In the Jungle, the mighty Jungle!

9^th November 2012

Today's the day! We woke pretty early and thankfully I was feeling a lot better after the whole heatstroke incident! It didn't take us long to get ready but we hung around for some breakfast which was, surprise surprise, sticky rice and omelettes. Having rice for breakfast was pretty strange and I'm not one for eating in the morning so I snuck a cheeky cereal bar!

We had to cross the river to start our trek which meant wearing our wet, cold kayaking clothes – not pleasant! Once at the other side I changed into dry clothes and we were off trekking through the jungle. I'm not the fittest person in the world but I am fairly active, even so I was worried about this trek and all my worries were soon confirmed. We walked up, then down and then up and up and up. When we got to the top, it turned out that we weren't actually at the top. There was just more walking. I shouldn't say walking actually because we really did trek. At times it was almost vertical and I was crawling up mud banks practically on my hands and knees.

As the day progressed, thankfully I wasn't the only one struggling and we took a few breaks which made the whole thing bearable. But as you know, what goes up must come down and down I came. I had hoped going downhill would be easier but it was just as tricky as the fallen leaves and wet mud made the path extremely slippy. The path was also very narrow, less that a foot for most of the time and we really were in the jungle – there were fallen trees, termite mounds and lots of sharp bamboo. The guides had obviously cleared the way with a machete but they did so at an angle meaning the entire forest was dotted with potentially lethal spikes!

As if that's not bad enough, the forest is home to tigers, clouded leopards, leopards, black bears and a variety of snakes including pythons, king cobras and green mambas. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we didn't see any of these, just lots of insects and even the remnants of a poachers camp!

It was really cool to actually get right in to the jungle and while I know we're in Laos, it just felt so completely different to anything I've ever experienced – it's nothing like Crawfordsburn Country Park!

We ploughed on through and despite stopping for the usual banana leaf lunch, we made pretty good time, emerging at around 2.30pm.

This left us plenty of time to get back to town for a real luxury – western food! However, laid back Laos had other plans and as we took the tuk tuk back there was a landslide on the road. The drivers were so chilled out and didn't seem to mind at all so we waited until the digger cleared away the mud and once again we headed home.

Of course our first priority was Facebook, shower and food, all of which were pretty good and now it's time to sleep, in a real bed and hopefully for a really long time!