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Muang Ngoi Neua

Posted by Stuart at 11:25 AM on October 16, 2005

As usual, I can not stay in the familiar for too long, so I jumped on a bus out of Luang Prabang and into the unknown as soon as possible. The bus took me three hours north, through the mountains to a small village called Nong Kiew. From there, I took a boat up the Ou River to an even smaller village called Muang Ngoi Nuea.

There are no cars in Muang Ngoi Neua, because there are no roads that go there. All transportation is done by river. It will stay this way for a long time, I�m sure, for very tall mountains enclose the village on all sides.

Due to the remoteness, you might imagine that accommodations would be primitive but cheap. You would be right. One night in a bamboo bungalow with an amazing view of the river and the mountains on the other side will set you back US$1 per night.

What do you get for $1? Not much. You get a mosquito net, a thin mattress and blanket, a shared toilet with a big basin of cold water to splash on yourself as a shower substitute, and electricity from a generator from 6-10 PM.

You also get a great view of the green mountains and the river, busy with boats going here and there. You also get roster wake-up calls intermittently starting from around 4 AM.

The village itself has one main dirt road that runs parallel to the river. There are a few restaurants and guesthouses sprinkled along this road, hoping to make a little money from the new found tourism. But, as with the guesthouses, you should expect your meals to be exquisite. Signs outside the restaurants say things like, �Today we have chicken and duck�. Or, even worse, �Today we have buffalo only�. (Not that buffalo is bad; it just limits your menu options.)

It looks like one restaurant taught all of the other restaurants how to cook food for tourists, because they all have exactly the same menu. And they cook the dishes the same way, sometimes in bizarre ways such as adding peanuts and thin noodles to larb gai. And all of them take about 45 minutes to serve your food. Needless to say, the whole dining experience in Muang Ngoi Nuea takes a little bit of getting used to.

But I spent a fabulous two nights there, doing a whole lot of nothing. I did hike about 30 minutes through the jungle to visit a cave, and swam in the Ou River a bit. But other than that, I just walked around and watched the villagers live their life. Or else I laid in my hammock on my bungalow balcony and watched the river go by.

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