He had come down from China, across the Impossible Border north of Hanoi, and journeyed high into the Tonkinese Alps to live among the tribespeople. He spoke fluent Hmong and Vietnamese, he told us, though the few words he sprinkled among his anecdotes were garbled and nonsensical.

He had hitchhiked, mostly in military vehicles or on trucks, following the border south through some of the most rugged mountains in Southeast Asia. At night the drivers invited him to share lodgings at the cheap flophouses and feted him with orgies of homemade whisky and roast dog. I asked him about police and permission papers. He gave a great, snorting laugh. "The police won't do near the tribal areas," he said. "They're afraid of the minorities - think they're savages."

The South had been less to his taste. He was now on his way overland into Cambodia and eventually to Laos, where he planned to spend six months living with a Hmong family in a remote village. Unwilling to pay the five dollar taxi fare for the trip to the Cambodian border, he was looking for someone to take him by motorbike for free.