Escaping Paradise

The weather got progressively worse while we were in Railay until, on the last day, we were basically hiding in our room while it poured down outside. Of course, to leave the peninsula we had to go outside and in the few minutes it took us to get down to the waterfront we were pretty wet. We had assumed that we would be able to get a boat pretty quick after arriving at the beach; boats had been coming and going all the day over the course of the week. Unfortunately, the weather was bad enough that the fellow at the boating office, gesturing towards the turbulent ocean, said that there might not be any more boats for the day (it was about 11am at this point). A couple of other people were standing around waiting for boats as well and they had all been told different times for boats arriving so we figured there was still hope. So we stood around pretty wet and a little cold and stared at the gray ocean, willing a boat to arrive through the waves.

And it worked. It was less than an hour before a boat arrived and we were able to throw our bags on and jump in. The only downside of this was of course that the reason the boats might not be running was that there were some fairly considerable waves outside our little bay. I am not too big a fan of being out in big waves on small boats so I found the experience a little stressful. While we were in a trough of a wave we couldn't see past the crest of the next to see land (or anything else for that matter). I wanted to get a video of this with our camera, but I was a little too nervous to let go of the boat. Our captain turned out to be pretty adept though, working at diagonals to our intended direction in order to ride the crests of waves and the ride was fairly smooth. This compared favorably to some of the other boats we saw that were being tossed all over the place as their drivers rammed straight on.

It wasn't too long a ride and soon we were, happily, back on land. The adventure of travelling in Asia began anew. Thinking we were too smart for the fairly expensive taxi racket that was organized at the boat dock, we started walking towards what appeared to be a main road. We were rewarded fairly quickly when a covered pickup came over and grabbed us and for a reasonable price we were on our way into town. It turns out though we were going in the wrong direction. After a few minutes we were confusedly transferred into a different truck and were heading back the way we had come, the correct way to Krabi. After arriving in Krabi we took the first reasonably priced room we could get and did our best to set up some of our clothes to dry. We then headed back out to eat and explore a bit before settling in for the night.

The view from the covered pickup as we made our way into Krabi. We thought it was just crazy how much water there was. It only got worse though.

Trying to dry off in our hotel room.

We were up early the next morning, I think around 5:30 or so, in order to catch the 8am bus from Krabi into Bangkok. It was still raining. We initially assumed that we would be able to flag down a pickup or taxi on one of the main roads, but maybe due to the rain, no one was around. We ended up popping into a hotel to ask them to call us a cab and the enterprising fellow woke up his son and made him take us to the bus station. About then things started going a little wrong for us. It turned out that all the basses were sold out going back to Bangkok, everyone was trying to escape the rain. Meg was able to figure out that we could get a bus to a more central hub town instead and get a bus north from there. "There are many many buses from this city to Bangkok" we were told. Fortunately a bus left for the town at 9:30 and we were back on our way. Unfortunately, as was pretty common, the bus had its air conditioning cranked all the way so the bus was freezing cold. Being soaking wet made this experience even worse and we ended up in the fetal position on our seats trying to avoid hypothermia on the three hour trip. To top it off, it seemed that there was some serious leakage problems on the bus so there was cold water pouring from the roof all over the seats and on to peoples heads.

That wasn't too pleasant but after a few hours the bus ticket collector came by to ask us where we wanted to go, as we were nearing the end of the trip. Meg told him we were hoping to go to the main bus station to go to Bangkok. The guy nodded and we were soon dropped off at a bus station. Hindsight being what it is we should have been a little alarmed at this point. For one thing there were no proper bus company stalls at the station, and for another there were only two buses available heading up to Bangkok and they weren't leaving until the evening. We decided instead to take a more expensive route and take a minivan up to Bangkok. We just wanted to get there and have a proper sleep. The minivan wouldn't be around for a few hours so we went for a walk to explore a bit and grab a lunch.

The view from the bus station where we spent several hours one day in the spring of 2011.

We came back after lunch to find that the roads were so flooded heading up north that the minibus couldn't make it through. The trains had also been cancelled as the tracks were flooded. We decided to take a big bus instead and as it wasn't scheduled to leave for a few hours went out walking again. This time on our return our bus vendor seemed quiet agitated as it turns out our bus had been cancelled. At this point, we hopped into a friend of his' pickup and he drove us to what ended up being the REAL bus station. There had been buses leaving hourly going north all day long and we had missed them all. It was possible that all of the rest of the buses were full now as well. Fortunately the vendor was pretty good to us in the end and was able to get us two seats to Bangkok. It was pretty frustrating realizing that we had wasted the whole day, but it was nice that the guy put the effort in to get us out of the city in the end. I think he still made a profit on us.

Relieved to be on the big bus and getting out of Dodge, we had a few minutes before it got completely dark to take in the craziness of the flooding. Water was up to peoples thighs on the side of the road, cars and motorbikes were pulled over and abandoned while boats powered along picking stranded people up. On the lighter side, we saw a few kids fishing the river/street from the sidewalk in front of their house.

After all of the chaos from the previous day the rest of the trip to London went really smoothly. The owners of the Bangkok hotel we had reserved a room for the night were understanding and didn't require that we pay for the night, and they shuttled us and our bikes to the airport. Our plane trip was on schedule and we were able to take the tube to within a block of our hostel downtown. Which was good news as we were dragging our boxed bikes everywhere at that point.

Railay

From Koh Sukorn we made our way uneventfully to Railay for the second half of the relaxing in Thailand phase of our trip. Railay is famous for it's beautiful beaches set amidst a landscape of steep karsts and jungle. It is also really popular with rock climbers, the limestone cliffs seem to be their ideal playground.

It really was beautiful. The beaches were great to run on and though we didn't do any climbing ourselves it was fun to see other people up there hanging around. The only unfortunate thing was the rain. Throughout the week the rain got progressively worse until, at the end, we were holed up in our room reading all day while rain pounded down around us. To go outside was to be instantly soaked, and there was no sun to dry our clothes. Anyway, more about the good times.

Meghan and Andrea, in the rain, with the beautiful karsts.

A lovely stroll, on a lovely beach

A happy couple

Aside from going for runs along the beach (which was surprisingly fun, considering we were just going back and forth, back and forth over and over again), we drank wonderful coffee, had good chats, went for a few swims, and had a couple day trips.

Run, run, run

The water was so nice and blue!

The gang of five spent a day snorkelling on an island tour which took us to four or five nearby islands. We managed to have reasonably good weather for the entirety of our adventure with the downpours holding off until we were (nearly) home to our hotel rooms. The snorkelling was good and we saw lots of fun fish. It was a sad farewell to Pamela and Dave, who left us behind for a few remaining days on Railay...the gang was now down to three. We went to Koh Phi Phi for the day and soaked up glorious sun, ate yummy curries, and enjoyed the mass amounts of people that were here--a little more lively than Railay.

Finally, it was our turn to leave, leaving Andrea behind on her own for one extra day...more sad goodbyes! Little did we know that it would be such an adventure to get to Bangkok...

Off to the Beaches

We arrived in Bangkok and eagerly awaited Andrea's arrival (Meghan's old roomie from university) and filled out time with a trip to McDonald's, escapades to get bike boxes while the boys dismantled and packed up all 4 bikes, and an evening of random karaoke and dinner. This felt like a perfect addition to our time in SE Asia as karaoke is raging popular and we had not yet taken part. Pamela and I wailed away (and I think the boys will attest that wailing is a good description) to Backstreet Boys and a couple other ditties that I can't recall. We had fun, the audience was...amused...and we even got a gift handed to us onstage...

A 20 Baht note and tissue flower given to Pam and I from an admirer in the audience

Andrea arrived in record time having just brought carry on luggage and we flew out the next morning from Bangkok to Trang City. From there, we had a mix of minivan and boat to get us to our final destination, Sukorn Beach Bungalows on Koh Sukorn. Andrea's mad Lonely Planet research skills landed us in a piece of paradise for 5 days--a tiny island with only four other resorts on it we had the beach to ourselves.

Pam and Andrea chillin' and relaxin' on our way to Sukorn. Fortunately this photo is taken before the sunburn that came as a result of this boat trip.

We had a most relaxing time--with cute little bungalows, a nice restaurant, and the beach about 50 steps from our door it was hard to do anything else! The days were sunny and warm, with a thunder shower in the afternoon for a couple hours (at which juncture we took advantage of moving indoors and napped, had a beer and a snack, and read our books) that would clear away by dinner time. With the warm weather abounding, and feeling like he was back to civilization Cameron decided it was time to rid himself of his beard.

Is this actually the same man in all three pictures?

Cameron, in his own piece of paradise...water, sun, a good book, and no one else around!

When we all felt full of relaxation we decided to get up and on the move a little bit. A day of fishing on the ocean was just what was needed and so off we went...the five of us, Tom our fearless guide, and Tom's father, a well-seasoned fisherman. We spent the day on the water using plastic pop bottles with fishing wire wrapped around them as our lines, squid as our bait. It was fun and we had just enough being caught to keep things exciting. A few bottom feeders, a little bit of coral (whoops!), and finally something we could eat.

Dave, with Tom and his Dad, getting our lines sorted

Red snapper caught by moi...I feeling like I'm born to be a fisherwoman (please refer to earlier Ontario posts)

The girls went out the next day on a snorkelling trip while the boys held back for an adventure day. This meant they were going to run around the whole island, climb the highest mountain, scale a cliff and drink beer...they did accomplish about half of this I believe. Us girlies had a great trip and saw some beautiful fish, really colourful coral, and nice limestone cliffs.

Celebrating (sadly) our last night in paradise..little did we know what was to come

No words needed

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.

To Oudamxai

After our day of hiking we decided we had seen the best of Muang Ngoi Neua and opted to catch a boat the next day heading northward. This boat ride was significantly longer than the one from Nong Khiew, but fortunately we had more room to stretch our legs and it was a comfortable and pretty ride. A nice day off for legs sore from the hike. The boat landed in Muang Khua at around 2pm, giving Meg, Pam and Dave plenty of time to take a walk around the town and explore. I had a bit of nap as I hadn't been sleeping well for a few days. During their walk about the team came across another set of Canadian (Vancouver even) cyclists who had just crossed the border from Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. We had an early dinner with them, swapped some stories and then called it a night.

The bikes locked and loaded

The riding the next day was really lovely. Fairly gentle hills for most of the day following a small river upstream. The valley we were in was lush and populated with some really friendly villages so when we weren't admiring the scenery we were shouting "sabai dii" to the local children. Nearing the end of the day we left the river and crossed a small hill range which was trying on our legs. After only a few medium sized climbs we descended to the valley of Oudamxai and had easy riding into town.

Always such nice scenery

Oudamxia was an interesting town. It had many hotels which were full, but there were not that many white tourists. It turns out the road North of Oudamxai runs to China and many of the people staying there were either Chinese tourists, of maybe Chinese businessmen involved with a highspeed train line which is being built from China into Vientienne. There isn't that much to attract tourists to the area other than a really interesting looking cave network, a local walking tour and a Laos cooking course. Though the Lonely Planet was dubious of the english spoken by the women teaching the cooking course, we chose that option. The cave was a little too hard to get to and the local walking tour seemed to cover things we had already seen before.

Our first night in Oudamxia we went to check out a chinese restaurant. Rather than order off a menu, we walked into their kitchen area and picked the ingredients for the food we wanted to eat. From there, the cook put things together as he saw fit. Our tofu ended up in a really salty tomato sauce, our chicken-pork (it looked like chicken at first, but then tasted like pork) ended up stir fried with green pepper, and the green beans were fried, deliciously, with garlic and salt. The food on the whole was quite good (partly I think because it diverged from the rice/noodle combinations we had been having so often on the road) and we were impressed by the magic of the improvised dishes. Some of the magic was lost when we ordered some of the same ingredients the next night and they ended up cooked the same way, but I guess it's hard to make up something new every time. This method of meal selection is actually how many of the bike tourists we met who had been to China described their experiences in that country. Pretty cool.

Our cooking course was a great experience. We were picked up in the morning by the cutest Lao grandma whom right away impressed us with her english. She is now retired, but was a french teacher at the local highschool and also had a good grip on our language. Off we trotted to the market to do our shopping...the veggies and fruit were gorgeously displayed but as we headed farther back into the meat section, things became a bit more sketchy...blocks of congealed blood, live frogs on a stick, lots of stomach and intestine, and vats of snake fish (repulsive looking creatures). Very kindly, our cooking instructor realized these stepped a bit too far past the comfort levels of Western tourists and we stuck to plain old beef for our meat dish. We learned to make laap, fried spring rolls, mushroom in banana leaf, and pho in the kitchen of a local restaurant. No fancy stoves and ovens for us, this was the "real deal" with charcoal fires and a couple woks.

The markets are always so nice to wander; a host of fresh fruit and veg, and just about anything else you could want!

Frogs-alive-on a stick-fresh for picking.

The boys working as a team making spring rolls

Building the ol' pipes by pounding toasted rice into flour

With full bellies we were ready to ride on out of Oudamxia the next day!

Hiking in Muang Ngoi Neua

Our river boat trip from Nong Khiew brought us to the town of Muang Ngoi Neua. As I mentioned previously, this was meant to be a pretty remote town, unaccessible by car. We figured we would have an interesting cultural experience. We were quickly disabused of this notion on our arrival. The town was one main street, on the right was all guest houses on the river and on the left was a hodgepodge of less expensive guesthouses, restaurants, shops and the occasional house. The setting of the town was stunning though. Similar to Nong Khiew we were surrounded by tall mountains and the river, but there was no traffic to get things dirty. The power in the town also shut off at 9pm at night so everything was blissfully quiet.

Eric (of Eric, Gabrielle and Blanche), the Quebecois fellow I mentioned in the previous post, approached us on our first night in town. He had been up to this part of Laos five years previously and done a wonderful hike and was wondering whether we would care to join him and his family for the hike on the next day. This arrangement was of mutual benefit, we got a guide who had done the hike before for free (the other option was to pay 35$ each and have a local guide tour us around), and Eric and Gabrielle had a couple people along to help if things got a little hairy. In the end, we would all agree, both groups benefited from the arrangement.

The day started off fairly early. About 6:30 we sat down for breakfast. Eric estimated the hike at about eight hours, but he wasn't entirely sure of the route we had to take, though he remembered losing the trail a few times the first time he did the hike. We were keen to get started first thing to allow for any issues that might crop up. After a relatively quick breakfast (breakfast is never that quick in Laos if you eat out) we hit the trail. The four of us and Eric with our backpacks, and Gabrielle with Blanche strapped to her front. Now might be a good time to introduce the fact that a few years ago Gabrielle was a fairly high level long distance swimmer (she was racing at the national level) and is tough and steadfast as all get out. Throughout the story I am about to tell it's worth remembering that a six month old baby is roped to Gabrielle's front and she is still outpacing everyone in our foursome.

The hike started on an easy note. We were walking along a villagers path, adjacent to a rice field, through a valley punctuated on either side by steep and heavily forested limestone mountains. Eric, the engaging fellow that he is, had spoken to a local guide and gathered a schematic view of the hike we would be taking. This was basically made up of a quadrangle with the name of four villages in the corners, a fifth, bonus village, was thrown in in case we wanted to do a little more exploring. The village names were written in both Laos and English (in case we couldn't pronounce the village name, but someone could read. Very useful actually as pronunciation is sometimes hard with these tonal languages.). Along the edges of the map were the estimated times between each village. Based on the map we had tonnes of time to hike before the sun set and we decided to see the fifth village as well. The hike went very smoothly and we soon came across a trail gate keeper who sucked a few dollars out of the group in order to continue on the hike as well as check out a set of caves near by. The trail at this point was quiet well marked and the first village we intended to visit was actually labeled with a street marker. We continued happily along.

Me, crossing a bridge.

The trail we were following eventually became a concrete irrigation trough and slowly neighboring bushes started encroaching onto our path to the point that we were fighting a bit to continue along. It is worth noting that all of the paths we are meant to be taking during this hike are paths commonly walked by the local villagers to get from one town to the next. At this point Eric decided that we should start walking along the rice paddy paths rather than the trough. This made sense as there are many well worn paths criss-crossing the fields. It also gave us a wonderful chance to take some great pictures and see some water buffalo up close. We continued in a rather half hazard way across the rice paddies in the general direction of a valley which Eric had remembered hiking through five years previously. I can only speak for myself, but I am blown away by Eric's memory. I have a hard time remembering a hike I did last summer, but he has very precise memories of this hike he did in Laos five years ago. His accuracy wasn't always spot on though. The rice paddies ended at a creek crossing which we did fairly easily via a few large stones laid in the water. A few minutes afterwords we had to cross the creek again, and this time it was a little more difficult. We had fewer stone options and maybe a fallen tree to help us keep dry feet. In the end we were all across; Eric helped Gabrielle and Blanche, and Dave carried Pam, though Meg refused to carry me (I am not particularly well balanced so carrying Meg was out of the question). Anyway, we scrambled up the opposing bank into a field of thickets (I am not sure what a thicket is actually. Anyway, it was a field of small trees tightly woven at about chest level.). It was possible to find clearly demarcated paths throughout the field, but they required that person bend fairly low at the waist. It quickly became apparent that the paths were probably for the quadrupedal oxen, and not the bipedal humans. Eric pushed on though, insisting that the trail must be just through the trees ahead of us. Eventually the four of us stopped and Gabrielle called Eric back. Northern Laos is not the place to be wandering through unknown trails. As I mentioned previously much of the area had been bombed by the Americans during the Vietnam war and many of the bombs did not explode as desired. Unexploded ordinances (UXOs) are a big problem still for Laos and many people are killed or maimed each year.

Crossing a creek, early in the trip, before wet shoes were the least of our worries.

We backtracked across the creek and were making our way back to our last known correct location when Eric was able to pick up the correct villager trail again. It turns out he was just a little off the mark, though he was 100% correct that if we had pushed on through the trees we would have eventually crossed the correct path. Anyway, we were all stoked to get back on the right path, and what a beautiful trail it was. On one side was a clean and calm creek while on the other was a large limestone karst, the trail itself cut through a natural grass so it was like walking through a backyard back home. Soon after finding the trail again we came across our first village. It turns out it was not the first village we had been aiming for (we missed the bonus fifth village) but we were okay with that as we had lost some time going along the wrong route. We had a quick bite to eat (or rather we ate quickly after the food took a fair while to make) in a funny little restaurant with a full English menu. Meanwhile Eric told us a few stories about the last time he had been to the village and wondered allowed what the twelve and thirteen year old kids he had hung out with last time were up to now.

Meg chilling out to the max, as she is wont to do.

Blanche, being the center attention.

Soon we were back on the road again making our way to the next village. The path became more difficult at this point as we started ascending a fairly steep mountain side. It was beautiful though. As we got higher we started getting wonderful views of the valleys around us and, rather than walking through cropland, we were now walking through forest which was a nice change of scenery. After a few hours of this hiking we came to the next village. It was dramatically poorer and dirtier than the first village and the men must have been out working as there were only women and children around. As with the previous village Blanche and Gabrielle were a big hit. I imagine that white babies are fairly rare in that neck of the woods and the women were keen to check Blanche out, something that Eric and Gabrielle said was a fairly common when they visited these towns. After a dust covered can of pop from the towns tiny store and a little bit of staring back and forth we decided to make our retreat. Just outside of town was the local school house, where we sat in the shade and shared the few snacks we had. The original plan had been to eat a full lunch at this town, but that wasn't an option. It was lucky we had ended up having a fairly big snack in the first place we visited.

Some beautiful scenery along the hiking route.

Meg, finding the hiking a little too easy, breaks into dance walking.

The posse hanging outside of the second village.

The journey to the next town was the last leg of our hike. From there we would catch a boat down river to arrive back at the starting village. It proved to be the most stressful leg as well. We got on a trail leaving town and within a few kilometers we had reached a creek. This was as expected. Eric had spoken with some French fellows who had done the hike the day previous and they had said that at the end there would be many creek crossings. At this point the trail basically walked adjacent to the creek and every now and then we would have to cross to the opposite bank in order to get to a passable trail. This involved much walking on rocks and logs to stay dry. As I mentioned before, I don't have very good balance so after crossing the river about a dozen times, I removed my shoes and socks, put back on my shoes and started walking through the water. Things got alot easier for me at that point. Also around that point people in our foursome were starting to get a little anxious. Now that the path was a creek we would often walk for several minutes with no indication that we were going the right way. On occasion a small path would leave the creek and join back up with it a few tens of meters downstream. These paths served to bypass areas in the creek where it was very difficult to find rocks and logs well spaced enough to allow peoples feet to remain dry. Unfortunately we started missing these side paths and so were hiking through areas that really showed no indication of a proper path. After probably an hour of this type of hiking anxious murmurs could be heard from our group. At this point it was about 4pm with an expected sunset of 6ish. I was comfortable that we would be okay as I had the sense from the geography that the creek would join up with the Nam Ou at its end point. Around this time though Dave's foot slipped into the water and a leach bit into his foot through his sock and a hole in his shoe. This did nothing to calm the growing tension in the group. It was evident that Eric was also getting a little stressed. As we had seen previously with the thickets, when faced with the unknown Eric could sometimes panic into a headlong rush. He and Gabrielle were ahead of us by a few minutes throughout the days hike. It calmed Blanche to go at a fairly consistent cadence (and it should be noted that she had not cried at all during the day), while it calmed us to be able to stop and catch our breaths every now and then. Anyway, Eric's stress must have reached a high point. As the four of us turned a corner we found him pushing on Gabrielle's bottom while she strained to climb up a slippery muddy bank. We quickly surveyed the scene and though it did look somewhat path like in that there was no vegetation on the slope, it also looked like maybe there had just been a mudslide there. While Dave and Eric helped Gabrielle descend the slope (this was the only point during the trip where Gabrielle lost her cool and we could hear "tabernacle" being shouted from the slope) I went to scope out a path a bit further down the river. Fortunately for all of us the path very clearly went in the right direction and was taking us away from the creeks edge for awhile.

One of our few shots from the creek portion of the hike. As you can tell, it is hard to tell whether we are on the trail or not.

Dave's post leech bloody foot. You would have thought we would have to amputate the way he carried on.

The rest of the leg was longer than we had expected, but still very beautiful. It was made even more wonderful by the late afternoon light and Just as we reached a high ridge overlooking our destination village and the Nam Ou the sun started to fall behind the large karsts in front of us. It was spectacular! It was also a hell of a relief after a fairly stressful day of hiking. After watching the sun set behind the karsts we quickly made our way down to the village below. After some strange negotiations with a reticent local man we were able to hire a boat back to Muang Ngoi Neua. By the time boat finally reached the village we had been motoring along in the absolute dark for fifteen minutes.

The end of our hike. Sweet!

The end of our hike. Sweet!

The end of our hike. Sweet!

Meg and I agree that it was one of our best days in SE Asia. Partly this was because of the adrenaline, but mostly it was just such beautiful scenery and the villages we had seen were some of the more remote ones we had visited.

Meg looking good in the sunset light.

As a bit of an epilogue to the story, during the rush through the thickets Eric had scraped himself up quiet badly. In particular a cut he got on his finger got badly infected and during the night the infection tracked up to his elbow. We were all pretty worried about him and were thinking he would end up back in Bangkok to get proper medical attention but after a course of antibiotics in Luang Prabang he was okay.

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.