#2: [30-Jan-12]

09-Mar-2009 -- 2 days after reading something about this project in a german newspaper I already found my first confluence point. Luckily I had some work to do in Muang Sing, which is 60km from where I life and about 25 km from the confluence point.

At the moment I'm working with ArcGis, some days ago I got some great files about the target area, so I created a map with all the information I had, like where are the villages, where are "roads" and where are UXO's (just to be sure I will not trap into a mine on the way :D)

From Muang Sing I had to go about 20km dirt road in the direction to Muang Long, until Ban Thad. From there I could drive to huannambak (which was the nearest place I found on my map). Narrow path but pretty nice. Arrived in huannambak I tried to find someone who speaks lao (which is not naturally, because the people in this village are from the Akka ethnic group, they have their own language). After I found someone I tried to explain him this project, which was really difficult, my lao is not yet good. After explaining 20min he looked like he understood but he told me I cannot go there. I thought this might be the end of my first try to find a confluence point, but I did not give up, drove around in town until two young guys were very interested in my motobike. I explained them what I'm going to do and for 50.000 kip (about 5 Euro) they wanted to follow me. We started walking on to a steep hill (from the village my gps said only 1.4 km). On the top of the hill I had a look at my garmin and what I saw was a deep valley followed by another hill in the direction to the target point (still 1km away). Nearly impossible to go there on the direct way, but we saw another path beside that hill, so we went back to my motobike and with the two guys on the back I tried to drive this really steep and small path. Totally exhausted I cut off my bike and we continued by walking. The confluence point was only 120m away. So after some searching I finally found it :)