Hill tribe trek of Northern Laos

Hill tribe trek's are relatively popular with tourists in northern Laos and Thailand.

After much research my mother chose to go on a very new trek in northern Laos from a small town called Vieng Poukha. We took the option of staying in homestays in small undeveloped villages.These villages were of the Hmong, Akkha and Khmu tribes.  They were undeveloped to the point of having no running water, no electricity and worse of all NO toilet!!!!!!!!! When we asked our guide the typical tourist question "where is the toilet??" He responded by spreading his arms out and saying everywhere. No big deal. However, to make matters interesting, we had to fend off dogs and pigs with sticks in order to "finish our business" before they came to clean up. Poor is poor. Putting aside this aspect of jungle life we found our experience quite rewarding even though it difficult at times. 

This was our delicious lunch served on freshly cut banana leaves. Our guide would cut them down were we had lunch and dumped all the food on them

See, the Canadiens are the greatest team in the world. There are even fans in the jungles of Laos.

This little boy was making these roosteres fight by throwing one at the other.

This is the tiny village that we slept in. We were woken up early by rooster's and pigs.

You might think that this is art, but it's actually a bamboo wall for their huts.

Voilà!!

"Don't play with knives" doesn't apply to Laos children. This little girl was nursing a few minutes before this picture was taken.

We gave the village some books that have Laos and English writing. They seemed to really like them.

This is the most commonly found building in all of South East Asia. The bamboo shack. The thing we were building will be one of those walls.

You cant imagine how much food they can make out of these little kitchens.

This little puppy wouldn't walk so we put her in my backpack until she jumped out.

 Not the Hilton, but it did just fine.

One of our guides making us some bamboo cups.  The jungle has all you need to live.  Each meal was prepared by our guides using vegetables and rice from the jungle villages.  Twice, a rooster reluctantly gave it's life to feed us.