Nong Khiaw, Laos
May 2018
Oh boy I am so behind. Photos from 18 months ago in Asia. Better late than never. Here we go.
We spent a couple of days in Nong Khiaw. It was our experience in small towns in Laos that due to lack of interested people, most of the hikes we would have liked to go on were simply much too expensive for us, because there weren’t enough people to split the costs. So we ended up finding our own non-guided walks to do. In Nong Khiaw we had read that the hike to the top of the mountain in the village was a must do at dawn. So we set our alarm, despite the fact it rained all night, and got up in the dark and hiked up through slippery paths for an hour or two as it gradually got lighter. It was, until that time, the hardest hike I’d ever done. Not only because it was dark and steep and constantly uphill, but also because it was so muddy and slippery and many trees had come down in the storm which required climbing over or under. I was rather proud of myself for managing it. At the top of the mountain, the dawn had already come, and we were higher than the clouds. All we could see was clouds in every direction. Suddenly, some clouds shifted we saw the green peaks of another mountain. We stayed for a few hours at the top as the clouds and fog shifted around, revealing different peaks in all directions, until all the clouds were gone and we had an incredible view of the surrounding mountains, valleys, town and river.