Fireflies, frogs and leeches of Laos

After one last night of Thailandness, supping Chang and slurping spicy fish soups with some friendly Australians, we slid across the Mekong river in a longboat and set foot in Laos. It was immediately different to Thailand. We were dumped at a gloomy bus station with two hours to wait till our cramped, rusty bus would depart, feeling a little bit sulky; we’d become too accustomed to air-conditioned efficiency of Thailand.

Luckily, Laos is even more beautiful than everyone says it is. As the bus wiggled its way through the tangle of green trees, lazy brown rivers and jagged peaks, we soon forgot how squashed and sleepy we were.

Four hours later we arrived in Luang Nam Tha, a small town in the north of Laos. We jumped straight in, embarking on a three-day trek in the jungly hills that join Laos to China the following morning. We were joined by another English couple, Aimee and Rick; four Frenches – Anne-Laure, Jean-Phillipe, Herman and Audrey; and our silly, bouncy guides, Bien and Syvon. The guides braved the jungle in flip-flops, knew how to make just about anything from a stick of bamboo, burst into lung-curdling song every five minutes or so and laughed a lot at us sweaty “falangs”.

By day we traipsed through the dense, pulsating jungle, scrambling up muddy slopes and slip-sliding down the other side, teetering across streams and yanking leeches out of our socks. This is what you imagine travelling to be – charging through the jungle with a backpack and a giant stick, cooling off under waterfalls. But it was bloody hard work.

At lunchtime we would stop in a clearing while Bien and Syvon cooked up and laid out a feast on giant banana leaves: sweet gooey pumpkin curry, banana leaf soup, fried fish and sticky rice. Around 4pm each day we’d collapse at a village, our home for the night. The villages were like small farms, home to Akha and Black Tai tribes and their populations of chickens, ducks, pigs and dogs. The villagers live in wooden huts suspended in the sky on sticks. Like them, we bathed in streams before dinner, splashing around and scrubbing ourselves under sarongs.

The first village had no electricity so after a candlelit dinner we passed around shots of Lao-Lao, a rice whisky which makes your chest burn and freeze at the same time, then set off with Bien and Syvon for a spot of frog-hunting. We tiptoed around marshy rice-paddies in the starlight, listening to the frog chorus and blinking at the glimmering fireflies. It was quite lovely until Bien’s holler pierced the darkness: “Falang! How many frogs you have!” Er, none, obviously. Bien had his latest victim in his hand – we covered our eyes as he shoved a long metal stick through its head and threaded it down to join the pile of squirming frogs dangling below. You can guess what was for breakfast. Snails, chicken heads and bugs were all offered up throughout the trek, too – free-range organic wildlife that Joe gobbled up and made me glad to not eat meat.

Still, it was lovely waking up in the middle of nowhere to the mad beeping of fluffy chicks, cackling of a million ducks and grunting of happy pigs. The shy village people were much less vocal but smiley and accommodating.

We were all a mess by the time we arrived back at Luamg Nam Tha with aching legs, scratchy bites and with Bien’s favourite songs ringing in our ears: “I lose control! Because of you! Baby! …Dot dot!” and “I’m not a girl! Not yet a woman!”