Day 96, 67km: by Chris

The night was thermal agony squashed into the tent: The door has to be zipped up tight to stop the mosquito army getting in, but this condemns us to a night of earth-core temperatures, lying there sweating like someone squeezing a saturated sponge.

In the morning we could hear voices not too far away, so we packed up as stealthily as possible and made our way through the undergrowth back to the road. Along the way Amy's bike got caught in a stubborn bush and while she was trying to wrench it free she was attacked by a colony of large red ants. They swarmed all over her and up inside her clothes within seconds. She freaked out a tad, but skilfully managed to do so without making any noise. I quickly started brushing away the insects while she frantically pulled off those that had attached themselves stubbornly to her skin. When we finally made it to the road Amy had lots of tiny blisters where the ants had sprayed their acid, but we had remained undiscovered.

In the next town we found a real 7eleven where we bought bread, cheese, butter, crisps and slushy ice drinks. We then sought out fruit and returned to the 7eleven for another slushy drink which we took 5km down the road to a shady pagoda only for me to throw mine down a muddy bank. This made me angry, but I was distracted by the arrival of a uniquely odd  little thai man on a pink bicycle who began trying to snatch away our empty water bottles. He eventually got one and ran off with it. A few minutes later he returned with it full of water so I filtered it with our pump while Amy tried to distract him with our map. He was very persistent though and managed to run off with a second, despite trying to tell him we really didn't want any more water because we had loads already. He was kind and overly helpful, but very odd, none'-the less.

Amy negotiates with the crazy bottle-grabbing man:

 

In the afternoon we cycled past more bedrock in a semi-desert like landscape under a roasting sun, sweat dripping of our heads and stinging our eyes.

We reached a place called Sam-Phan-Bok with a few hours of light to spare exploring plateaus of rock riddled with hollows and pools left exposed by the Mekong river in the dry season.