Elephant Village and Khmu Village

I got up excited for today, not just for the bacon and Luang Prabang sausage, but that after a short elephant ride we would be spending the afternoon trekking through the hillside to more remote villages. One of my all-time favorite things to do and see. We first headed to the elephant sanctuary, a kind of retirement home for older elephants.






I’m still not sure how I feel about this, while it’s good that they are looked after and generally have a good life, they are chained up at night, I guess for their own good, and not really free. Speaking from experience I bet they could really use a vacation to spread their wings. So we did our best to respect these great mammals. Well, at least in theory, here is Riley pretending he is on a roller coaster.


The climb down the hill does feel awkward and you worry the elephant is going to tip over, however she knows what she is doing and the chance for a stumble is unlikely. Unlike the French lady whose stumble ruined it for everyone else at Angkor Wat.


Once in the water you have a new concern, and that is not falling off or dropping anything. This also applies to your elephant driver.


My elephant driver lost his sandal in the river and went to chase after it, leaving me in the driver’s seat. I pushed in the clutch and down shifted from first to one half hoping my driver would soon return. This had really had no effect as the elephant has repeated this route many times and continued as normal. My driver however went in to deep depression as his sandal would be long gone, probably recovered and now for sale in the next village down the river.


Riley then got a turn at the wheel and took his Mom for a ride. This would be good practice for when he turns 15 and begins driving an actual car. Although, while cars travel at high speeds and can crash, elephants are slow and just stomp over anything it their path. Maybe we should switch to elephants in the U.S. until we can educate the greater population on how to drive cars.




They only allow people to ride the female elephants because the males often get in to fights endangering their riders.




Our elephants were very photogenic and posed for a few more shots before we started back.






Afterwards if your elephant did not dump you in the river and you want to thank them you could feed them some bamboo. In a short amount of time I was able to feel and understand them, they have a soul. And I’m pretty sure a few of them would have preferred a Beer Lao over bamboo.


We would then begin a three hour hike to a Khmu village though the jungle of northern Laos. It would be hot and humid, but also inspiring and beautiful.


Our destination was at the base of the rock face in the distance.


On the way out of the elephant village we passed a baby boy elephant.


Along with his Mom. It’s almost like the Kim and Riley of the elephant world, except they are trapped in a cage instead of spreading their wings.






You may think this is just some animal used for joy rides and grunt work, but when you look in to their eyes you can clearly see that someone is home, there is a conscious mind at work, an old and wise mind.


“The Boy” wanted out.


We said our goodbye and began trekking in to the depths of the jungle ahead.


Carrying plenty of water.


Taking step after step.


Heading uphill.


And just generally sweating through everything we were wearing.


We finally started to see signs of civilization, however it was not the civilization we would be stopping at, as we were still an hour or so away.


Our guide showed us a plant that produced a red color dye. While the locals use this for yarn and paints, Riley gave it a try on his face, and while it blended in and was kind of hard to see, it took two full days to wash off.


Yeah, we were now pretty far out there, away from most others, and I could tell Riley was getting frustrated and tired. But he is such a good kid that he did not let his emotions effect Kim and my enjoyment of the experience. Only saying that “Let’s put things like this in the maybe pile for our next trip”.




We finally saw our destination village in the distance when we spotted the local school.




Some locals were excited to see us.


I love walking around villages like this and seeing how the people live. They even offered a home stay, but that would have to wait until another day.






This lady was an expert in multitasking as she transported fire and put a curse on me for taking her picture, all at the same time.


The scenery was amazing and I could easily see myself living in this village. They may not have a lot of things, but they don’t need much, and the one thing they don’t have that I would not miss is stress.




Kim’s initial reaction may have put it best when she said to me “It’s like they are camping all the time”.


This village almost became extinct due to a lack of a clean water supply. They had a community “pool” in which they bathed, their animals bathed, and they drank from. Due to this only 4 out of 10 babies survived. The government stepped in and helped build a well for fresh water. Now this village has been labeled as the “baby factory”, as almost everyone survives. They just don’t all have pants, they live, but live without pants.








We took a break and ate lunch here, chicken fried rice, and it tasted great.




The local store. We still had another two hours to hike to the waterfall so I passed on having a Beer Lao.


After lunch we spent more time in the village learning about their daily life.








There was one family in the village that owned a TV and they charged others 500 Kip a person in order to watch. This was collected in order to help pay for the petro needed to run the generator that created electricity. 500 Kip is around 5 cents USD.


Small watt items such as lights could be powered by solar panels like this.




These guys were making knifes and machetes. If you are wondering where they get the steal from, they are melting U.S. bomb and bullet shells left over from the war.


Some people keep birds as pets so they can enjoy their songs.


I miss my dog Koda.




We headed out of the village on our way to the waterfalls, two short hours away.






Along the way we found these two little guys coming back from gathering mangos.




Riley was thinking “I’m hot, sweaty, and tired, and we still have two more hours of hiking”. Uncle Chris was thinking “I’m hot, sweaty, and tired, but with all this exercise today I can double up on my Beer Lao consumption tonight”.










We finally reached the falls, which during the dry season was not all that impressive, but still offered a place to cool off.




Good news is that this is on the river and we would be taking a boat back to our hotel. The one thing you do not want to see when you turn around is your boat captain bailing water out of the boat, yet here he was doing that very thing. I'm sure we will be fine.


We got back to the hotel and showered after a long, but perhaps my favorite day in Laos. I know it is not everyone’s cup of tea, but Kim and Riley did great trekking over five hours through the hot and muggy jungle. Both Riley and I did not detect any disturbance in the force so we decided to turn in some clothes to the hotel to be washed. We then headed to the hotel restaurant for dinner where Kim and I both had the tasting menu which was around $20 USD and included a large Beer Lao. The food was amazing, and even after an exhausting day, almost more then we could handle. But we both stepped up and finished everything through dessert. I really did get to double up drinking both included Beer Laos(s) while Kim ordered some wine. Riley got his regular drink, a Strawberry Fanta, then ordered some spring rolls. We somehow made it back to our room without falling asleep and crawled in to bed, deciding not to pick up the newly placed flowers throughout the room.

VIDEO: Laos Day 3