A rainy day in Lìjiāng

The trip to Lìjiāng takes an hour by train or four hours by road. Needless to say the locals know this and make sure that they book their train ticket well in advance. The rest of us take the bus.
The trip is scenic enough going through forests, fields and mountains. Unfortunately the reason for the duration of the journey is that a large part of the road is unsealed while a new highway is under construction. As it had rained all night and still rained during our bus ride that meant large mud puddles everywhere.
Lìjiāng is a bit like Dali with ancient buildings under construction, lots of hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. It does look more genuine though. There are narrow cobble stone streets, little bridges and small streams everywhere. It looks like the set of a Chinese period movie.

Lìjiāng is 2400 meters above sea level and this is the first time during this trip that I am actually cold. I think I'll have to look for a jacket or a sweater tomorrow. As my sandals are beyond repair as well, a new pair of shoes is probably in order as well.

Muang Ngoi Neua

The minivan that was supposed to pick me up from the hotel wasn't there of course and after a while I got the hotel owner to ring him up another thirty minutes later he arrived, picked up some passengers and dropped us at the mini bus station where I got in a van with four others and we started for Nong Khiaw.

It's starting to rain again.

The four other passengers are a couple from Melbourne, Nina from Germany and Alex from Virginia. We have a chat and while the rain gets heavier we weave our way through the mountains, there are a few minor landslides but the road is generally in good nick and we arrive just after lunch.
The main street in Nong Kiaw is a slippery mud slide and we slip and slide our way across, most of the hotels look quite drab, cheap but no atmosphere, the continuing rain doesn't help either. The Australians eventually decide on a cottage with a river view and I suggest to Nina and Alex that we have a look and see if their is a boat to Muang Ngoi Neua. In spit of the weather it's a fantastic trip, green mountains on both sides of the boat, serious water flow and rapids to go against.
On Muang Ngoi Neua things move at the slowest pace possible, we have bungalows overlooking the Pak Ou river and a few hammocks strung out in front.
This place is well of the beaten track the only way in or out is by boat, there is no Internet and electricity from six to nine thirty in the evening.
I think I am going to like it here.

Be careful what you wish for.

A few days ago I wrote about the lack of rain so far on this trip. Well my message must have gotten through to the Buddha of the rain.

It started to rain the evening that I arrived in Luang Prabang and hasn't stopped since, 36 hours and counting. It is not your European drizzle or New Zealand squalls but torrential monsoon rain all day longs as if someone has opened up a fire hydrant and aimed it at the city.

The Mekong is a mass of floating debris and big churning water. it's also steadily rising. Last night just before dark I grabbed my umbrella and walked to the boat landing to see what the skippers of the long boats were doing. Quite tellingly they were all busy moving there mooring ropes as high up the bank as they could,and the water looks indeed like it's rising.

At least another ten vertical meters to go before it hits the road though and there is a hill in the middle of town that goes up another two hundred odd meters so now worries about washing away anytime soon.

Note: Just when I was about to post this the power failed. Now 24 hours later it rains again but it was dry for a while yesterday afternoon and I went for a walk. The places along the river bank have suffered quite a bit of erosion with banana plantations and vegetable gardens just slipping away in the river. The cause for the power outage became clear too. An enormous tree had lost it's footing on the hillside and crashed across the power lines leading to a small transformer. It was eight in the evening before the lights came back on.

Monsoon

Surprisingly it hasn't rained at all since my arrival in Thailand. Normally like a rain god the monsoon follows me around wherever I go. But this time it has been dry, it might have threatened a few times, but that's where it stayed. That is until an hour ago when, with a loud crashing of cymbals and flashing of lights, the skies opened up and it all poured out.
Funny but things like that make me a happy.

The heat.

It's amazing how while doing nothing more strenuous than listening to your iPod you can still work up a sweat.
Yesterday I walked half the day and sweated out about ten litres of water, or at least it felt like that. The biggest problem really is one that I have suffered before and had forgotten about. The sweat runs from my forehead into my eyes and by midday my vision goes all fuzzy. Nothing much I do seems to help so I try to keep cool and carry on.
In the evening my eyes look as if I bathed them in chilly but in the morning I am as good as new again.