Laos - South to Luang Prabang - Day 198 (17,638 miles)

At the bike wash Laos style.


Cute kids.


On the day we travelled to Luang Prabang we met Angela and Antje, Berliners touring northern Laos on hired motorcycles. They told us about a great guesthouse in Luang Prabang, a good price with the all important off road parking for the bike. If you are ever there it’s called the Jaliya Guesthouse and costs around £6.50 a night. We met up with Angela and Antje later that day and had a great dinner and very enjoyable evening. They were great company, we should have taken a better photo than this!


Nice kids who were interested in the bike when we stopped in their village.




Luang Prabang is an incredibly pretty UNESCO World Heritage town, it is a peninsular surrounded by the Mekong river on one side and the Khan river on the other. It has some lovely buildings from it’s French colonial days and some interesting temples. I don’t want to quote statistics because I will get it wrong but it has been rated as one of the top city destinations in the world in recent years which is quite amazing considering the location of Laos. It is a lovely little city and you can get really nice boutique hotel accommodation on the banks of the Mekong for prices that are really reasonable compared to most other desirable cities in the world. However, in our view getting out and seeing rural Laos is a lot more interesting.


Unfortunately John had a tummy bug for a couple of days, luckily it was while we were in Luang Prabang so at least he had a nice room with a decent bathroom and there was plenty for me to do while he didn’t feel up to sightseeing or riding.


Each day at 6.00am the Tak Bat takes place, this is a time when anyone (but usually the local Buddhists) make offerings to the monks from the local temples. It has become a bit of a tourist attraction although due to the early start I suppose there were only about a hundred tourists spread along a street watching and photographing the offering. To be honest I and others I spoke to afterwards felt a bit awkward, it’s a spiritual act but some tourists virtually chase the monks along the street trying to get good photos! Still, hypocritical of me to criticise and I did take a couple of photos from a distance.


On a hill above the town in the Tham Phou Si temple, I got chatting to 2 Laos ladies who were visiting to collect a young relative who is training to be a novice monk. They took me to a part of the temple where the novices where being given what must be the equivalent of a school end of year assembly before spending sometime with their families.


Not a bad spot for a game of volleyball.


I did a one day Laos cookery course, great fun that started with a visit to the market to buy ingredients.


Unfortunately creatures such as small birds, snakes and rats are delicacies. Luckily we weren’t using any in our recipes that day.


Banana flowers, we did use these but I may struggle to get them from Sainsbury’s back home.




Coagulated pigs blood another yummy ingredient I was glad we did not use!




With John feeling better we had a cultural day and visited the National Museum during the day and the Royal Ballet Theatre in the evening. The dancing was traditional Laos and it was a bit hard to follow the story but kind of went along the lines of…….

Baddie wants to marry princess
She says no
He puts all her servants to sleep
Good guy comes and wakes them up
He kills the baddie
And marries the princess

Lets just say we were glad it only lasted an hour!




At Kouang Si there is a charity that rescues Asiatic bear cubs that have been orphaned when their mothers have been taken for the supply of bear bile to the Chinese medicine market. The charity are working to educate the population to report poachers and to boycott the use of bear bile as a medicine.

The beautiful but very cold Kouang Si waterfalls, we left it to the young backpackers to get the jumping in the water shots.

Bye for now.

Laos - Luang Namtha to Xieng Kok - Day 191 (17,440 miles)

We spent a couple of days visiting a very small town on the north east border between Laos and Myanmar (or Burma as it's still known to many). Xieng Kok is on a very pretty part of the Mekong and the one road in is 70km of very dusty dirt track. So, a very slow journey, we averaged around 20km ph which is exactly the right speed to travel in my view! It gave us the chance to take in what is going on in the villages we passed through, so much of the villagers lives take place outside their homes and kids and adults a like love to wave and shout "Sabaydee".








This grass above is cut and dried in much of the rural areas, it is used for everything from roof thatching to household brushes.

John learns from the locals. Most people who ride, walk or work in the rural areas where the roads are just dirt tracks wear masks understandably as every time a vehicle passes by everything and everyone is shrouded in grey dust.

The reason for coming here was for the journey not the luxurious accommodation!

The views of the Mekong more than made up for the cold shower.

No traffic congestion in this town! We were the only tourists in town that night, because of the dirt road in it doesn't appeal to many. Most of the visitors they do have are Chinese lorry drivers carrying goods across the Mekong, it seems like all manufactured goods in Laos come from China.

This little fellow joined us for breakfast. His spines may be a useful defence, from what we have seen so far there are not many creatures that aren't hunted for food in the rural areas.

Although farming and cutting of bamboo and grasses seems to be the full time occupation of many Lao people (adults and children) a lot still struggle to grow enough to sell as well as feed their families because much land is still littered with UXO (unexploded ordnance).

This are bombs dropped by the US when they became involved in the Laos civil war between 1966 and 1975, the Laos Communist party were allied to the Vietnamese. A lot of people (including us) had not even heard about this, there are still many Laos people injured/killed each year trying to cultivate land to earn a living or retrieve bombs to sell for scrap metal. There are charities who are educating people and training bomb disposal teams but it is likely to be another 20 years or so before all the areas that would make good agricultural land are made safe.

Bye for now

Jane and John

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Thailand to Laos - Day 189 (17,272 miles)

Our last night in Chiang Mai was a few beers and good conversation with John, Kelly, Matthew and Anita. Both couples are travelling two up on motorbikes.

On the way to Laos we stopped at Tha Ton a small town on the Kok river. We had breakfast in this little hut on the river, quite idyllic. Breakfast lasted around 4 hours!

Newly picked tea leaves drying.

Rice planting, back breaking stuff.

Late afternoon on the Mekong river. We approached Chiang Khong the northernmost border crossing from Thailand to Laos late in the afternoon. We followed signs for a resort and travelled next to the river for about 15 miles only to get there are discover it was much to upmarket for us and around 10 times our daily budget. So a round trip of 30 miles on bumpy roads and all we got was a nice photo of the river!

We did find cheaper accommodation and set off early the next morning to board the ferry to Houei Xai in Laos.

John gets a couple of helping hands below.

Even when land border crossings go smoothly they still seem to take a couple of hours getting stamped out of one country and into the next, then the bike paperwork has to be completed and in an attempt to travel legally bike insurance needs to be purchased. This time John stayed with the bike while I went (as directed) to a police office to buy insurance. After 15 mins of trying to explain what we needed and two policemen writing many details from our registration document and passports in a big ledger I was told they didn't sell insurance. 5 minutes more gesturing brought the response that the insurance sales office was closed for the day. We decided to take a risk and go on without insurance until we reached another town, we had gone about 20 metres when a lady shouted (in pretty good English) from another building that she would sell us insurance! It's hard to know what is legal or valid in these situations but we came away with a sticker that may or may not mean our payment actually bought us any cover.

Outside the Customs office a lively game of Petanque (Boules) was in progress, there was lots of shouting and money changing hands. Petanque and volleyball are very popular, a couple of the better things that 50 years of French rule left the Laos people.

4 on a bike! Chances are they weigh less than the 2 of us.

Laos is a Communist country and has had a very troubled history (more about that later). Although much of the countryside and terrain is similar to Thailand it is a significantly poorer country and the rural population's living conditions and agricultural development is much less advanced. The roads are in worse condition making travelling slow (although the lorries and tourist buses still fly along). A lot of villages share one water tap for the whole village and many still bathe and wash clothes in the rivers.

Having said all that there seem to be at least a few satellite dishes in most villages!

Our first stop was in the small town of Luang Namtha, Kelly and John had recommended the great Zuelas guesthouse below. Our first shopping trip was to buy the all important local sim card so we have some communication (just in case the local emergency services are ever required, fingers crossed they're not) and to practice our Laos "Sabaydee" (Hello) and "Khawp Jai" (Thank you). As long as we can manage these words in whatever the local language is we don't feel like completely ignorant "Farangs" (that's foreigners by the way).

We then sampled some great spicy Laos food and the imaginatively named Beer Lao which is also very good.

Love

Jane and John

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