Heading further north towards Nong Khiaw in a sawngthaew (small pick-up truck with two benches in the back) I realised that I had just made it to the real Laos. Small huts made of wood and bamboo on the hillsides and along the windy mountain road- and Nong Khiaw, where most travelers just stop to change the bus or get a boat further up the river, wasn't much different: just a couple of houses and huts along the river. We found a little restaurant where 2 women were preparing the lunch for the family: LAB ( meat mixed with herbs like mint), papaya salad, herbs, soup and sticky rice. They invited us into their kitchen to see how they prepared the food on the floor, and later on we had the same food as the family. We started to hike east on the road from the town, we walked for about 45 minutes until we got to the only "tourist attraction" in the surrounding: a cave - we kept on walking, and it was pretty amazing to see how far the travelers before us had walked: while the kids in the huts around the cave came toward us, greeted us and asked where we're from, the kids 15 minutes down the road, where most travelers obviously had turned around, were still able to say PEN ( for school) with the well-known suffering look in their eyes. We kept on walking for about 90 minutes and finally reached another village where we saw the kids shout at each other, pointing at us and then they disappeared inside or behind the houses to stare at us from a save distance - finally curiosity won and they followed us with a few meters distance giggling through the whole village, we greated the women who were sitting outside their huts and they stared at us before they managed a smile and one woman greeted us with "Sabadee falang". It was getting late, so we turned around and walked through the village again, the kids coming closer this time as they wanted to have a closer look at the displays of our cameras - the unexpected encounters are often the most authentic ones. It was quite a walk back, we made it to our hut way after sunset, but it was certainly worth it. A whole day of beeing in transit brought me to Luang Nam Tha and I headed on to Muang Sing the next day.I walked down the main street (not that there are many) of Muang Sing, I didn’t get far till women of a minority tribe, who were roaming the place looking for tourists, located me as their target ( it seemed that I’ve been the only westerner in this street at this time ) and offered me hats and bracelets- in their open hands you could see small packages of Opium shining through the uplined bracelets. We did some trekking through the surrounding hillsides the next day, we visited villages of the Akha & Hmong minority tribes which were almost unspoiled by tourists – definitely the best encounter with minorities in asia so far. Some of the older woman had black teeth from chewing betel nut, and although we saw many women in the villages we could hardly locate any men ( sleeping after smoking to much opium?) ,we resisted ( after being shouted at ) to get out our cameras most of the time and were rewarded with unforgettable impressions and scenes of their daily life. A doctor was visiting one of the Akha- villages, which was interesting to witness. We had a delicious lunch in a small covered place between two fields, our guide had brought yummy lao- food cooked by his wife and wrapped in huge leafes: sticky rice, steamed vege’s, lab, omelette and in addition baked or deep-fried bananas and crusty, dried beef which he had bought at the morning market in Muang Sing earlier (Oh my god, I’m rambling about food again!). Althrough we felt more like having a nap after that meal, we kept on walking. Many of the surrounding hillsides were just cleared of their natural vegetation to become fields, leaving only some burned stumps where used to be trees. When we left the last village some kids just returned on the back of water – buffallos. I took a private shuttle early in the morning of the next day back to Luang Nam Tha to catch the morning bus down to HuayXia next to the border of Thailand. As I got my ticket fairly early I was lucky to get one of the “regular” seats right at the back of the bus, I could even stretch out my legs a little, who would let this luxury be spoiled by having the only motion- sick woman sitting next to you: as this was the second time in a row, I was pretty prepared: after she had filled everything she had brought along I handled over my spare plastic bags which she thankfully filled as well while the bus slowly rolled downhill around another corner. The skinny old guy on my right leaned out the window: sniffing – he turned to me, we looked at each other and gestured at our noses to make sure that we smelled it both: must have been the brakes, not surprising with this mass of people in the bus, more surprising that we had made it up the hill in the first hand, while I was still wondering if all the traveling guides had something like this in mind while writing about getting into touch and interact with the locals….. I could ramble on about bus trips forever …. – thanks to the new highway we made it to our destination in the mid-afternoon, still in time to cross the border to Thailand by crossing a river- which I did. I got a shuttle-van to Chiang Mai in the evening, where I spread out over a whole row of seats while JonBonJovi and Extreme lulled me into sleep with some rock ballads and made unmistakable clear that I’m back to Thailand….how I missed Laos!!!! . I roamed aimlessly through the streets of central- ChiangMai the next day, passing loads of temples and even more travel agencies which offered “everything in one day”- tours: 40 min this, 15 min that, just reading made you sweat already, I guess I’ve been still exhausted from the day before. I fled to the countyside - a village called Pai - the next day, which you could describe as an INTERNATIONAL hideout, a small place at a river nestled between mountains, the main street consists of internet-cafes and restaurants where you can get everything you could possibly wish: thaifood, pizza & pasta, tapas, steaks, humus, even “Schnitzel”. Still very relaxing to sleep in a little bamboo hut next too the river. From there I made a day trip to Mae Hong Son, there’s a village with Kayan-people there, which are better known as “giraffe- women”. And unfortunally it’s really like visiting animals in a zoo: as there are only about 100 people with this very unique custom which came from Burma to Thailand recently as refugees – they were settled down in set-up villages which can be visited for an entrance fee. I just returned to Chiang Mai today, got a bicycle which makes it much faster ( and more “adventurous”) to get around.

I walked to the bus station in the early morning, got some sticky rice and 3 pork sticks from one of the "mobile" food stalls and jumped on a bus up to Nong Khai, a small relaxed town next to the Lao border. I crossed the border the next day and made it to the capital of Laos-the Land of a Million Elephants: Vientiane. Tried to relax with the obligatory beerlao after a lot of traveling lately ( what a stupid comment) and did some sightseeing, of course, cycled to the huge golden holy stupa - the most famous landmark of Laos, walked across the morning market and saw more temples ( unbelievable that I can still manage to look at more temples). I took a bus to Luang Prabang, passing small huts made of wood and bamboo at the hillsides next to the winding road. Luang Prabang is an amazing place: a pretty small town nestled between mountains and almost surounded by rivers - lots of golden temples and french colonial architecture using a lot of wood which gives this place a special flair. Althrough loved by tourists, this town seems to maintain a laid-back atmosphere where time seems to tick away very slowly. You just float through the small streets of the town, passing dozens of temples with hundreds of monks and a street market where Hmong people sell beautifully woven and embroidered blankets and clothing. I went to the elefant park project to do some elefant riding and kajaked down a river later on, which was very relaxing: just take in the beautiful landscape, paddling around some water buffallos which looked at us with big eyes and somehow managed to keep their heads above waterlevel while chewing in slow-motion....some kids playing in the shallow water while we made our way through some little rapids. At 5am today only a small strip of light suggested where the sun would rise later on, I started to walk towards the centre of town through empty streets, the town still seemed to sleep, I sat down at the riverside and watched the first locals open their foodstalls, a few minutes later a long row of monks in saffron robes slowly passed by to collect the morning alms ( rice contributed from kneeling women), I walked a few streets and found the street market, where locals were about to sell all kind of food: fresh vegetables like sweet potato, pumkin, chilli, cucumber and herbs; fruits like rambutan and loads of mandarines, fresh meat - even living frogs, tied with one leg to a bamboo stick. Later I saw some more monks hurry down the streets, about to finish the collection of the morning alms, at 6 sharp loads of tourists with their cameras seemed to pop up at the corners of the streets to get a good shot of them. I went to a waterfall in the afternoon, several pools with cristal clear water to swim in, and not to many people there as it was a little overcast today. Gonna leave this lovely place tomorrow to head further north.

Eventually, we made it to the famous temples around Siem Reap - Ankor Wat and dozens of others, some of them partly swallowed by the jungle with huge trees growing on top of the builings. Spend quite some time climbing up and down temples, watching little monkeys coming out onto the streets in the late afternoon and cows walking through "open-air restaurants" or people riding elephants. When it was time to leave Siem Reap I decided to take a bus to Bangkok in the early morning. The trip through Cambodia was rough, unsealed roads, which means that the "street" had turned into one big field of mud because of the rain the night before. Anyway, we were bouncing along, I've learned to cherish the seats of the minibus, althrough not much space, especially for my knees, I don't know how the Khmers on those trucks survived....we passed some bikers with pigs striped behind them on the bike, I guess those didn't make a sound because their backbones where already broken because of these streets...I had a big laugh when I looked in the lonely planet guidebook: it's called the Boulevard of broken backbones...we made it to Poipet, the town next to the border, somewhen after 3 pm, the main road of the town had become a river, when we stopped at the bus station/place, our bus made a huge wave so that everybody at the station got wet feet...after another 5 min busride and a little hike across the border I found the place where the bus to Bangkok left from and finally got a bus at 5 pm ...I was wondering when I had left ASIA and returned into the western world: airconditioned, big luxus buses("2 floors") , and no more than 24 people where allowed to hop on each bus ( I still don't get why ), which meant not even half full- I felt like in Elvis' living room, big TV screens in the front, the roof plastered with leather, looking like a couch...and sealed highways with several lanes - what a smoth fast ride!!! Straight electricity cables! We stoped at an ordinary gas station: no 3- liter cocacola-bottles full of fuel at a little place along the street.... how I missed cambodia !!!!!!! I made it to Bangkok somewhen after 9pm and found a nice place to stay at one of the small streets ( =soi) off Sukhumvit Rd. I spend the next days running from different embassies to several tourist attractions and back, spending lots of time just "in transit". Anyway, I managed to see quite a few sights at the right shoreside of the Chao Phraya river, like the Royal Palace and the shining Wat(=temple) Phra Kaew, Wat Pho with it's large reclining buddah statue, Chinatown, the Vimanmek Teak Mansion, the Elefant museum, the throne hall and the beautiful red teak house of Jim Thompson. I headed down Sukhumvit Rd in the evening, looking for nice Thai food, walked down one of the small streets off Sukhumvit Rd, went around another corner and guess where I ended up ( what a coincidence, hahaha) ??? Flashing red lights reminded me of Las Vegas, no wonder it's called cowboy street...I waded through a ocean of bars with dozens of Thaigirls with short skirts waiting in front, and as it didn't exactly look like they were waiting for me ( or had an intention to feed me) I made it back to Sukhumvit Rd and headed further down to find something to eat, which I finally did, after walking quite a bit down the road, keeping myself bussy looking at the roadsite markets and trying not to run into one of those old western guys holding hands with their little thai chicks. After collecting my visas I left Bangkok, there's still a lot to see over there, but I'll be back anyway. I headed north to Ayutthaya, a city ( or let's say island as it is surrounded by rivers) with lots of ancient temples left from times when it was the capital of thailand - a small place though, I decided to rent a bike to get around, which was really enjoyable till it started to rain in the late afternoon which ended the trip a little early, at least I kept the locals entertained: picture me completely soaked, cycling along the streets ( that turned into lakes) with a big grin and only one shoe - as one of my sandals broke on the way...there were even people circling around me on their motorbikes just to make sure that they'd seen right - while others shouted at me, trying to tell me that the "stopper" on my bike was still in place ( couldn't be fixed). I took the train to Nakhon Ratchasima (Khorat) today, thankful that my backpack is such a comfy thing to sit on. Originally I wanted to see a place south of town, but I guess I'll head straight north to the border of Laos instead, as this rainy afternoon kind of puts me off wandering around in the middle of nowhere.