I was trail running deep in the forest by myself.
In Phu Khao Khouay, I’d been looking at these trails for a long time. I’d gone exploring with a friend there once before (you can read about that time separately), and I finally got a chance to get out there again. This time, I took a different turn to follow a trail that looked like it might go right up to the top of the escarpment to the Phar Ngoii viewpoint. I didn’t have time to do the full journey, but I grabbed the chance to spend a couple of hours exploring before the kids woke up.
We’d stayed nearby the night before, so I left the guesthouse in the dark and headed out in the pre-dawn twilight. Spiderwebs hung across the trail from the night, a sure sign I was the first one through that day.
For a while, I had the trail to myself. Then, about four kilometres in, I saw a few motorbikes covered with branches. Hunters ride in as far as they can, park their bikes, and head off on foot further into the jungle—sometimes for days. In the accessible areas, the wildlife is already gone or incredibly wary, so they are constantly pushing deeper and deeper to find something worth hunting.
A bit further on, I met one of the hunters coming the opposite way down the trail, returning from his night in the jungle. He looked at me, wide-eyed in amazement. We chatted briefly—he asked where I was coming from, where I was going. Just before we parted, he reached out, grabbed my arm, and squeezed it. A falang, alone at 5:37 in the morning, six kilometres deep in the jungle—thinking about it now, he was checking to make sure I was real. Up unitl that moment, I think he truly believed he had met a ghost.
