Click on the links below for details of our trip and a photo gallery

It's another cold and damp morning as we cross the bridge in Nong Khiaw and board our covered narrow boat for a six hour boat ride up the river to Muang Khua. Our boat has a roof, open sides, reclining car seats and, thankfully, blankets to keep warm and dry. As we head upstream cliffs tower overhead, swifts dart across the water and we can spot villages hidden behind the trees. Further north the the steep cliffs and primary forest changes to gentler slopes with agriculture. We stop at a weaving village where, after five days of cold, the sun finally comes out. Pushing on we stop for a picnic on a beach. Further up river we pass several rusty old gold dredgers, fishermen casting nets, a kingfisher on a branch and more sections of rapids before arriving at Muang Khua. This is quite a prosperous town - apparently from trading opium in the old days as well as general trade with Vietnam. From here it is a short drive to Muang La.

Muang La Resort (below) is in a different league to the places we have stayed so far. Located in a small village by a stream it is next to a hot spring which is used to fill big hot tubs on raised platforms where you can soak and enjoy the view over the hills. The 10 rooms are beautiful (and warm) and the gardens and communal areas are well done. You are looked after by a Swiss manager and local staff who serve a five course menu of locally based food every evening. We enjoy a long walk around the village and countryside and watch farmers sending beans to market, talk to villagers, watch village life, take a bamboo raft across the river and generally take in the countryside at slow speed. The following morning we get up early to walk to the local market and watch the village monks on their early morning walk.

The drive to Nam Tha takes us back onto route 13, which we took out of Vientiane but this time we are right up near the Chinese border. The road has recently been upgraded (by the Chinese of course) and we make good progress. We see a variety of hill people in markets and villages including Black Tai and Lanten (below). The markets are full of seasonal products - beans, aubergine, ground nuts, cassava, chillis, bananas and gourds as well as more bamboo rats and small birds (hmmm). We approach Nam Tha through a wide flat plain with more industrial scale farming. Many of these farms, and the rubber plantations in the surrounding hills, are Chinese owned and many people in this area are Chinese. Local Lao work on the farms for USD7 per day which of course is quite a lot in such a poor country.

Nam Tha is a large but sleepy town. It looks more prosperous than many we have seen and is in fact the fifth richest in the country thanks to agriculture and trade with China and Thailand. The main strip is full of 'ecotours shops' and two to three day treks through the hill villages in the Nam Ha National Park are popular and a great way to see traditional life. We have a decent (but slow) Lao lunch in the Minorities Restaurant and in the evening try out the Night Food Market where locals sell a wide range of dishes. We settle for beer, spring rolls and noodles. There are lots of backpackers here as well as Chinese tourists. We stay in the Phou Lu guesthouse in huge simple bungalows - basic but functional.

Another one and a half hours on narrow windy roads through the hills takes you to Muang Sing via more local villages. We stop at one, Ban Patoi, which is famous for making "whisky" and learn how sweet corn and rice are fermented in big pink plastic bags before being distilled. The stills are big black barrels over wooden fires with convex, copper water-cooled lids that condense the hooch which is caught in a long funnel and piped to a big plastic container. The sweet corn 'lao-lao' is itself quite sweet and sells for USD 1.50 per litre. The rice lao-lao is more expensive and drier at USD 3.75/ltr. We are very lucky to find a village blessing ceremony going on when we arrive (above). A frame has been constructed next to the village spirit house and all the villagers are bringing offerings of food, money and candles. The village shamen sits beside it and recites texts from an old book written in Northern Lao script while his assistant or 'puppet' sits next to the frame as a conduit for the spirits.

We visit 3 more villages around Muang Sing and see rice noodles drying in the sun, village temples, young monks modelling, a seemingly very poor Akha village and a smarter and tidier Iu Mien village where ladies sell us embroidery. Muang Sing itself is a rather sleepy border town. It was once the centre of the Golden Triangle - the French colonialists had encouraged opium growing and this was continued into the 1950-60s when the KMT escaped from Maoists into the area. Now opium has been replaced by Chinese owned banana plantations and the market is full of money changers with stacks of Remenbi notes. We spend our final night in the North at the Boat Landing resort and restaurant outside Nam Tha. Only one guest is staying here but the food is really good regional fare. A jeow made from rattan, a ground duck sa, tasty green beans soop, local noodles and a chicken stew. We are woken up early the next morning by cocks crowing and martial music on the loudspeakers for the long drive back to Luang Prabang.