A Southeast Asian journey while uni is out. Part Seven C: Another Trek

Our trek began with a steep climb through a rubber tree plantation where ceramic bowls filled with a glutinous white sap had begun to smell after three days in rain water. As we left this behind us, the forest closed in properly and we felt as though in a leafy cathedral where just a few soloists were practicing for the evening service. This is to say that admittedly, although there were more birds than anywhere in Vietnam, where there should be hundreds of species my ears singled out only twelve or so distinct calls.
Bamboo and cardamom plants crowded in around us, a single green crab snapped its pincers at me and all around the sound of the girls panting on the upwards slog filled the air.

Tan the guide, cut bamboo walking sticks for us which were a great help in navigating the narrow footpaths. Onwards and upwards we went, over fallen logs and under living beings. Our body clocks were chiming the lunch hour but the guides were being evasive when suddenly a long bamboo table, set carefully on a hill crest came into view from between the trees.
"Lunch!" Tan grinned in delight. The local trail finders appeared with freshly cut banana leaves that they used as a natural tablecloth onto which they layed small green packages of banana leaves that we opened like the treasured boxes of an advent calendar. Smoked bamboo shoots, fresh chili, sticky rice, sweet rice cakes with red bean dip, grilled and herbed chicken, courgettes .... mmmm.

We ate with delight.
Back into trekking mode and as the sun climbed into a cloudy late afternoon, a light drizzle began, a small reminder of the pelting rain the day before. But the day's adventures were not over yet. Before us lay a muddy river some thirty metres across and this, we told the girls, we needed to cross!! They oohed and ahhed and "no way are we doing that M'gog!"  was uttered many a time. We rigged up two ropes, bank-to-bank, I crossed to the middle with the throwbag in case a rescue was needed and, six by six they carefully felt their way into the fast, muddy flow, smiles at first only faintly visible. Using skills most had probably never practiced, the students worked out a way to carefully take measure of the rocky river bed, one hand on the safety line, boots over their shoulders, water up to their bums. A wobble here and a wobble there but all crossed successfully and after a slippery ten minutes further, we made camp.

Camp that night was beneath mozzie nets on a bamboo slatted floor where, once again the bamboo table was layed with banana leaves and a meal that left no grumbling stomachs. The mozzies did not stick to the burbling stream that ran down one edge of our new home, they voraciously moved into camp, swarmed between the bamboo floorboards and attacked any juicy morsel of flesh that lay up against the nets.
Morning was met with a scratching hoard of students, long faces and a river crossing back to where we had come from. On the other side of the river we split the group, a few that determined to walk a longer route, while the others felt the need to shorten the day's walking hours.

Shorter did not mean easier and as we sidled along the steep riverbank clutching at bamboo stems and dislodging boulders into the brown torrent of water we had just crossed, the students began to question their choice. But the sun came out, the mood got jolly and soon we settled into the jungle, it's fronds and thorns, it's red earth and emerald greens. As we neared the boundary of the protected area (Nam Ha National Biodiversity Conservation Area) banana plants appeared more and more frequently. Soon we were in a banana jungle, plants towering thirty feet above our heads. Soon the bananas thinned and we moved into the community lands, the edges of which were marked by the stumps of felled forest trees, charred earth and eroded soils, examples of slash and burn agriculture still in line with outdated farming methods from a hundred years ago.

Rice paddies began to quilt out the land below us and we descended rapidly into their geometric squares chased by rumbling thunder and a light spitting rain. But the drops grew and grew and grew and within ten minutes it was a tropical downpour... we were once again soaked.

As the village that was to host us this evening was only twenty minutes walk further, we continued to slip and slosh through the downpour, balanced on long but narrow walls between rice paddies and sometimes, when we missed our steps, on our asses in the mud!
The rain stopped just as it had started. Suddenly. The clouds cleared as we entered the village, thatched bamboo huts on stilts with an array of chickens, ducks, dogs, piglets and children milling about between the stilts, all curious, all shy.

We spread ourselves between three village homestays and, before the wonderful spread of lunch was served, we collected in the river to wash off the muddy tribulations of the walk, wondering aloud how the walkers of the long route were faring. They appeared an hour or so after we had eaten, having missed the tropical deluge completely.

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