Riding through the Night in the Jungles of Laos

Before getting on an 18 hour hard seater night train between Guilin and Kunming:
"It'll be an experience."
"Yeah, a BAD experience."

We went on from Shangri-La/Zhongdian to Kunming, and then to Pu'er, home-base of the famed Pu'er tea. See Joe's blog (hangjoe.blogspot.com) for an account of our odd time in that city. We continued towards Laos, stopping for a night in seedy Mengla before crossing the border at Boten. And on to Luang Namtha. The much-vaunted return. Not much has changed except that there's more trekking agencies, a new night market, and even a couple four-storey buildings under construction.

We did a three day trek with a guide I remember from 2001, Mr. Bou-get. He has learned English and started his own trekking company, "The Jungle Eco-guides". He was an awesome, fun guide. In a matter of minutes he made a bamboo aqueduct to get cooking water from a small stream. He used the same skills later to make a bamboo water pipe to smoke tobacco. The trek was basically a slog through rain and mud in the amazing forests of the Nam Ha NPA. I'll tell you more about that later.

Yesterday we rented motorcycles for a trip to Muang Sing, north of Nam Tha. We'd contacted a couchsurfer up there who works for an aid project. It'd stopped raining by the time we left and the first hour or so was a beautiful trip on a curvy mountain road, through villages, hill farms, and jungle. Then...I got a flat tire. I only vaguely considered this possibility, but had no idea what I'd do. Luckily we were within a minute of a roadside house with a couple people hanging around outside. I pointed to my flat and they quickly looked around for tools and patches. A man walked up, some children gathered as we started working on it. They gave us an extremely sour fruit they'd harvested from the forest. The man patched the tube, put the tire back on, pumped it up. I gave him some money and got on...but it was still flat. So he stopped me and did it again. Put the tire back on and pumped it up and it was STILL flat. There were three holes in the tube and it took the better part of two hours before I was on the road again. Rain clouds were gathering. It was getting late. A guy holding an AK-47 over his shoulder hitched a ride with me for a time. It was soothing to know that I had a local with a gun with me. Then he got off and it really started pouring down. We put on our rain pants and set in for the next hour and a half of intense, dark, wet riding. The sun went down and so did visibility. I just had to keep breathing and telling myself this is awesome. At times the rain actually hurt -- I think it was hail! My bike stalled, in the real middle of nowhere, pure jungle, and I freaked. But it started up again, and we went on. I hit a pothole and again was scared shitless as I thought my bike was falling apart. I saw an unoccupied bamboo hut and thought, if we need to, we can shelter there for the night. The road straightened out before night completely fell, which was a boon. Our meager headlights were enough to make our way at reduced speed. We made it to Muong Sing, nerve-wracked and hungry and profoundly wet.

It was an experience.

(ps -- Don't worry, mom, we wore helmets!)