We were hiking up a hill. One of the guides stopped to dig a hole in the ground. He was digging for a good five minutes. We all stopped and watched. Then he put his arm deep into the hole and pulled out a brown clay-like ball, about the size of a baseball.
He told us that a mother beetle laid her eggs here and used buffalo manure to create a shell for the larvae to mature. He pulled out nine more balls and the mother beetle. He cracked open one of the balls. There was a yellow fleshy beetle in there–a beetle fetus. He said that they are edible and we will cook them with eggs and rice for lunch.
I will eat wild fruits and vegetables from the forest or fresh (cooked) fish from the sea, but not insects. No thank you. I draw the line there.
Olivier, Tom, and Mathias tried the beetle larvae at lunch. Olivier liked it, while Tom and Mathias did not. I ate my chicken and noodles and that was it.
We got finished the trek and returned to Pai around 6pm. I wanted to move on to Laos. It was only a 7 hour drive to the border. I checked if there were any busses going there tonight. Just my luck, there was one at 8pm. I said goodbye to Olivier and Tom. I booked the 2 day trip to Luang Prabang, Laos. The trip included a night bus to the border town, stay in a dorm, breakfast, ride to the border, and a 2-day boat ride down the Mekong River, ending in Luang Prabang.
I entered the bus (minivan) at 8pm. I found a good seat next to the door, when a worker told me I could sit in the front. Oh, great, first class! Little did I know the air conditioning was weak there. I sweated for an hour. I finally positioned the vents so that it exactly hit my forehead. At least then, I had some relief. In contrast, the vents in the back we blowing hard and everyone else was freezing.
We arrived near the border at 3am. We slept in a basic dorm room, sponsored by the bus company. They would take us to the border at 9am.
