Detour

DAI-HARD There’s a murmur, then a babble and then suddenly a roar, and I’m sitting soggy-shoed in a wicker chair, clutching a pink parasol, almost a foot under water. This is white-water rafting, Xishuangbanna-style. Granted, the rapids on this particular stretch of the Nam Baan river, a chocolatey tributary of the Mekong, don’t quite deliver Grand Canyonesque white-knuckle thrills. But when you’re sitting in a wobbly chair, sliding around atop 20-odd lengths of bamboo lashed together with twine, any white water is, frankly, too much.

Our boat girl, Ee Kan, and boat boy, Ai Kum, seem to know what they’re doing, poling furiously as the gnarled fingers of overhanging branches grasp and claw at us. Ee Kan wails as we scud past an exposed rock, and I prepare to abandon ship. As we slide over the last of the rapids into blessed calm water, I am relieved to remember that a serenade from these silk-swathed gondoliers was part of the deal. Both are Dai tribespeople, but they’re singing their hearts out in Mandarin. “This is a famous Chinese song about a boy and a girl who fall in love under a tree,” explains Ee Kan. “I wish I could sing a Dai song for you, but we’d be in big trouble if the government found out.”

The Nam Baan, as the Dai call it (Luosuo Jiang on Chinese maps) is about two hours’ drive from Jinghong. The first part of the trip is scarier than the rafting: a twisting road dips and soars above the furious foamy rush of the Mekong’s narrow gorges. Just when you’re wishing you had found time to write your last will and testament, though, the road eases off into long, straight runs through rice paddies, and the previous hour’s terror is left behindmuch like the worst moments of river rafting, once the boat reaches calm waters. “We do fall in sometimes,” admits Ee Kan, poling away from the rapids. But by the time we glide past a jungle that thrums with cicadas and dragonflies, I have forgotten my near dunking, and I am convinced this is a lovely way to lose an hour. Just don’t wear your best Prada mules.