Laos - Muang Ngoi Neua

The boat trip to Muang Ngoi took us upstream along the Nam Ou through some spectacularly beautiful countryside where people washed their linen, mended their fishing nets or children just played on the riverbanks below sleepy looking villages, one of which was to be our temporary home for the next three days.
Muang Ngoi is a small village that has electricity for only a few hours in the evening and no roads. It's idylic in other words. We stayed in a 'harbour-front' guest house with solar-heated water for a mere $5 and reveled in the lack of modern distractions, there really was nothing to do here but relax.
It's funny thing but these places are gearing up in a huge way for tourism, apparently there's only been paople coming to Muang Ngoi for five years and they're going wholeheartedly after the 'new' income. Everywhere you turn there's building work, and every third house has become a guesthouse or restaurant. And it's not confined to the out of the way places either, we've seen it everywhere from Muang Ngoi to Siem Reap.
For our second day we took a walk inland to go see a cave, (very cavey), and then on through arid paddy-fields, now full of grazing buffalo, to Ban Na village where there was also building work in full flow and four restaurant/guesthouses at the mouth of the village. There we had a Coke with the smiley Nong & his wife. They didn't speak a word of English but we communicated as best we could as Beth dished out the cigarettes. They were very proud of their guestbook and looked on expectantly as we thumbed through the comments from backpackers the World over.
Muang Ngoi is just the kind of place that I'd love to return to in five years time to see how much it will have changed but then I'd probably find it depressing. In their pusrsuit of the toursit Dollar a lot of it's cahrm will be probably be lost and no doubt 24hr electricity, internet cafes and higher prices will change things. That said, it's exactly this money that they're chasing so vigorously that'll give their kids a better education and provide much needed medical facilities. Up until a short time ago Muang Ngoi didn't even have a school. Now, thanks to tourism, it does.
Reluctantly we headed off the following day back to Nong Khiaw to spend a night there before heading back to Luang Prabang.