Getting out of Luang Prabang

Alright, it's been a fair while since we last updated our adventures. Partly this is because we have been on the move alot and partly because the internet has not been very available. We are currently hanging out on the beaches of Thailand, soaking in the sun (and more often the rain) relaxing our tired legs. Between the last post (Luang Prabang) and here though there are alot of kilometers so best we get started on our catch up.

In Luang Prabang both Dave and Pam got some sort of food related sickness and they were knocked out for a few days. In a repeat of our Koh Kong experience they were stuck in their room watching old movies for a day or two. When the worst of the battle was over we started off on the next leg of our journey. The intent was to cover about 130km over two days, doing about 80k the first day and 50 the next into a riverside community. From there we could grab boat up the Nam Ou river (that might be redundant, I think Nam means river). As with many of our plans though we ran into some issues.

We started off early out of Luang Prabang. We were not entirely sure how the day would unfold as Dave was running about 60% (by his own approximation) and we made sure we had some fall back options in case he was actively sick again. We planned to check out a mystical, Buddha filled cave about an hour and half out of town, and Dave-dependent stay at a guest house there or continue on. When we got to the turn off to the Buddha cave the road turned to a fairly rough gravel which wasn't really doing much for anybody and we decided to turn back. That was probably the last of the fortuitous events that happened to us that day. About 30 minutes after we got back on the main road and started trucking our way along, Meg started feeling sick (correction, Meg felt a little sick first thing in the morning, but it passed), about ten minutes after that she was vomiting in the bush. I am not sure how I would compare this situation to our Cambodian illness episode; whether it is better to be ill in a bus on the way to a hotel or on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere (Meg says on the side of the road, and I guess she would know). In any case Meg is a pretty super tough kind of kid so pretty quick after she had lost her breakfast she was back on the bike putting in the kilometers to our guest house for the night. After a bit though she was sick again, and then again and then again. The intervals between her being sick was getting progressively shorter and Meg finally threw in the towel. I should mention that throughout these struggles it was super hot and there was very little proper shade to be found. Anyway, with Meg done for the day we flagged down a truck and Pam was able to communicate that Meg was in dire need of a lift to a town called Don Ngeun. Meg and I and our gear were loaded into the truck and carried the last 7km (Meg had really held in there to the end) to the town while Pam and Dave finished off the ride.

Meg and I, in the back of a pickup, loving every minute of our cycle trip.

Now we were told by the fairly uninformative tourist information fellow in Luang Prabang that Don Ngeun was the first town outside of Luang Prabang, and passed the caves, that had a guesthouse. It turns out he was wrong. There was nothing in Don Ngeun except an oddly nice restaurant without an English menu that seemed willing to sell us only rice and fried eggs. Originally the owners were behaving so strangely we thought they might actually be closed, but then a herd of people walked in and ordered a wide range of dishes including fish soup. After that we figured they just didn't really care for us, this was partly confirmed when the owners young child kept crying at the site of us and amidst the jumble of Laos we heard the phrase "falang" (foreigner) over and over again. I guess white people weren't all that common in that neck of the woods. Anyway, Meg and I were able to order some food to keep us going and Meg got set in front of a fan so she could cool down. Pam and Dave arrived quickly thereafter and we briefed them on the situation, it was eggs and rice for lunch and there was no guesthouse in town and probably none until a town 30km down the road.

After a bit of deliberation it was decided to hire a truck to take us the 50km to the Nam Ou adjacent town, Nong Khiew. There was no point in having a truck carry us to an intermediary town if Meg was going to be sick again the next day. We were able to convince, for a fairly reasonable rate, a local pick up truck to carry us into town. He ended up being a pretty nice guy who even picked up a nice mat for us to sit on as we jostled around the back of his pick up. The town of Nong Khiew ended up being a pretty little place divided in half by the river and surrounded by steep lime stone cliffs. We grabbed a reasonably priced room, had a nice dinner and called it a night fairly early. We hoped that Meg would be feeling well the next day.

Loading up the second pick up of the day. I am a bit busy documenting the situation to help.

The next day started enchantingly (I don't know how else to put it, also Gary has been harassing us to broaden our vocabulary). I didn't grab any photos as I didn't want to hunt around the room looking for the camera while Meg slept, but fog clung to the limestone peaks while the sun slowly crept over the hills and lit up the valley. It was beautiful and I got to sit there and watch it happen with a few cups of coffee which made it all the better. We had decided the night before to catch a 1pm boat heading upstream to what we expected to be a fairly remote village mid-river. Meg woke up feeling okay and we figured we would try to get out to a set of caves a few kms from the town before the boat took off. The caves were the hiding ground for many of the local people during the Vietnam war when America was bombing the hell out of Laos in an effort to stop the supply train of the North Vietnamese army. It turns out the the government and the banks also holed up in the caves. The caves were pretty neat to see, aside from the large and open caverns there were many narrow twisting passages which ran deep into the hillside. More stunning though was the peaceful pastoral scenery around the caves.

Dave, hanging out in the hallway to the bank meeting room.

Some of the nice scenery around the caves. Hard to imagine what the place would have looked like when the bombs were falling.

After the visit to the caves we made it back in good time to catch the boat upriver. The river cruise was really enjoyable, partly due to scenery and partly because we weren't on bikes. On the way up we met a really nice couple from Quebec, Eric and Gabrielle, and their six month old baby Blanche (we managed to bastardize this name a bit so it sounded like the name of the Golden Girl rather than the nice sounding french name). More on these guys in the next post. We also met a couple from Tazmania who were speaking in fluent French to the Quebecois and once again Meg and my resolve to learn french was hardened. I mean if Australians are speaking with our fellow Canadians better than we are, something must be wrong!

Something that we saw on the way up the Nam Ou. It appears that there were boats, mountains, and a river.

Fairly cramped quarters. Luckily Meg was feeling okay by this point.