucky with my choices.

If Muang Sing has become used to tourists, Muang Long has not. A small village just two hours west by pickup from Muang Sing, Muang Long has only two basic guesthouses and a few noodle stalls. It sits in a valley beneath a sheer limestone cliff to the north and forested hills to the south. I attracted attention everywhere I went here, and it was a bit difficult trying to take photos of the tribal women at the small market because of this. Lenten, Hmong, and Akha women frequent this little market and are very colourful. I came to Muang Long because I'd heard of some forest trails here. It took me a whole day to find one, but when I did, it proved very interesting indeed. A long unused vehicle track goes south up into the mountains just about 400m east of the village. I walked about 2 hours along this, having started only in the early afternoon. The track was buzzing (?) with butterflies and crickets, and after half an hour of uphill walking, a small trail headed off into the trees. I followed this for about half an hour until it got very steep and slippery, and with not much time before it started to get dark, I returned to the bigger track. I met a few people on this track, some hunting, some cutting bamboo, and each time I asked where the track went, I got a different answer!

It was only when I got back to Luang Nam Tha a few days later and looked on the forestry office map for these different place names that a very interesting picture of a possible trail all the way from Muang Long over the mountains to Vieng Phukha, halfway on the road from Huay Xai to Luang Nam Tha, took shape. The forestry officer wasn't sure if there was a trail all the way, but I figure the locals in Muang Long wouldn't have mentioned the places to me if it wasn't possible to walk there. Something that would be interesting to go back and try! The higher I got on this track from Muang Long, the more extensive the views of the mountains north towards Myanmar. Unfortunately, with only a 30-day visa and a whole country to try and see, I didn't really have time to explore all the possibilities I saw from this track disappearing into the hills, but it's logged away for the future! Returning over the fallen trees and landslides that have made this track impassable for vehicles long since, I got back above Muang Long just as the sun was setting. I'd decided to leave Muang Long the next morning before I got too carried away with all these interesting-looking trails!

Possibly the single biggest reason tourists come to Muang Sing is the market—it's not a big market, but very, very colourful with Akha, Yao, Thai Lu, and Thai Dam tribal women in traditional clothes trading here. The market is really alive between 6 and 8 in the morning; after that, a lot of the women have packed up and left. There's a covered section selling clothes and household items, but it's the open areas around this that are the most colourful and interesting. Unidentifiable for me, herbs and wild vegetables are in abundance, and it was interesting to see what would turn up in someone's stall destined for the pot each day. I saw a few small birds, a squirrel, and a few tiny bats. Of course, it's the people that you come to photograph, and some of the women will now ask for money to have their picture taken. I found it best just to find one spot to settle in and watch what's going on around me until everyone was used to me being there and paid no more attention; then I started to take pictures. In the early mornings, though, it's very dark for pictures, and it was cloudy as well each morning I was there. But it's still a fascinating place to wander around, and the adjacent truck and tractor yard keep the activity high!

Hiring a bike is the way to really discover Muang Sing, and a bit of hiking from the end of the road can get you to some pretty remote villages. The bikes for hire around town are ordinary street bikes and not really suited for the rocky dirt roads around Muang Sing, so give your bike a thorough check before setting off, because anything slightly loose will be shaken free just when you're miles from anywhere! A couple of basic sketch maps are available from guesthouses and bike-hire shops, but there's little detail. Just pick a direction and cycle off! I found that heading off the main roads and down the narrower tractor trails not only avoided any passing traffic and the following dust cloud, but also took me through some less-visited villages.

The road leading southeast by the visitor centre has a couple of dirt options about 20 minutes from town. Inevitably, after an hour or so pedalling steadily uphill, the tracks ended at an Akha village characterised by the spirit gate at the entrances and exits to the village. A basic wooden arch was decorated with symbols and carved figures to ward off bad spirits. Don't walk under these gates; definitely don't touch them; taking photos of them will also make you unpopular in the village if you're spotted. By walking through these villages, I found each time a steeper walking trail or unused vehicle track running into the mountains. If you have the time, stamina, and curiosity, you can find some very remote villages here. I walked for three hours up a steep track from Huay Kham village through forest and past stunning views of the area the higher I got, until I came to a grassy plateau on a ridge. I met an Akha villager here going hunting with a homemade rifle. The metal trigger mechanism on the wooden stock was like an old-fashioned Flintlock pistol with a small pan for the gunpowder.

The safety catch wedged between the pan and the trigger was a school pencil eraser tied on with a bit of string! I can't begin to guess how far I could see from this point, but it was a really spectacular vista of valleys and mountains when the clouds cleared. Unfortunately, at around noon, the clouds decided to settle here and shed their cargo, and I faced a 3-hour walk back in heavy rain. The track had become a slippery, muddy stream within 10 minutes, and I was a very bedraggled, forlorn character arriving back in Muang Sing, where the sun was shining and had been all day! Undeterred, but slightly sore, I was off again next day!

The Akha people are very shy about having their photos taken, some believing that you take part of their spirit away, but Akha villages are always full of curious kids, and though they were a little scared of me and kept their distance at first, a bit of larking about and letting them play with my binoculars soon had their parents gathered around having fun. After everyone seemed happy that I was there, then I tried to take pictures of the kids first. Akha women wear their traditional clothes here: usually a loose black tunic edged in red and yellow, a short black skirt, and a headdress decorated with coins, keys, and any other bits of silvery metal they can find—and it's them that I wanted to photograph. Some of the villages are more used to tourists and their cameras, and I could take a few pictures without too much problem after a while. In others, the women would scuttle into their huts and hide when they saw me! Unfortunately, some tourists have come to Muang Sing after hearing of the Akhas' predilection for smoking opium. Walking out of these villages to others further up the mountains, I didn't have the problem of the people thinking I was there just to smoke. I was viewed with as much friendly curiosity as I had about them. Now, if only I could speak Akha!