When we got to the National Park of Laung Nam Tha we thought we might stop off to do some hiking but quickly realised that we weren’t going to navigate the jungles by ourselves! The National Park is a popular place in the North of Laos, and has a couple of towns that serve as bases for it. Someone at some point must have come here and told people all the buzz words involved in tourism and so now there is a swarm of “Eco-Treks” on offer and hoards of “Boutique Hotels” which are about as boutique as a 24 hour Tesco. The National Park itself has won lots of awards for sustainable environmental tourism and the likes..so we thought that if we were going to hire a guide at any point then this would be the place. We joined a group with Ariel from Israel and a French couple Nellie and Janik, and had a great laugh with them even if the trek was not as we promised with not a bit of primary jungle in sight.
We choose to do a 3-day hike where we were promised jungles, bears, gibbons and even tigers were mentioned but in the end it turned out to be more about eating sticky rice and wandering through bamboo thickets.
starting off through the rice paddies
some jungle fodder
jungle lodge
