After our bicycle-tour around Chiang Mai, we took a very run-down bus to Soppong (or Pang Mapha), further into north Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar (Burma). We found a nice place to hang out: the Cave Lodge. Built by the Australian John Spies some 30 years ago, who from there explored the many caves in the area and the hill-tribes living in the border area with Myanmar. He even wrote some articles on these hill-tribes, who mostly live on growing poppy, which they use to produce raw opium, and the opium trade that made this area infamous: the Golden Triangle.

The Cave Lodge itself was built much alike a ‘youth city', from scraps of wood, corrugated sheet, no (apparent) building plan, let alone any calculations had been done. It made us wonder when the first collapse of wooden floor, wall or roof would happen. Luckily this did not happen during our stay. The place had, on the other hand, a certain nice atmosphere around it, relaxed and laid back. We enjoyed our stay. One day we went on a black water kayaking tour, through a cave and down two very steep concrete dams and over lots of rapids. Very exciting! The other day we walked to the exit of the cave to watch thousands and thousands of birds (swifts, a kind of swallow) fly into the cave at the end of the afternoon. During the day they fly around catching flies, at night they sleep in the cave, whilst bats inhabited the caves during the day, and fly out at night. Very impressive seeing so many birds gathering above and entering into the cave. We celebrated Claudia's birthday on the last morning with painted breakfast eggs and a small cake (with candle!), before the cook brought us to our next destination.

Our last stop in Thailand - for the time being - was Pai, a small village much geared to backpackers, where lots of young people just hang out. Here we rented two mopeds and toured around the neighborhood for a day. Visited a waterfall, a temple, went past many elephant camps (but withstood the urge to take a ride), just enjoying the touring around.

Pai marked the end of one month of Thailand, which went past extraordinary fast. What were our feelings after this first month of Asia? Very friendly people, although not ease to really make personal contact with them. Beautiful countryside, very wet, very green. We experienced the (end of the) rainy season, which wasn't too bad. The rain came and went more strict than the Dutch trains. We felt safe on the streets, no shouting, no angry people, all very relaxed and friendly. Thailand in general, however, is one big ‘no-favour-zone'; nothing's for free. The best proof of this happened when Sil hurt his foot when we ended up in a ditch along the road with our rented moped. A friendly Thai came over to help us and asked us whether we wanted some water to clean his foot, 'free of charge' he felt obliged to add .....

From Pai we took a night minibus to Chiang Khong at the Mekong River, the border between Thailand and Laos. Dispite the fact that it was a luxury minibus, it was a horrible drive. We left Pai at 8 pm and arrived at 3.30 am in the night. We were off-loaded at a very (and I mean very) shabby hotel, everybody (2 minibuses carrying 26 tourists) disoriented and trying to get to a good room first. The next morning we were brought to a place where we could get some breakfast and - to our surprise - we were also dropped off at the border post at the Mekong River as part of our minibus travel arrangement. When we were having breakfast, however, our driver suddenly disappeared, taking our luggage with him in the back of his van, only to return after half an hour. We did not want to be too mistrusting, but we thoroughly checked if everything was still in our backpacks, and, more importantly, if nothing was added ....... This appeared not the case, so we went on our way to our first border crossing in Asia. To be continued....