Trekking Around Luang Nam Tha

Claire and our guide strutting through the rice paddies.  What you can't see is Claire's very worried face as she had heard nightmares about leeches in the jungle.

These water leashes were freshly picked off a water buffalo and sat laying in the sun in a huge pool of blood. Given Claire's fear of leeches and the fact we were spending a lot of time in leech territory she started to get scared.

The first village we came to was a Hmong village who unlike the Hmong of Vietnam, seem to largely abandoned their native costumes for fly-threads of China.

They seem to get a little confused by sunglasses

Or was it the camera flashes?

This picture was taken by a little boy taking pictures with our camera.

Our guide was super ace... he kept the leeches at bay and even built bridges for us over the streams

And we finally got a picture of kid riding a water buffalo.

Lunch was pretty fly for a slap-up jungle meal

Just as well we ate a lots, as around the corner the locals made us drink rice whiskey. One shot for each leg as we were walking... they even had to refill the bottle straight from the petrol container.

It transpires they make it from rice husks in 44 gallon drums and then crudely distil it. They drink it all over Laos so it surprising the whole country isn't blind.

Silk worms anyone?

Claire making an arse of herself trying to flip the rice to separate it from the husk.

One of the Dutch girls borrowed the camera to take this sneaky shot of how well Claire has it as Jason ties her shoelaces.