Luang Prabang Day 10, 5 February 2006

I was feeling much better this morning. After breakfast, I went back to Ban Xing Lom. This time I had both the digital camera and the hasselblad and a meter with a fresh battery plus a spare just in case. The villagers seemed friendlier this time, I would greet people that I would pass and they in turn would greet me. As I was taking my pictures, I noticed that there was only one bar in my 10d. It did not help that I could not charge the batteries because I left the chargers in the guest house and Miss Vanh promised to get these for me yesterday before she attends her friend's wedding. At first I was trying to take pictures of homes but these did not look as interesting so I started taking pictures of the villagers while doing their daily activities. I was received with a lot of giggles. But they did not tell me not to take any photographs. I even managed to take a couple of portraits that I only had 3 frames left in the hasselblad when I left the village.

It was already 11:30 am when I got to the resort. Pat passed by and asked if I would be interested in trekking to a town that can only be reached by walkin. I told him to tell me how much it would cost and he got back with information he received from Ms. Vanh and I agreed to the trekking. I took a nap after my lunch and at 2:30pm I was ready to do some trekking.

Pat showed up on time. He was acting as my guide this afternoon. To make the trek a bit easier for me, we took the boat to where the waterfalls were and there was a stairs that would take us up to the start of the trail to the village. It was a series of uphill climb and plateaus. I took some pictures of the trees because I was confident that I had 2 spare rolls of film in my pocket. We got to a clearing where we had an impressive view of the mountain and I took a few photos. Along the way we saw some huts around which rice was planted. Obviously, trees were felled and burned to make way for these fields. As we get closer to the mountain, it gets even more impressive. When we got to the road leading to the village we met a man from the village we were going to visit and Pat told me to greet him "Smailer" which is the equivalent of "Sabai dee" When we got to the village, I took one last shot with of a boy looking out of the fence. He was patient enough for me to adjust his hat and let me tinker with my camera before taking the shot. I then took out the exposed roll and took out the last roll. and loaded it in the film. I was not paying attention that the film did not have the black wrapper around it, so I broke the seal and loaded it in the camera. When I was rolling the film in the camera, the paper got torn, I took out the film cartridge and tried rolling it out and I noticed some film had already got out. It was then that I realized that the film was already exposed. So I immediately returned it to the camera back and closed it. That was it, there was no more film to take any picture. I may have lost a few images in that exposed film, but it was still better that I realized it at this point because I could have ended up with a roll of double exposed images.

The sun was already starting to set and Pat said that we better start making our way back to the resort. We did a brisk walk. It was good that this time we were walking on either a flat surface or was going downhill. As we got nearer to the resort, Pat pointed to me the location of the Elephant camp. We also met 3 men who were hunting birds for their dinner. It was past 6 when we got to the resort and I asked Pat to let the restaurant know that my massage will be rescheduled at 6:30 pm. I needed to take a shower first.