Day 2 & 3- not quite dead

15/4/11 Day 2

We woke early and had breakfast of pancakes and fruit before setting off on our trek. Amazingly we did not feel too stiff and trotted along quite happily. Before we knew it it was lunch time followed by another afternoon nap. The walking and the views were again spectacular and the main obstacle in our enjoyment was a very muddy section on the edge of a steep hill. That said we negotiated this and arrived at the home stay in one piece. We were a little stiffer but after some stretching a hot shower and some beer we felt fine. We were however plagued by Black Mong ladies throughout the evening. Its one thing to be bothered whilst walking but whilst at the home stay was a bit much. James will write a strongly worded email to the trekking company expressing this view!

Dinner was shared with two buyers for tescos… well someone has to do it. Despite working for capitalist central they did not have two heads and appeared to be quite nice. Again another early night after a few rice wines.

16/4/11 Day 3

Now this is traditionally my last day of walking. I find that the cumulative stiffness is still at a manageable level. This combined with the knowledge that at the end of the day I will be in a hot bath normally spurs me on. Instead I realized that today was going to be one of the longest walks I had done, there were two more nights in the home stay, 3 days of walking and an overnight train. Oh my god!

The first half of the day passed off uneventfully and by lunch we were ok if not a little hot as it was far sunnier. We had lunch by a waterfall and felt generally ok. After lunch the 1st hour was generally pleasant and then the assent from hell began. An unrelenting 3KM up hill walk in the heat of the day saw James and I sweating like pigs and walking whilst staring at our feet. Upon arriving at the home stay our Guide Zan informed us that it was FULL. One can imagine our faces so Zan quickly told us that the next home stay was only a 10 minute walk. After some water we trudged on and arrived at the home stay, promptly lay down and collapsed in a pile. This was short lived as we knew we had to stretch but alas the enthusiasm for this was somewhat lacking.

Eventually we pulled ourselves together to do some washing and make our way to the table to eat. Dinner was again lovely and the host was friendly. Zan translated between us all and we generally had fun. The host took drinking rice wine very seriously and encouraged us to do “100%” which essentially translated as knocking back our shots of rice wine in rapid succession. We did not like to offend him but the chances were that we would be drunk very quickly. As such we moved onto shots of beer to keep him happy. Bed followed shortly after!