The End of the Bike Trip

Meg "the Grinder" Muhle climbing yet another hill.

Leaving Oudamxai we were heading south-west, down a valley, to meet back up with our old friend the Mekong. We rode two days through the valley and quite honestly it wasn't pretty. The hills surrounding the road had been deforested and the crops planted in their place harvested and burned for the season. The riding was good though as the road was in fairly good shape and there was not alot of traffic. Also, the road had not really caught on with tourists yet, a fairly rare event during our Laos travels, and the towns we visited gave us a better feeling for Laos life, not to mention Laos weddings (every big sized town seemed to have one or two going on). Along the route were also some of the poorest villages we have seen on our travels, with children with obvious signs of malnutrition watching us as we passed by.

Where our highway met the Mekong was the town of Pak Beng. A funny little town that works on two shifts. Early morning and 6pm onwards; this is the schedule for the river boat departures and arrivals respectively. People arrive in the evening on the boats from/to Thailand and then depart early the next morning to/from Vientienne (capital city of Laos). We arrived early afternoon so the town was pretty quiet and many of the restaurants were closed. Our plan on arrival was to catch a boat the next morning to go 30 minutes upriver to a drop off point at a highway heading into Thailand. After speaking with a restaurant owner over a few excellent (and expensive as it turns out) curries we learned that we could actually bike up to the highway and cross the river on a ferry, cutting out the boat ride. We had about 40km on the other side of the river before getting to the Laos/Thai border and we weighed the option of biking all the way to the border that afternoon, but decided against it. The map indicated that the terrain was hilly and the restaurant owner confirmed it. Instead, we settled into a relaxing afternoon of playing cards and having beer. For awhile Meg and Pam tried to convince the crowd of offloading boat tourists to exchange our Laos Lonely Planet for a Thai one. Everyone seemed pretty tout weary though and wouldn't bite. The next day started with a short 10km ride on a ridiculously nice highway. It turns out that Thailand was helping build up the highway from northeastern Thailand into Northern Laos. This seemed to coincide with another big project coming from Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam into Oudamxai, so maybe there was an effort to improve highway transportation from Thailand into Vietnam. The nice thing for us was that they had built the highway, but the trucks hadn't come (yet). Likely this was because they had not yet build a bridge across the Mekong and the ferry seemed capable of only taking one big truck at a time.

After crossing the Mekong we started the "hilly" section of the day. It turns out that we were back in the land of the super-grade where the only thing dictating how steep the highway is, is whether the highway equipment flips over backwards when trying to build it. We spent the better part of the day climbing, with steep descents not lasting long enough to give our legs a break. On a few of the uphills we almost hit our breaking points and thought of flagging a truck down to get us the hell out of there, but luckily trucks weren't very frequent and we were able to persevere. The surroundings during the biking were pretty nice, though, honestly, I spent much of my time looking at my front tire. The highlight of the day was when Meg flagged down a watermelon truck and we spent 15 minutes eating watermelon with the truck driver and his family. The low light was that we didn't have a GPS device with us to show just how hardcore we were.

Everyone loves watermelon, even the people who grow them, and babies.

Our last encounter with the Mekong, a ferry crossing.

We arrived in the Laos border community early in the afternoon, and really, it wasn't that great. We had a well deserved, though undesirable lunch and after much deliberation (we were tired after all the hills, but weren't digging the town) we decided to research the option of leaving Laos immediately rather than the next day. The only thing holding us back from crossing the line was that we didn't know where the first guesthouse would be. We were far enough off main stream tourist routes (the border we were crossing only opened to foreigners six months previously) that the Lonely Planet Thailand we had ended up purchasing in Pak Beng only indicated that there was a guesthouse about 130km across the border. After asking four different people and getting four different answers as to how far the nearest guesthouse was across the border (ranging from 2km to 19 or 90km) we decided to take the plunge and go for it. I didn't mention this before, but standard Laos restaurant food is not that good in large quantities. There is only so much rice with fried vegetables or noodles with fried chicken that a person can take. I had hit my threshold about eight days before reaching the border and was having a hard time getting food into my stomach. Everyone else was to varying degrees suffering the same. Visions of pad thai, red curry and hot and sour soup overrode our fear of sleeping on the side of the road in Thailand.

See how Dave has pushed me out into traffic? He did that alot.

After we crossed the border we only travelled a few kilometres before we found a "resort" to stay at. It was a relatively expensive hotel, even with all four of us staying in the same room. The story we heard from a Finnish expat who was hanging out in the town (avoiding immigration police it seemed) was that the only people who stayed in the town were professionals working at the local hospital. These folks had their rooms paid for by the government so didn't really care how much they cost. We definitely weren't in Laos anymore! Unfortunately we still ended up having fried noodles for our first meal, though it was accompanied with some fried beef that was quiet nice.

The next day of riding started extremely well. The roads were new and wonderful, the best we had seen on our bike trip. We were rolling so smoothly it felt like we had lost weight over night. The hilliness of the previous night continued though, only more so. It seems the Thai had the developed some technology to build even steeper roads, perhaps trucks with lower centers of gravity. There were a few points where, if I tried to remain sitting in my seat, I would pop-a-wheelie (to use a term I haven't since I was twelve years old) and lose control of my steering. It was pretty fun. As we settled into a river valley the hills got progressively easier. As the mountains gave way, the riding got nicer and nicer until it was some of the most enjoyable we had had on our whole trip. The road was winding with gentle hills, and surrounded by pretty forests. For awhile we road along a ridge that gave us nice views of the mountains on either side. Eventually the hills disappeared completely and we were riding flat. The trees gave way to towns and homes and the riding became more mundane. Then Dave got a flat tire. Then it started it to rain lightly. Then Dave got another flat tire. Then another. (Broken pieces of glass were starting to get through his tires and pop the tube. It turns out his tires were starting to fall apart a bit under the stress of the kilometers, they weren't really meant for touring evidently.) At that point it really started to rain and our plans to put in a huge day to cycle all the way to Nan (140km from our starting point) fell apart. Instead we settled on a bustling little town called Pua which not only had a guest house, but also a 7-11! Civilization! Relieved to get out of the rain we hung up our wet clothes, had a hot shower and Meg and I went out to look into our options for getting out of there. The extreme hills of the previous few days had ruined our plans to get down to Bangkok. We had been intending to bike down and intersect with the rail system and then train south. We were now about 180km and a mountain range away from the train, and needed to be on board the next day at 5pm. Riding was no longer an option. Sadly, it seemed nor was busing. The really nice bus lines wouldn't take bikes and the lesser bus services were completely full for the next day and a half. We decided that we would have to bike the 60km or so the larger town of Nan the next day and try to get a bus from there. After getting ourselves sorted we settled in and had an extremely good Thai meal.

"The Day of Flats", but everyone is still smiling. Except me, because Dave's high flat count made us lose the gender based flat count contest.

Pam and Meg, cruising the ridge line. To take a line from our friends at McDonalds, they're lovin' it.

The next morning we woke at 5:30 (with plans to be on the road by 6, we had alot of unknowns ahead and had to be in Bangkok the next day) and it was raining really hard. After getting ready to go I stepped outside to watch the rain fall and think angry thoughts. I wasn't very keen to ride in the rain again. At that moment a songthaew (covered pickup) passed and I flagged it down. He pulled a mildly illegal manoeuvre, parked in the hotel parking lot, and agreed at a really low price to get us and our bikes down to Nan. We weren't all ready to go yet so there was a flurry of activity while the driver helped himself to the hotel's instant coffee. We were then packed on the pickup with our bikes and on our way to Nan. We arrived in Nan at 8am, a little dazed by the speed at which everything had come together and Meg was able to find us a day bus going all the way to Bangkok. We could have gotten a bus to the train as well, but it would have cost more and taken longer, not a great combination. I think it was around 11am that we stuffed our bikes and gear on the bus and scrambled on board, it was 9pm when we arrived in Bangkok. Dave bargained a truck for us and we got to the hotel around 11:3opm. That was it. The end of our bike trip.

Crazy, three months of cycling are over. Meg is saddened.