My last days in Laos

The ride from Vang Vieng to Vientiane was a case for the top gears. A little sad I left the mountains behind me. The closer I got to Vientiane the more traffic I had to share the road with. I decided to hitchhike the last 40 kilometers because it was getting dark. After I stood there for about half an hour without a car stopping, a couple picked me up because it just started to rain pretty heavy. They had a pickup truck full of bananas which they were about to sell at a market in Vientiane. They didn’t speak any English but we seemed to get along just fine. Then the woman decided that she needed a translator and called up her friend. The communication wasn’t much easier with her friend on the phone, and for some reason I still don’t quite understand they turned the car around and rode back to a restaurant where her English speaking friend was drinking beer. 15 minutes later they started the car again and were finally driving towards Vientiane. My translator sat next to me and asked me for the tenth time where I will stay in Vientiane and for the tenth time I told her: no hotel, friends place. Still 30 kilometers from the capital city they told me that now it’s too late for them to sell their bananas, so they will go back to their village. For a ridiculous amount of kips they offered to give me a lift to Vientiane. Very angry I got out of their car. I didn’t tell them to fuck off, but I hope it was written on my forehead.

While we were going around in circles the sun set and now I was surrounded by pitch black darkness, only the dim lights of some little stalls and the floodlights of the cars lit up the road. It was too dangerous to cycle. I started to wave my arms at the passing trucks but none of them took notice of the fallang that was standing at the side of the road. Just as I was about to give up and pitch my tent somewhere a car stopped and a young guy gave me a lift to the center of the city.

Very tired I reached the place of Ceci and Celine, two couchsurfers from Argentina and France that are living in Vientiane. The two girls were so nice and their couch incredibly comfortable that I didn’t want to do much more than just chill, chat and eat.

In the evening of the second day I cycled to the bus station. With my bicycle tied to the back of a bus I fell asleep in Vientiane and woke up in Pakse.

Right now I’m in Don Det, one of the 4000 little islands in the middle of the Mekong. It’s a beautiful and quiet place, perfect to lie in a hammock and read a book, cycle around the island and swim in the Mekong.

Tomorrow I will cross another border. This time it will be Cambodia on the other side.

In Vientiane with Ceci and Celine

Mekong

 

Wat Phu, Champasak

Don Det, 4000 islands

Hills, heat and highs

Five days I stayed in Luang Prabang, gave my muscles a rest, my bicycle pants a good wash and hung out with some fellow travelers. The days were hot and just relaxing seemed to be the most sensible option.  One evening Roger, a Spanish guy, and I managed to go sightseeing and met a 24-years old ex-monk who was just “released” from the temple and was enjoying his newly gained liberty by checking out the girls that were passing by. The next day he showed us some sights in Luang Prabang and set an end to our days of just lazing around.

15 coffees, 40 bananas, 2 beers and a few noodle-soups after arriving in Luang Prabang I was ready to leave again. A cyclist who I ran into on my way to Luang Prabang warned me about the journey ahead and backed up his words with an altitude profile he showed me. There were 2 scary looking hills coming up. It took me 3 days to get to Vang Vieng. 3 days that, besides the long sweaty climbs, offered me some of the most stunning views and some long downhill rides. Whenever my bicycle tripled its speed without me doing anything my mood went from great to fantastic and I sang along with the song that was playing in my head.

The mornings were beautiful. The valley was covered in a sea of clouds and only the mountain tops were glittering in the sun. The air was still cool and it was quiet. The villages came slowly to life. People trickled out of their houses and disappeared in the fields and kids with sticky rice in their hands were walking to school. Each turn of the road offered me a more spectacular view of the mountains.

Arriving in Vang Vieng was a little bit shocking. On my way here, whenever busloads of tourist passed me (there were MANY of them), I wondered: Where the hell do they all go? Now I know: They all have a jolly good time in Vang Vieng. They wander about the streets in their skimpy dresses, showing off flesh (nice or not so nice I let them be the judge of it), get drunk on dirt-cheap (for them) Lao beer and say things like “protein just makes me too big”. Because I didn’t fancy swapping tales with them about how drunk I got while I was floating down the river on an inner tube (which is one of the attractions here) and collecting new facebook friends, I successfully avoided them and had a jolly good time on my own. I’m the antisocial anti-consumer.

Luang Prabang

Bicycle parking in front of a school

Two hard working women

The stowaway or how my magic cape got holes

Yesterday I went swimming and used my magic cape as a sarong. Another good thing about my cape is its multi-functionality!

So my magic cape was wet and needed to be dried. I hung it over my bicycle (another multifunctional thing) during the night. The next morning, it was still a bit damp; I stuffed it into my little backpack.  After 2 hours of cycling, I just finished my noodle-soup for breakfast, I got it out and stared into two eyes, attached to a HUGE (really huge…like 15 cm long) grasshopper (or something alike) that was dangling from my cape.

Poor thing! It was captivated in the darkness of my bag for over 2 hours and must have been terrified. In its despair it chewed 4 holes into the cloth; 4 holes in search of light and freedom.

In disgust I tried to shake the creature off. With its long legs it was clinging on to the piece of cloth that was almost worthless but very precious to me. After a little fight, which I won, it disappeared in the bushes. I wonder if it will ever find its way back home…

As for my magic cape: it still works.

Noodle soup, sticky rice and Beer Lao

Today I heard it again. My favorite Thai word: ALLOY. So it also exists in Laos! I don’t know EXACTLY what it means, but its best to be accompanied by a wide grin and a thumps up. It’s the perfect ice-breaker. When you like something you, just say ALLOY and everybody knows: the Falang likes it!

I heard it today at the market in Luang Nam Tha. Hungry I was hunting for some food and slowed down next to a stall where people were eating Noodle-soup, not too sure whether I like what I saw swimming in their bowls. A woman pointed at the empty seat besides her. I sat down. She gave me a spoonful of her soup to try and asked: ALLOY?? ALLOY!! I replied and ordered myself a steaming hot and very tasty Noodle-Soup.

With a bag full of sticky rice I left Luang Nam Tha and cycled towards Boten and the Chinese border. Only 30 km from the border I had the choice of cycling to China or heading towards Vientiane and the South of Laos. I took a right turn and headed southwards.

In a little village I tried to get comfortable on a stone, got out my sticky rice and was eyed by the villagers with curiosity. The road went up just to go down the other side again and went down just to climb up again. In the end it was a race against time because with every spin of my wheels the sky turned a little darker. As the first houses of another village appeared I was stopped by some people drinking beer at the side of the road. They filled a glass of ice cold Beer Lao for me and told me that I have reached my destination Oudomxai. After 2.5 month of alcohol abstinence 2 glasses of beer were a lot to take and before they got me completely wasted I bailed out and cycled to a guesthouse, a little tipsy.

The next day I encountered a road full of potholes and parts where the asphalt seemed to have gone missing. The road only went uphill. My legs were tired and soon I decided to try my luck with hitchhiking. I was on a road without much traffic, so I kept cycling till I heard an engine roaring behind me. I pulled on my brakes, held my thump out and the car came to a stop beside me. A friendly man gave me a ride to Pak Mong which was only 44 kilometers away. The many bumps in the road were too much for my bladder. I had to request a pee stop.  He didn’t speak English so I had to sign it to him. As soon as he got what I asked for he stopped, I jumped out and disappeared in the bushes, praying he won’t leave me and take off with ALL my belongings…

The route from Pak Mong to Luang Prabang was a blessing: I was cycling along a gorgeous river, there were many kids that treated me like a superstar as I was cycling past them, I received a lot of “free kilometers” by long downhill roads, the sun was shining and the birds were singing….was I dreaming?

Drinking Beer Lao with strangers

Hitchhiking to Pak Mong

Nam Ou river

My 20 dollar tent

It didn’t rain the whole day despite the grey clouds that were hanging in the sky above me. “Why would it rain during the night?” I thought to myself when I decided to camp in the middle of nowhere, on a little green piece of land at the side of the road that leads to Luang Nam Tha. The last village was about half an hour away and I had no idea how far the next village would be. My legs were tired and therefore the spot seemed so inviting I could almost hear it calling my name. Behind a bush I parked my bike and placed my bags so they were invisible from the road. I sat down onto my backpack and was waiting for the nightfall to provide me enough darkness to secretly pitch my tent. It was going to be my first experience of camping in the wild and I’m not going to lie…I WAS a bit scared.

The first problem occurred when the mosquitoes started to eat me. There were still villagers walking home from a long days of working in the fields, so I didn’t want to pitch my tent yet and put up a sign that says I’M A FALANG (foreigner) AND I’M ALONE, COME AND ROB ME. So I was waiting and fighting the bloodsuckers away.

It was almost dark enough now but I could still hear the hollow sound of a man cutting bamboo. Because a few meters from my “campground to be” there was some bamboo lying on the ground, it needed no Sherlock to know that the man will eventually pass this place and drop off the bamboo before returning to his home. Patiently I was waiting for the man to pack up work. In the meantime the grey clouds above me turned kind of black and threatening. Think positive! This is going to be a good way to test a 20 dollar tent!

2 workers passed. Their chatter warned me and I could duck down behind a bush. The last worker was quietly creeping through the bushes and I wasn’t quite sure if he spotted my hideout.

Now that I was only surrounded by the sound of nature I could finally build my shelter and crawl inside it to eat a nice meal of toast with jam and bananas on top. Fearful I was peeking through my mosquito net to check if there was really nobody coming along the way.

I tried to sleep but with every noise I opened my eyes in shock just to see that there was absolutely nothing going on outside my tent. Only the floodlights of passing trucks kept appearing on one side of my tent and disappeared on the other.

Then something strange was happening: There was a light but it wasn’t accompanied by the sound of an engine. It came closer and closer and lit up the inside of my tent. I unzipped my “door”, exposed my head to the light and wanted to say something like: “I surrender. Take everything but not my life!” I didn’t know the words in lao at that time so I tried it with: SABAIDEE?!? (Hello) Back came a friendly sabaidee, sabaidee and then the cone of light swiveled away from my face and lit up a little path where the sound of footsteps and quiet whispers disappeared.

The signs were all there: The lightnings, the clouds…I just didn’t want to face the truth but wasn’t surprised either when heavy drops of rain started falling onto my tent. Within minutes it started drizzling inside the tent. How refreshing I thought! But after a while I covered myself with my 2 dollar “raincoat”. Water came streaming in from the bottom and formed little puddles around my 6 dollar mat.

The next morning, after a little bit of sleep I woke up with a wet ass. What did I learn? You get what you pay for!

My hideout

The morning after...

FALANG ALAAAAAAAAAARM!!!

Heavily loaded with water and fruits I left Huay Xai and the Mekong behind and cycled inland.

The scenery passing me by is beautiful. It’s very mountainous, with green fields and forests.

Laos has some very noticeable differences to Thailand: For a country of its size it has not a lot of inhabitants and for the amount of inhabitants it has very little cars. With a frequency of 5-10 minutes cars and motorbikes were passing me as I was slowly rolling up the hills. It’s a cyclist’s dream!

Laos is poorer and much less westernized than its neighbor.  Most of the people live in villages, in simple wooden houses. The villagers work in the fields where they grow rice, vegetables and fruits and they exchange goods amongst each other. In the morning I can see people walking to the fields with tools in their hands and in the evening they walk back to their village. Some of them have bicycles, but it’s mostly kids going to school that make up the cyclists of the country.

Between the villages there are many little bamboo huts, along the side of the road, where the workers can seek shelter. I haven’t seen many of them in use, so they make up perfect places for my lunch breaks!

There are no 7-11’s or other impersonal supermarkets, but very lively marketplaces to buy cooked food, fruits and vegetables and small shops that sell the products they import from Thailand.

Whenever I cycle through one of the little villages the Falang (Foreigner) Alarm goes off.

As soon as one of the villagers spots me he informs the others by shouting FALANG!

All the children start waving and shouting: Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye! I hear eeeeeeeh’s and oooooooh’s and bye’s and sabaideeeeeeeeee’s.

It feels like taking part in a marathon. The only thing missing are the tables at the side of the road, with cups of water, Gatorade and little pieces of bananas.

Kids come streaming out of their houses and the crazy and brave ones even jump into the road to get a hand slap from the “Falang” that is cycling through their village. When I extend my arm and clap my hand against theirs, they jump up and down, and proudly turn around to check if all their friends have seen the spectacle.

The roads

The roadside shelters

Other lunch places

The villages

The landscape

The children

 

 

 

 

 

 

The admirers

There’s something about border crossings

As I was getting closer to Chiang Saen I was getting closer to the Mekong, the river that I will meet many times along my journey. When for the first time I saw its masses of water flowing in the direction I was headed, it filled me with excitement and peace.

With the first glance of the Mekong came the first time I saw the country that lies behind its eastern riverbank: Laos.

The grass is always greener on the other side right? In the case of Laos this was really true. Across the river I saw nothing but green hills.

Because there is no official border crossing in Chiang Sean I still had a day’s cycling ahead of me. To get a stamp in my passport I needed to get to Chiang Khong which lied about 55 km downstream. Since it’s downstream and the way leads mostly along the river I thought it’s going to be an easy ride. I was wrong. Not only the views that presented themselves in front of eyes were breathtaking, but also the rides up very steep hills. Many times I had to get off my bicycle and push it. And even that was challenging. Not for my legs but for my arms instead. Ironically that day also presented me with the first flat tire since I started this journey. After I cycled over broken glass so many times in the previous days and nothing happened, this happened now that I really have to exit the country…

A few hours later as planned I arrived at the Immigration office in Chiang Khong, where an official exit-stamped my passport and gave me a stern look goodbye. I wasn’t expecting a goodbye speech (something like it was nice to have you in our country please come back) but a smile would have been nice.

Because the Mekong forms the natural border between Thailand and Laos and there is yet a bridge to be built I had the pleasure of crossing the border on a boat!

“U taking that thing to Laos?” an American guy asked pointing at my bicycle. “Yeah? That is aaaaaawesome!” Yeah awesome…of course I’m not going to leave my lovely bike behind. What a horrible thought!

With bike and bags I jumped onto one of the long-tail boats that were floating on the river. Rapidly the houses of Thailand got smaller and smaller, and the shore of Laos came closer and closer. Goodbye Thailand, hellooooo Laos!

My first encounter with the Mekong

The golden triangle, where Thailand, Laos and Burma meet

Border crossing, from Chiang Khong in Thailand to Huay Xai in Laos

Nice, nicer, Thai?

The amount of friendly people I met in Thailand equals about the amount of people that tried to rip me off in India.

 Maybe because we were travelling by bicycle or because we looked dirtier than normal tourists, people didn’t see us as cash machines on wheels and didn’t want to take advantage of us. It was quite the opposite.

Apart from the first two nights in Bangkok we didn’t have to enter a single hotel in the whole time in Thailand! But not only did the policemen and the monks let us camp wherever we wanted, we met a whole lot of other kind people along the way.

One morning a white Honda pulled up in front of us and out came a hip looking young man, waving his arm up and down in order to stop us. He told us that he is from the Mountain bike club in Singburi and offered us to stay at their club house before we even spoke a word. Because the house was only 15 kilometers away and we wanted to cycle a little more we declined his offer with thanks. He left his number in case we have a problem we can call him ANYTIME. Later, when Theo and I were having lunch in one of the rest places along the road, the same white Honda appeared and the man came out with 2 ice cold drinks for us. He was worried about us and asked again where we would spend the night.  Then he offered to pick us up wherever we would get to today, drive us back to the club house and give us a lift to wherever we want tomorrow. Although it sounded tempting because he was such a nice guy we didn’t make use of his offer.

On a hot afternoon we stopped at a little gas station where we spotted a table to sit down. A minute after we made ourselves comfortable a man came out of the house and gave us two bottles of ice cold water.  He joined us, smoked some cigarettes and after a long chat he disappeared and came back with a whole plate of mangoes from his garden and proudly presented them to us.

Another guy that deserves to be mentioned here was a worker that gave us ripe bananas after he saw us taking some unripe bananas that were lying at the side of the road. We just picked about 8 unripe bananas off the bunch and he brought us a whole lot that were ready to be eaten. After a while he came back with a knife and chopped off the whole bunch of unripe bananas and handed them over to us.

In our time in Thailand we got so many bananas from different people that sometimes I couldn’t remember the last time we paid for bananas.

Then there was the nice doctor that gave us food (and even wanted us to take some money…but that’s another story…), the family that gave me a red bull so I could fly up and down the hills, all the people that gave us rides and all the people that waved to me from the back of the trucks and encouragingly showed me a thumbs-up, that made my time in Thailand unforgettable.

Drinking Red Bull with a lovely family

Theo and the bananas we got from a friendly worker

Hospital we camped at thanks to a nice doctor

Theo enjoying the drink we got from the worried stranger that appeared in his white Honda

Salty sweat and sweaty tears

So far this journey has been full of surprises, mostly very nice surprises. But there were also challenges.

One of those challenges was when Theo and I decided to go separate ways and I decided to keep going alone.

With mixed feelings I cycled out of Chiang Mai. ALONE. For days I haven’t seen any tourists. Now there were busloads of tourists passing me and I was wondering if I’d rather be part of them. NO WAY.

A woman stopped me and said: “You bicycle. Very good. Very eco”. Then she left me in a cloud of fumes as she drove off with her motorbike…

Under the relentless blazing sun I crawled up the hills, swallowed down some tears and wiped the salty sweat out of my eyes.

Dead tired I arrived in Chiang Dao. I spotted a temple and cycled through the gate. With sign language I asked a man if I can camp on the lawn behind the temple. Not sure whether he understood me he consulted his son who consulted his English speaking friend on his i-phone. The phone was passed between me and the son a couple of times and a whole family joined the discussion. Who are these people and why are they living next to the temple, I wondered.

I didn’t want to cause any trouble, so I said “no problem, no problem” and pointed out the gate, towards the road where hopefully another temple would come up.

It turned out they were only discussing where they could let me sleep. I was taken into the house and before I could resist the 2 sons were kicked out of their room and I was offered a place to sleep on a carpet on the floor. Their hospitality was overwhelming. The grandmother pointed towards the coffee table and grabbed me a packet of soymilk out of the cool box. The mother placed a plate of fruit on the floor of my room and said “sleep, sleep”. It was only 4 in the afternoon!

Later it knocked on my door and the mother handed me a plate of rice, followed by her son who gave me a bunch of bananas and a packet of crisps. After I ate I joined them in the living room and we tried to communicate as good as we could in Thai and English. I found out that they were from Bangkok and just visiting Chiang Dao. How they came to stay at the temple I don’t know…but for me they were heaven sent.

The next day, another encounter made me decide that cycling alone is easier than I thought!

Fully loaded with water and supplies the friendly family gave me, I continued along the road towards Chiang Rai. The road was flat and I was fast. Mae Sruai with a distance of 131 kilometers seemed a stone’s throw away. But then suddenly some hills presented themselves in front of me. Behind every curve I was hoping to see nothing but the blue sky (which in the meantime turned grey and threatening), but it just kept going up and up. The road would have been a treat, with little traffic and leading through small mountain villages where astonished people stared at me.

After a well earned 15 kilometers downhill I reached Mae Sruai just before darkness. At a temple that looked slightly abandoned I asked the only monk I saw for a place to sleep. He stepped out of the gate and called 2 ladies who helped with the translation. The ladies pointed to another house and walked me through a gate where on a wooden board I read the letters: “Akha women’s project Mae Sruai”.

Out of the house stepped a tall man and shouted in a Scottish accent: “I take it you’re lost?” I explained to him that I wasn’t lost at all but just in search of a camping spot. Looking at the sky above us he offered me a place inside the house. The timing was perfect because in that moment a massive rainstorm started and it rained the whole night through.

The house is a place where girls from the Akha hill tribe can stay during the school term. It was sponsored by a Dutch couple and run by a Thai woman, her mother and occasionally George the Scotsman who all welcomed me with great hospitality.

Family i stayed with in Chiang Dao

The road to Mae Sruai

Akha women's project Mae Sruai