342km Luang Prabang to Pakbeng

We must be gluttons for punishment. After a gruelling journey over mountains to Luang Prabang, we hit the road again for another steady series of rolling hills all the way to the tiny riverside village of Pakbeng. We could have taken the boat straight from the tourist centre of Luang Prabang to the Thai border but instead we plumped for the more difficult option of four days cycling to the halfway point. Our legs were complaining but our souls were happy as we pedalled through yet more rural villages to the steady tune of “sabaydee” sung by Lao children.

The average Lao family seems to have about eight children. You can’t pass through a village without large groups of enthusiastic and smiling kids running to the roadside to greet you and it’s these young Lao citizens who have really won us over to the country. When we first arrived a month ago from Cambodia we thought Lao was nice but not great. A tough couple of days about halfway through made us feel like running back to Thailand but now, looking back, we are so glad we didn’t take the easy option.

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It’s the beginning of September and as of today we’ve been on the road for two years. Two years! When we write it out, it’s hard to believe. So, what have we been doing all that time?

Well, we’ve had 306 rest days, off the bikes. That leaves 424 days to do all the other things we get up to. We are very good at sleeping and we reckon that takes up a good 8 hours a day. That’s 141 more days gone right there.

Now we’re down to 283 days.

During that time we’ve practiced another specialty, eating, which easily takes up 3 hours of our day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and a multitude of snacks. A cyclist has to eat and that’s 35 days gone just on calorie intake.

Add in shopping at the market (1 hour), writing things for the website, getting it online and keeping in touch with all of you (at least 1 hour), relaxing and sightseeing (2 hours) and we’re left with just 196 days.

How many days?! We still haven’t done our washing, filtered our drinking water, packed and unpacked our luggage, set up our tent, cleaned the bikes, planned our route or renewed our insurance and bank cards not to mention sorting through the other paperwork amassing in a pile at a friend’s house in London. That’s got to be at least another 2 hours a day right there.

So now we’re left with just 179 days on the road. Lazy? Well, in that time we have managed to cover 29,888km – about two thirds of the earth’s circumference. That’s an amazing 166km a day through 25 countries on 4 continents! Phew. Now we’re feeling tired. And we’ve survived 302 nights together in close quarters in our tent and we’re still married and speaking to one another. Even more amazing! Here’s to the next year on the road…

With credit to Sonya and Ali of Tour.tk for the inspiration for this post.

240km Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang

If we were asking ourselves just a few short days ago why we were doing this journey by bicycle, the world delivered its answer on the road to Luang Prabang. From the town of Kasi, only famous as a bus stop a little north of Vang Vieng, the road starts out flat but before long the mountains appear. Their peaks were still covered in mist as we began our climb in the early morning hours.

Up, up and still further up we went, passing women from the H’mong hill tribes with handwoven baskets on their back, walking in groups to the fields of rice, corn and bananas for a hard day of work. Sometimes they took their small children along but more often than not as we passed through tiny villages we spotted men at home with the youngest babies strapped to their backs. The parenting duties are equally shared in this part of the world, it would seem.

In each village, we were a universal hit with the kids, who rushed forward to wave and say ‘hello’ with wide grins. A few even held out their hands for high fives and were delighted when we managed to deliver one while still pedalling uphill. It was this constant string of good cheer coupled with the spectacular scenery that kept us going over a seemingly endless series of hills.

“Good luck,” said a backpacker as he looked at us when we stopped for lunch and then hopped into an air conditioned minivan for the ride to Luang Prabang. He was right, we needed it. Only occasionally did the road turn downwards, sparking hopes that maybe we’d reached the top but after two or three curves we inevitably spotted the next ascent ahead. By late in the afternoon we were flagging but a good 30km remained to the next guesthouse so carrying on was the only option.

Too tired to expend much energy on talking, we pushed silently to the top of a hill. Just as we glided over the crest we were greeted by a boy about 12 years old, singing a tranquil song in his own language. What a reward for our hard work and what a reason to travel by bicycle. The sound of his voice carried with us for a few hundred meters as we slipped down the other side to the next looming ascent.

Only the next day did we reach the city of Luang Prabang after rising at 5:30am from our spartan hotel in the mountain top town of Kiukacham, cooking breakfast on the hilltop and then descending through dreamy clouds of fog and lush valleys from 1,400 meters. Down we came to a river, then back up 15km before we reached our last downhill stretch into Luang Prabang. Finally in the city, our legs were like jelly and they stayed that way for the rest of the day. The mountains of northern Laos are hard work but the dividends they give back to the eager cyclist are worth it.

195km Vientiane to Vang Vieng

After our marathon bus ride to Vientiane and a day of sightseeing, we decide to leave the capital city on Friday for our ride north to Luang Prabang. There’s no natural light in our hotel room but we still manage to wake up around 5am and after cooking breakfast outside on the patio we’re ready to go. These are the best hours for cycling, when the air is cool and refreshing.

Our initially promising early start is soon delayed when we stop at a motorbike shop to fix a very slow leak in Friedel’s front tire. It’s been losing air for about three months now and we’ve just topped it up once a week, being too lazy to find the hole in the tube. Today we decide we’ll sort it out so we stop by the shop to use their compressed air and start to pull the tube out. We instantly attract the attention of four underemployed mechanics and for a moment we wonder if we shouldn’t just get them to do this but then we remember a photo another cyclist showed us of a Lao repair to his tube that went wrong. The patch turned into a big bubble when the tire was inflated. Better to do it ourselves, we think. Unfortunately our five minute stop turns into a half hour job when we realise the new tube we’ve put in also has a hole and it’s a quick leak this time! Off comes the tire again, we patch the hole and eventually we’re on our way. (more…)

12km Bus station to Downtown Vientiane

We hummed and hawed over whether or not to take the bus to Vientiane. As soon as we made our decision we changed it and then, a few minutes later, reversed it again. The bicycle has always been our preferred way to get around but, with time ticking down on our Lao visa, five days of long, hot riding seemed excessive to cover a relatively bland stretch of countryside. On the other hand, ten hours in a bumpy bus is no pleasure either and on the few occasions we have hopped on the bus there are always the little twinges of ‘what ifs’ – what if we’d met someone interesting out there in the middle of nowhere?

We’ll never know because in the end we plumped for the 7am bus from Savannakhet. The bus was a local affair, aging with lumpy seats and one television at the front pumping out karaoke tunes all the way to the capital. Now we were rolling with six wheels instead of two but the experience was still full of discovery. Over the course of 500km we learned that every single karaoke video features a young, handsome man with a guitar, singing his heart out for a beautiful girl. We also had another installment of our lessons in real Lao food. Ladies jumped on the bus at each stop to sell everything from three eggs on a stick with developed embryos inside (these were popular in Cambodia as well) to grilled squirrel and green mango with a salty chilli dip. The green mango was tasty. We didn’t try the squirrel. We’ve never been tempted by the eggs. One man across the way bought a dozen. (more…)