Darkness falls quickly this close to the equator. For about half an hour, silence comes to the Laotian jungle as the creatures of day and night change shifts. Soon the trail is near pitch black and I hit the knot of a tree making me dismount my mountain bike; the enveloped path now too treacherous an undertaking. Closing in are the sounds of the night starting with the cicadas but soon joined by other insects and untold beasties. Just minutes earlier we had been happily cycling through fields set amid the karst hills with the odd water buffalo for company.

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