“I spent the first night under a straw shelter, nobody came to see me, as if I didn’t exist.
Having ventured so far into the mountains, and admittedly fascinated by this encounter with a new world, I decided to spend a second night here before trying to find a guide who could take me back to the waterfall. From there, I could try to find my way back to the road and return to the civilization I had come from and had left behind in my confusion.
With no one coming to meet me, I decided to go into a hut and try to make them understand that I wanted to stay the night and be able to eat a little.
The women brought me a soup of bamboo shoots and some boiled vegetables, which I devoured in an instant, then I fell asleep in the main room.
It was the acrid smell of opium that woke me. Lying next to me, the men of the house had lit the opium lamp and were surrendering to the dreams and enchanted and cursed journeys of which only he has the secret.
The voice from beyond the grave of the opium smokers is something one cannot forget, and out of fear, I tried to get away from there and go around the village to find another refuge, because night had already fallen.
But through the bamboo walls, I could see opium lamps lit in all the houses and I could hear the broken voices of men.
I had to face the facts: every man in the village, without exception, had succumbed to her charms.
I had only one option left to live through that night at their place, and that was to sink too…
I returned to the hut I had come from, lay down next to the man, and asked him to start filling the opium pipe.

© Asia Slow Travel