Chang Rai we cycled due north to Chiang Kong. Every last person we met
during these two days was an absolute freak. I don't know if was a
border town thing or due to the festivities of the five day holiday
leading up to new years, but it made trying to get a room or meal
surreally time consuming.
While Michael and i crossed the mekong to huay xai in laos, marc beat
a retreat to chang mai for some urgent repairs to his bike. For the
next two days the two of us rode through the most remote mountains and
largest forest i've ever been through, passing only 3 vehicles (i use
that term loosely) on the second day. the first night, new years eve,
we spend on the floor of a 'restaurant'. The next day we arrived in
Vieng Phuka an overgrown village.
australia isn't getting is also holidaying here. it's rained every
night, and when we woke the next day we found it had really poored,
and continued to rain us in for half a day. It turned the road into a
70km line of mud snaking through the forest, so we threw our bikes on
a songthauw (ute-bus) to get to Louang Nam Tha.
behind our guest house here, along a bamboo bridge over the rice
paddies, suspended in a small grove of trees, is a herbal sauna and
massage hut- the perfect evening for two cold and tired cyclists.
The last two days have taken us to Udomxai- our first place with more
than 3 hours electricity a day (and another, bigger, sauna). The road
was pretty rough- ankle deep mud in places. a few sections were sealed
(i use that term loosely too) though, which is what we expected more
of on highway number 1.
having entered Laos in one of the remotest and leat populated corners,
it seems like we're seeing the country in reverse- the villages and
towns getting larger and the markets more diverse, the only constant
being thick forest following us the whole way.
The rain poured down as we road northwest to muang khua. the mud was
knee deep in places, and i gave up try to slip around the edges of
puddles in my dry weather tyres and just plowed through the middle. it
worked ok. we stayed on the banks of the Nam Ou, Laos second biggest
river, and we found out why all the roads had no traffic- the rivers
are the main highways. There were dozens of huts along the flats of
the river, but with all the rain, overnight the river rose over 2
metres flooding them out. it would have been tragic if the owners
didn't seem to find the sight of their huts floating away hilarious.
the river. on the first night we stayed in Muang Noi, one of the
biggest towns we'd been to so far. it had no road or trail linking it
to villages over the sharp mountains surrounding it, which meant that
the only vehicles on its paths were two muddy bicycles tearing around.
the mountains, river and lack of traffic noise also made it a good
place to chill out for a while.
We didn't make the whole distance we planned the next day, and ended
up staying on a spare mattress in a motorcycle repair shop at Pak Ou,
where the Nam Ou meets the Mekong. Arriving in Louang Prabang threw us
into a city where the french colonialism could be seen everywhere-
buildings, boulevards and bakeries. After two weeks where at least two
meals a day where sticky-rice with an egg cracked over them, chocolate
cake and bagettes with cheese never tasted so good.
It took another four days to ride to Vientiane, where we're at now.
after a few days we were out of the mountains and back into dry hot
weather. There's still not really much traffic, but there's alot more
tourists. every now and then a bus will pass with some jammed into it.
even when we're going up the steepest hill the people in the bus look
hotter and seem to be sweating more then us. They definately look more
exhausted and seem to complain alot about it.
Our last night in the mountains, at about 1400ms, was spent in a dank
agar dish calling itself a hotel in Phou Khoun. In the middle of the
night i was woken by the sound of something bashing itself against the
walls in our room. pointing a torch up i saw a bat flying around. all
i could think of was rabies. i woke up peter and said 'there's a bat
in the room we've got to open a window to get it out'. he looked up
saw it swooping down and said 'oh yeah' and quickly pulled the blanket
over his head. using reflexes honed by table tennis, i snaped an arm
up and opened a window. the bat flew straight out. i thanked peter for
his help and went back to sleep.
There's far more cycle travellers than we expected to meet- probably
as many as 30, which has been exciting for everyone concerned. We also
met Frank Van Rijn, at 400,000kms the world's second most cycled man,
and with 9? books probably the most published cycle traveller. We'd
heard rumours that he was in the country, and as we were stopped for
lunch by a river one day he pulled up next to us. it turned out he'd
followed pretty much the same route as us, and the same route as me
before that in north thailand, and like us was heading for a lake that
night, but he settled for the guaranteed quiet of a nice guesthouse in
town while we arranged a boat to take us to a guesthouse out on an
island we'd heard rumours about. It wasn't quite The Beach, but still
fun to discover. Managed to get lost again the next day looking for a
shortcut to a national park.
As far as capital cities go, Vientiane is as exciting as Canberra, and
as vast as Wellington, which means i haven't felt guilty about
relaxing these last couple of days rather than dragging myself off to
the tourist sites (although we managed to see both of them in 20 mins
ealier this evening). tommorrow we start following the mekong down to
southern Laos.
Riding down the mekong (well, near it) was nice, but there weren't as
many views to take in, villages, caves and ruins to explore or
waterfalls to swim in as the mountains (just one temple with attached
carnival), and we covered 250kms in a day and a half due to lack of
distractions and flat terrain, where we then happily turned off back
up towards the mountains and national parks.
here we almost made it to what is probably the least accesable village
in Laos- connected to the rest of the world only by river that runs
through the middle of a mountain. we turned off again down a dirt road
leading into a national park. it was about 50kms long, and for the
last half we were simply following tire trails over rice paddies
alongside the Nam Hin Boun. i guess one wet season when the road is
impassable anyway some farmer decided to shift the walls of their
fields over it. A k or so past the end of the road, the hin boun flows
straight out the side of a cliff indiana jones-style. we took a boat
up into it- in places it was so wide or tall that my torch couldn't
reach the walls. we continued up for an hour, fording a couple of
small waterfalls, but we were running out of time and had to turn back
before we reached the other side. i really wanted to visit a village
where rivers flow into mountains not oceans, but as it was we still
had to ride back under the light of the full moon.
we headed further into the mountains the next day, to Lak Sao. It's
name means it 20 kms from the border, but it's actually more than 30.
it must have been named by the same person who made the map i'm using.
from there we headed south for two days along what was called highway
8 but turned out to be a disused road with missing bridges, through
Laos biggest national park. We didn't see any of the leopards, tigers
or elephants that live there, but it was still nice to be on a road
with no traffic and lush forest.
After 1,126kms of cycling (assures my odometer) i'm finished my trip.
The tally for the trip:
* No puntures
* Over a thousand kms
* 1 broken cables
* 3 Weeks
* 1 bike still rolling
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