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May 22. Paper mash.
The accident could have been avoided. It was my idea to do paper maché, and I feel a little bit guilty about it. The kids gather at the porch as usual and when we let them storming in they are enthousiastic as always. Yeon prepares a bowl of glue and we start dipping little pieces ...
May 21. Jump around.
We have found a beautiful place. We stay under the mosquito net long this morning, before enjoying an extended breakfast, as far as the reconstruction goes. The house is really quite, despite the main road that crosses the fertile valley and should connect to China and Thailand. The local market in Luang Namtha does offer ...
May 20. Butterfly children.
The bus to Muang Sing leaves early in the morning, and after a nearly two hour ride through the staggering subtropical beauty of a national park, the road winds down into the big valley of Muang Sing. This region has the most different ethnicities of Laos, and is currently being discovered by travelers and nonprofits ...
May 19. Lao mores.
We cross the border without any difficulties. The Chinese authorities stamp exit in my passport and we walk to the Lao side, a shack with a line of waiting tourists in front of it. I study the government poster of do's and don'ts in Laos, learn about the status of the monks, the sad occurences ...
May 18. Crossing into Laos.
We get up early to take what will be our penultimate Chinese bus to Mengla. It's still a long ride down, but when we finally reach the border town of Mohan, and are in sight of the border post, we high-five like two Elvisses leaving the building. However, the border is "closed" after five o'clock, ...
May 17. Ordinary day.
Early morning we move to yet another town called Jinchang. We hope to get back to the main trail heading south towards the Laos-border. The road is beautiful again, and induces appetite for more.


We try to hitchhike here, but my stuck-out thumb is either not understood or all the drivers on the ...
May 16. Oh those rice terraces…
Windows of Yuanyang is a community shop selling handicraft run by the large Christian NGO World Vision. They cannot accept donations of any kind, because of the system the big host ngo imposes on them. I perfectly understand the need to eredicate corruption, but I simply can't deny that I feel the unnecessary burden of ...
May 15. Oversleepernight bus.
We still try to do something here in Kunming, but things don't get easier overnight. Sadly, the experience of organizations hanging up the phone, or offices hidden in some impossible to find backstreet remains associated to China non-governmental organizations. But of course! The government is doing everything here. We've learned that in Chengdu and wonder ...
May 14. They have moved three years ago.
The guidebooks are right: Kunming is the most relaxed metropolis in China. We hope to encounter better luck in finding small-scale charities here, and gahter a list of phone numbers and addresses. After a while we manage to make an appointment with an ecological ngo called greenwatershed, and we figure out that it is actually ...