Good old Tom Waits and his Alice!
I have just regained by private space after an hour long entertainment session with me the entertainer and a whole village of
spectators. A good 50 people have gathered around the tent that I have somewhat unfortunately placed still too centrally in the past
seven o'clock dark (the days don't get longer here). Quite at the end of my strength I politely excused myself for the third
time and laid myself down in my tent. The folk got the message, well, at least for the next ten minutes before few people returned and
resumed watching me, this time eating my supper from start till finish. I offered them an armful of bananas to make the feast a little
less one-sided but to no avail, they pocketed the fruit and resumed their gaze. Oh well... (you sort of get used to it actually)
After crossing the Cambodian border I spent almost a week semi-paralysed with my scratched right knee swelling up like a pumpkin and a
good fever on top of it too. Two antibiotics and a decilited of antiseptic later I rode into the Bolaven Plateau in search of good
coffee which I found and coffee plantations that eluded me somewhat. Plenty of waterfalls on the way were a nice distraction but another
two days of exploring the surrounding country didn't have the right vibe and somewhat disapointed from the dulness that comes with
development and all the tourist traffic I turned into the mountains a bit more north and much further east in search for the signs of
uncle Ho. A few hour driving from the developed Saravan on a road through the mountains and after spending the night in a
beautiful little village at one of the mountain peaks with much less intense village folk I arrived to Tahoy in the early
morning next day. Tahoy has been a major crossroad for the Ho Chi Minh's trail in the area and there is even an old NVA
(North Vietnamese Army) tank nearby which I had the opportunity to explore.
(The Ho Chi Minh trail is a wide network of trails in the north-south direction on the border with Vietnam. As we all probably now it
was used to bring supplies to its troops from the north and since it was the primary target for American bombarderes many trails have been
put up in the mountains of Vietnam, east Laos and Cambodia even though there they call them Sihanouk trail - Sihanouk
being the misfortunate king having the privilege of indirectly bringing the Khmer Rouge to power.)
And thus after the second day of riding I am sleeping in this random little village on the Ho Chi Minh trail in the mountains. I had
plenty of opportunities and a desire too to stop earlier when passing some magnificent hillsides but the opportunities did not present
themselves - it was still a bright light of day and none of the local village folk that gathered each time I stopped to marvel at the
beautiful settings invited me in for the night. So I let it be and continued on this suprisingly easy stretch of road only to discover,
as it tends to be, the rough bits when it started getting dark but being me (never turn back) I continued on crossing streams and
climbing peaks on the ultra rocky and destroyed path meandering the jungle with the last of the light and then complete darkness. Just
as I was contemplating putting the tent up somewhere on the road I have recognised the shape of huts on the hill just above me and
altered my course here instead.
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