mickan in world

I am writing from the end of a busy week. 

Pi Mai (Lao New Year) is a three day event. Well really it's a three day drunken waterfight, but it is marvellous and exhausting. For the last day of Pi Mai we thought we'd escape the throwing of water by being in the water so we rented tubes (upplasbara traktordack) in town and took a tuck tuck upstream. We spent the day floating down the Nam Song. Chilled out indeed, but we all got sunburnt and looked like four beetroots. The we I'm mentioning so frequently consists of a very nice group; for the floating it was me, Cameron and a Scottish girl, Chery and her Malysian boyfriend Mysoul. Really, really nice people. We have been a good group of people at the farm for the last week or so, well actually, when Cam and I discussed it is almost always a good group staying at the farm. It is as if all the nicest and most decent people from the traveling scene are being hand picked to come and stay here. I guess that that is kind of close to the truth, since it takes a little scouting to find the farm. The people who find it and makes the effort to come here are either interested in organic farming, English teaching or humanitarian projects and the rest just needs a break from the crowd and all the shit that is actually going on while backpacking. But now I lost my focus...

Oh, yes my busy week....

Wednesday a group of five strong and adventurous explorers set of on a trekk to find out what was actually on the other side of the mountain across the farm (we were very curious). It was the four people mentioned above and the fifth was our guide Marc, an English guy who kind of had been up the mountain before. Sort of. He proved to be an excellent guide though and we had a wonderful day!
Our first task was climbing the razor sharp limestone cliffs that formes the mountain side. Here Marc find it amusing to tell us the story of the last time he'd been up there; the time when Mr. Thi's son in law got bitten by a poisonous snake. "He didn't die, did he!?" "No, don't worry, he was paralyzed from the neck down and spent three weeks in total agony but after that he was fine." By the way; based on a true story.
We continued nonetheless up, up, up hill until we came to the top of the pass. Here we saw some really amazing 'rain'forest (in my world it was rainforest, it had amazingly tall trees and it was very green and damp and it had all the sounds of a proper rainforest). Here Marc choose to tell us about the features of a dengue mosquito which we imidiately recognized as the mosquitos buzzing around our sweaty heads. "Don't worry, dengue fever is not particularly common in Laos, I think."
After surviving bridges made out of a single mouldy log and all the other dangers of the 'rain'forest we reached a vally that was totally burnt. Illegal lodging and slash and burn farming is common here and it was a real pity to see it. All those old beautiful trees, and it's spreading. After that we 'macheted' us through a banana plantation (we didn't actually have a machete, but we sure wished we had one).
After a bit of skillfull pathfinding we made our way out to a beautiful, peacefull vally covered in rice fields and with magnificent mountanious surroundings. It took your breath away. We walked through the vally until we reached the other end. Here Marc presented us with the choice of either climbing a small pass to get back or to go through the cave/ tunnel that goes through the mountain. "But I think I should warn you; there were two Austrailan girls who got lost in there last year. They died from thurst." We decided climbing sounded lika a good idea.
After a beautiful walk in a dryed out river we made our way back to the safety of the farm. We were out for over seven hours but we all had a smile on our faces for the whole time; eventhough it rained for the last half hour and we were all soaking wet. It was a wonderful day!

By the way the sewing shop opened today! The girls had their first costumers for sewing class, five people, and they did a great job. I really believe in this project and I'll tell you all more about it later. Gotta run now though.

And also, I just booked my ticket for Singapore; online (very proud indeed). I'll go there on the 13th of May, so that's the latest news.

Miss and love you.