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.