One of the things which is talked about as a thing to do in Kon Tum is guest stays with the minority people combined with hiking in the jungle. Daylyn and Nick had had a wonderful homestay in the Mekong Delta and we were keen to try it out ourselves so, after settling into our hotel, we went to the recommended (and only) tour operator in town. It was closed. We went to the tourism bureau next door and they told us the address of the "head office" of the company. This address proved to be incorrect and we headed back to the downtown tour office to try to get the phone number off the sign. While we were sitting there writing down the phone number (and actually getting the correct head office address) a fellow zipped by on a scooter and after a short somewhat confusing discussion we were cycling behind him while he bought beer and fruit and toys for some sort of party. We then followed as he drove (slowly) a few kms out of town and into a neighbouring village. The best that we can understand it was the new years party for that local village and we were invited into the home of (one of?) the local witch doctor woman to celebrate with her and her family, as well as the tour operator and his employees. The celebration at first involved sitting around a woven matt floor eating from plates of fruit, drinking beer, and, when ordered, drinking from the communal "jar wine". Drinking from the jar was actually kind of a feat. It was a gigantic jar of rice wine, which is sort of an aquired taste I think, with a reed placed across the rim and then a little piece of the reed sticking down in the wine. The jar would be filled to overflowing and then the drinker/victim would have to suck on a communal straw until the liquid was below the hanging down reed. I would estimate that it was about a cup or maybe a little more of wine you had to chug when it was your turn. When you got the liquid below the reed you were said to have "crossed the river", which made for good jokes about the river being too deep, or not being a good swimmer.
Meg, giving 'er to the Jar Wine.Anyway, after a bit of this drinking shenaniganery someone turned the television set to some kind of Much Music station which initiated the dance party section of new years. Much to our surprise our new friends were very familiar with western music as well latin and club dancing (I guess the grandma and the mom weren't that great at the club dancing actually). Anyway, there we were clubbing it up on the dirt floor of the entry room in a villagers home at 4 in the afternoon. Quite frankly I had not crossed the river enough times to make this situation anything but strange. Fortunately, after one last Lady GaGa song the party ended as quickly as it began and we all shuffled off to our evenings destinations.
We had been asked to go help one of the guides of the tour operation teach an english class at the seminary and we headed off behind her on our bikes. In the end the nuns appeared to be praying too long and Faile (our guide) decided to hell with it and instead we went to the home of another guide, Bahn, and hung out while an American couple taught an english class to a gaggle of minorty girls. After the class wrapped up with a few rounds of "Frere Jacques" (in English of course) we headed out with everyone (except the kids) for a really great meal of Bahn Xeo.
This became sort of the trend for the next few days. We would meet up with the gang for an excellent new culinary experience, and also do some rice wine drinking. A bit too much rice wine drinking actually, we got the uncomfortable feeling near the end that we might be around people who had some drinking problems. This helped us decided not to stick around Kon Tum for Tet (Chinese Lunar New Year, also the biggest Vietnamese holiday), though it would have been nice to be around friends for the holiday.
Bahn, and a little person we were never introduced to, eating a really neat meal in which various leaves would be used as wrappers for shrimp, pork and some kind of sauce. The leaves all had interesting and unique tastes.
Faile, me, small girl, and Bahn having coffee. In the background the quiet lovely river valley.
During this time of eating and drinking in Kon Tum, Meg was feeling a little under the weather with a cold (likely picked up from Nick and Daylyn, aka "The Infectors") so everything was a little slowed down. I even got an afternoon to myself drinking coffee and reading while Meg slept. It was quite nice as I like the coffee with condensed milk and had gotten really into that "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" book, it was getting painful to stop reading and actually enjoy Vietnam. It wasn't so great for Meg though.
Also, during our stay we were trying to line up to do a hike with the tour operator. It proved to be surprisingly difficult as the store front never appeared to be open. After talking with the guides during our evening though we finally managed to line up a hike for our fourth day in Kon Tum. The hike ended up being fairly interesting. We had two guides, one was an owner of the tour company (everyone else had plans), and the other was a member of the village whose lands we were traipsing around. The tour company guide had good english and clarified alot of questions that came up and the village guide helped us not get caught in any of the dozens of hidden rat, porcupine and deer traps which littered the forests we were walking through. Both valuable things. While we saw many interesting things on the hike (illegal deforestation to make room for farmland, cassava crops, rats being roasted on a spit, small little terraced rice fields), the highlight was probably being chased off by a troop of monkeys.
It happened like this. After walking through the cropland of the village we finally got onto some of the hunting trails in the jungle. We had been in the jungle about an hour when we started hearing the strange hoots and calls that we were informed were some kind of monkey. Our village guide was making a bunch of weird sounds back so we figured he had things under control and weren't really too concerned about what was going on. Suddenly there was a sound like a small avalanch, or an animal running down hill in a jungle and our guide turned back up the trail and started running in our direction. Naturally we also turned and started running thinking that we were about to be killed by a jaguar (me) or a bear (Meg). Honestly, I think there are few memories that are burned in my memory as much as hearing that sound and then looking and seeing our guide's head spin in our direction, his cigarette burning bright red (I think he had inhaled quickly). After about 30 metres we turned back to see the guide had stopped running, apparently the chase was over. We were then informed that the fear was of the monkey troop running down and throwing things at us (maybe then attacking us?). After that our hiking direction changed a bit and our guide walked with his machete out. We felt a little anxious, but had a nice lunch a short while later.
A baby pineapple. Who knew? We sure didn't. 
Meg trying to figure out how the rat trap worked.
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