(Daniel) Packing up to leave this morning, I felt we had been here for weeks, not days.  I had woken up late, easier said than done, considering the noise that the assembled villagers were making outside the hut.  Overnight, torrential rain had poured down for several hours, leaving the track leading out of the village a muddy bog.

Mr Porn and Mr Joy made breakfast while Mum Nii and I packed up the vehicle ready to leave.  Once the noodles, rice and remains of yesterdays chicken had been consumed, the five of us sat down to discuss the plan for today.  Apparently there was another tribe just next to the Burmese border, the traditional style of the women includes shaving their eyebrows off completely.  We would also get a chance to visit the Burmese border with Laos, the two countries separated by the mighty Mekong river.

With our plan for the day complete, we climbed into the vehicle to leave.  Just then, the Village Chief, who had been overseeing our preparations walked over to me.  Through Mr Joy, he asked me to take his nephew with us, to Muang Long.  Of course I agreed, although this would now put four people on the Wolfs already crowded three rear seats!  The whole village seemed to be around the truck as I turned the Wolf around to leave.  The faces that had seemed so interesting and different, now had characters and familiarity to them, I am sure that we all felt sad to leave as the villagers waved us goodbye.

The track which had proven tricky to climb was a very different animal on the way down, the mud was deep in places, making the brakes a seriously bad idea on the down slopes.  I was forced to crawl down medium slopes in second gear, low range to prevent the front wheels digging in or sliding on the soft mud.  The start of the track was safe enough, as even the occasional slide didn’t pose a threat on the forest sections, but as we entered the slash and burn farmland tracks, the sides that had been wooded and flat fell away to steep valleys or sheer drops.  At one point the front wheel dug into the soft mud and the Wolf slid down into the hole towards the edge of the track.  Over the side I could see that the steep slope fell away into mist and the tops of tall trees far below.  I could feel the tension as I tried once to correct the angle but only slid further towards the edge.  Mum asked to get out, but knowing that we were not in any danger yet I said no.  I gave the wheels a little more power, momentarily sliding to the actual edge of the track, mud dropped down from the slope into the misty void below, but the other wheels had traction and with a blip of the throttle the Wolf gained purchase in the mud and lurched back to the safe side of the track.

Just a few hundred meters further on we came to our first downed tree.  Having driven in the rainforests of Malaysia, I know that even a small rainfall leaves trees down all over the place.  Rather than one tree we found that the mass of leaves and branches lying diagonally across the track was infact a clump of trees which had fallen over in a minor landslide.  I took the two knives which the tribes people had given us, my Parang and the Axe which I bought in  Luang Prabang.  The three guys got out from the back and together we began cutting the trunks of the fallen trees.  About halfway through a tribesman turned up and began to help us, he cut one branch and then stopped, indicating to me the root structures which hung precariously above us.  The mud surrounding the huge stump of roots was very soft, and it looked like the only thing holding the whole bank in place was the trees which we were busy cutting!  The others moved back as the tribesman and I cut the last couple of trunks.  Strangely the roots didn’t fall, but looked like they could do at any second.  The boys returned the tools to me, and climbed back in to the Wolf.  Then I carefully pulled forward to the section where the branches and stumps overhung the track.  Once again I powered through, just incase the bank decided to drop the three or four tones of mud and roots on us, bowling us into the valley below!

Further along the track we came across several other trees down, but these were smaller and posed no major problem, the mud remained the major difficulty making every downhill slope a white-knuckle experience.    After a couple of hours driving we eventually found ourselves back at the main road.  The sigh of relief was audible, It felt good to be back around towns and civilization again.  I turned onto the road and headed for the market where we had bought supplies three days ago.  Here I dropped off the Chiefs nephew, he went to get a bus to somewhere, meanwhile the others bought cold drinks at a stall.  Mr Joy told us that we could eat lunch at Mr Porn's house, then he would stay here in Muang Long as the four of us drove on to the border with Burma.

Mr Porn's house was nice, and surprisingly modern, especially compared to the simple huts which we had been staying in.  We sat outside and ate a picnic meal next to his “tac tac” tractor.  Afterwards we thanked Mr Porn, laughing about a few of the falls and funny moments from the last few days.  Our goodbyes said, Mr Joy, Nii Mum and I returned to the Wolf and headed out onto the road again.

The track was the same gravel and dirt mixture that had infuriated me before, with huge potholes ready to shake the vehicle to pieces if they were hit at the wrong speed.  After about 50kms we found ourselves at a small village, at the end of the village ran the Mekong Rover, brown and murky with whirlpools and treacherous currents evident all over it’s troubled surface.  On the other side sits Burma, thick jungle presumably patrolled by all manner of military forces, I watched the forest for ages, trying to peak a guard or sentry patrolling the jungle, but no-one appeared.  Mr Joy told me about a ferry which had recently gone down in the turbulent waters, only fifty feet to the edge of the river, but 21 of the 28 people died by drowning.  With the Mighty Mekong guarding the border, maybe the sentries were not required?  We spent some time wandering in the village, visiting a market where I bought a small knife with a buffalo horn handle.  The handmade tool with engraved blade and sheath cost me less than $2.

We left the village at around 3pm, heading back along the way towards Muang Long.  On the way the rough gravel track ran alongside many tribal villages.  About ten kilometers along the way, we turned off into an small tribal village where the Thai Lu tribe live.  We parked at the entrance to the village, walking into the group of houses.  It looked as though most of the older people had gone to work I the fields, but we found one lady sitting outside her hut who spoke to us for a while.  She had her eyebrows shaved and wore a black uniform that looked very Chinese.  We returned to the vehicle after a while, aware that it would still be a long drive back to Muang Sing.  Mr Joy, who had become close to all of us during our time together told us that he would leave us here, as his farm was close by to the area.  We said goodbye and thanked him for a great trek.  Then drove back the 80kms to Muang Sing.

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