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.
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