My 20 dollar tent

It didn’t rain the whole day despite the grey clouds that were hanging in the sky above me. “Why would it rain during the night?” I thought to myself when I decided to camp in the middle of nowhere, on a little green piece of land at the side of the road that leads to Luang Nam Tha. The last village was about half an hour away and I had no idea how far the next village would be. My legs were tired and therefore the spot seemed so inviting I could almost hear it calling my name. Behind a bush I parked my bike and placed my bags so they were invisible from the road. I sat down onto my backpack and was waiting for the nightfall to provide me enough darkness to secretly pitch my tent. It was going to be my first experience of camping in the wild and I’m not going to lie…I WAS a bit scared.

The first problem occurred when the mosquitoes started to eat me. There were still villagers walking home from a long days of working in the fields, so I didn’t want to pitch my tent yet and put up a sign that says I’M A FALANG (foreigner) AND I’M ALONE, COME AND ROB ME. So I was waiting and fighting the bloodsuckers away.

It was almost dark enough now but I could still hear the hollow sound of a man cutting bamboo. Because a few meters from my “campground to be” there was some bamboo lying on the ground, it needed no Sherlock to know that the man will eventually pass this place and drop off the bamboo before returning to his home. Patiently I was waiting for the man to pack up work. In the meantime the grey clouds above me turned kind of black and threatening. Think positive! This is going to be a good way to test a 20 dollar tent!

2 workers passed. Their chatter warned me and I could duck down behind a bush. The last worker was quietly creeping through the bushes and I wasn’t quite sure if he spotted my hideout.

Now that I was only surrounded by the sound of nature I could finally build my shelter and crawl inside it to eat a nice meal of toast with jam and bananas on top. Fearful I was peeking through my mosquito net to check if there was really nobody coming along the way.

I tried to sleep but with every noise I opened my eyes in shock just to see that there was absolutely nothing going on outside my tent. Only the floodlights of passing trucks kept appearing on one side of my tent and disappeared on the other.

Then something strange was happening: There was a light but it wasn’t accompanied by the sound of an engine. It came closer and closer and lit up the inside of my tent. I unzipped my “door”, exposed my head to the light and wanted to say something like: “I surrender. Take everything but not my life!” I didn’t know the words in lao at that time so I tried it with: SABAIDEE?!? (Hello) Back came a friendly sabaidee, sabaidee and then the cone of light swiveled away from my face and lit up a little path where the sound of footsteps and quiet whispers disappeared.

The signs were all there: The lightnings, the clouds…I just didn’t want to face the truth but wasn’t surprised either when heavy drops of rain started falling onto my tent. Within minutes it started drizzling inside the tent. How refreshing I thought! But after a while I covered myself with my 2 dollar “raincoat”. Water came streaming in from the bottom and formed little puddles around my 6 dollar mat.

The next morning, after a little bit of sleep I woke up with a wet ass. What did I learn? You get what you pay for!

My hideout

The morning after...