14 February 2009, Northern Laos

One hears wonderful things about cycling in Laos and in many ways Lao does not disappoint. We have spent around 2 weeks cycling through Northern Lao on virtually empty roads. The first few days were on a new road – Chinese built – wide and smooth, 2 lanes, extending to 3 on the hills. Northern Laos is seriously hilly – we have cycled several days with multiple climbs that compare in height and steepness with any of the classic Tour de France climbs. Exhausting stuff in sweaty heat often over 30 degrees C. We had to take a day off in Oudom Xai to rest before the next testing stretch of 2 days to the delightful Luang Prabang. Along the way we passed through remote hill villages with desperately poor people, zillions of kids (a sure sign of poverty) and purely subsistence farming. These mountains were once great opium producers – now they are increasingly deforested and there are various projects to introduce alternative crops for the opium farmers.

We have met countless cyclists here in Lao (one night alone we were 8 cyclists occupying 4 huts in a 5 hut ‘resort’) – a pleasant change from our journey so far and it’s made for a very sociable time. It’s incredibly useful to quiz eachother about routes – the exchange of information with cyclists heading the opposite direction is worth its weight in gold (we’ve been lucky enough to get good advice on our proposed route through Cambodia, for example). Many cyclists come to this part of the world for a medium-length journey – lots are here for 2 or 3 months. This makes us the hard core riders at last – we feel like we’ve finally got our cycling wings as we have now traveled further than almost everyone we meet and are often asked advice on bicycles, routing etc. It’s a very bizarre world when you achieve cycling ‘status’!

Children and adults alike delight in greeting us enthusiastically in every village, but are somewhat flummoxed if we actually stop anywhere to communicate, or buy supplies. It’s a strange level of communication and often a confusing one – it took many days to finally understand that hands held together in prayer translates to 10,000 kip, and combined with pointing the praying hands to the feet, we think means 100,000 kip (just under ₤10). Understanding different cultures as we pass through them is one of the challenges and usually pleasures of this journey.

Luang Prabang provided a wonderful respite from the road – a world heritage town packed with Buddhist wats and temples, French colonial villas, zillions of tourists and a fabulous handicraft nightmarket selling high quality goods. Laos is proving to be one of the most expensive countries we have visited, and yet apparently the poorest. The exchange rate has something to do with this, but can’t be the whole picture. Our journey through this long thin country demands a full month of our time, but we will have to extend our daily budget to feed ourselves properly.

It’s hot here – and it’s getting hotter as we have now dropped down from the mountains to skirt the Mekong river for the rest of the journey south (give me a colder climate to cycle in any day). We set off earlier and earlier each day to try to beat the worst of the heat. This is now a serious challenge and we will have to get off the bikes for the middle section of the day to rest out of the sun. Ideally, we will leave at sunrise and finish our cycling day at lunchtime. The roads should be flat and fast from now on, so progress should be good.

Tomorrow we leave the disappointing town of Vang Vieng (a tourist trap for youthful backpackers drinking their way through Southeast Asia and a few bewildered-looking middle aged tour groups) and head 2 days south to reach the Lao capital of Vientiane. This is a region of stunning limestone cast scenery and beautiful sunsets over the rivers – a photographer’s paradise.

So – that’s the story of Laos so far. As usual, a few diary entries selected by Andrew are below. I hope they illustrate our time here along with Andrew’s photos. Enjoy!

3.2.09 Camp spot beyond Ban Thapha, Northern Laos
Wow – today has been an adventure and Laos certainly doesn’t disappoint!
The road has been excellent almost all day – with just a few areas where they are already making some improvements, even though the road was only finished a year ago by all accounts. It’s wide and smooth, and goes to three lanes for the climbs. If it weren’t for this road cutting a modern and efficient line through the landscape, we would feel like we were a million miles from anywhere: only very small, poor, simple villages along the way, and otherwise wonderful jungle all around.

All day long the children in the villages (there are many children again) waved frantically at us and yelled ‘Saa bai dii’ in hello. They were wildly over-excited and very friendly, as were the parents. Our wrists were aching from the waving and cheeks sore from smiling by lunchtime! It was lovely. In one village we saw a little shop and stopped to buy a coke each (no electricity in these villages, so no fridges etc for cold drinks) and were soon surrounded by at least 20 children – all staring in wonderment. They loved it when Andrew took their pictures, and when we finally left, the whole crowd of them waved us goodbye and shouted Saa bai dii again.

We stopped beside the road and a river to make a fire and cook up some noodles for lunch: although there are a few tiny basic shops in the villages, we have seen little sign of places to get a bowl of noodles or similar. I was very impressed by Andrew’s fire-building skills and decided that we could survive without the stove, luckily enough (we posted it home from Thailand)! We certainly had some of the crippling climbs today that Northern Laos is so famous for: absolute killers that went on and on and on, in searing heat. We sweated buckets, but physically both felt strong and just kept the legs spinning until we reached the top, zig-zagging our way up. There were 2 or 3 climbs like this.

Eventually, we reached the village where we had been told we could find a homestay. Just before it we had met a wild-looking German cyclist coming towards us and had a good chat with him. He prefers to camp, he says, having had as many as 9 visits to Laos over the years! His advice on payment for a homestay was that sometimes it’s not appropriate to pay anything, but sometimes perhaps around 3,000 kip (just under 30p, which sounded a pitiful amount even in Laos).

Soon after saying goodbye to him, we arrived at the village and pulled off the road in amongst the houses – all wooden affairs up on stilts, several with wooden weaving looms beneath where the traditional ethnic fabrics are made. The very first one we came to, an elderly man gestured to us that we could stay the night – that was easy! Or so we thought! A crowd of young girls accompanied us up to the house where an elderly lady was sorting through salad leaves. No English whatsoever, and no real effort to interact with us, offer us a drink, show us where to put our bags or anything like that.

Eventually, we moved our bags into the house and the girls made gestures to wash, so we followed them down to the river where a couple was bathing – he in underpants, she in a sarong. So we went and got our wash things, and came down to the river, followed by at least 7 girls and joined at the river by at least 4 boys – all of whom settled down to watch me struggle to get undressed, wrapped in my silk sleeping bag (in place of a sarong) and get into the water. At this, the girls left, but the boys were having far too much fun watching me. I struggled on and washed my clothes, constantly in danger of the sarong slipping off. Eventually I finished and climbed out of the river, dried myself off as best I could and struggled to get my knickers on. In the process, the boys (including one young monk in saffron robes) got a flash of my knickered bum and started giggling. At this, I finally drew the line. I have no idea what the etiquette of bathing in Laos is, but I’m pretty sure there is not an open invite for young boys to stare at women bathing and giggle when they get to see something (although my knickered bum can’t be that exciting!). So I turned around and gave them a ferocious look, at which they legged it (ironically, the monk was the worst offender – hmmm – I’m sure something can be read into that!). Situations like this can be tricky – we cripple ourselves to be respectful of local cultures and sensitivities, to try to act and behave as the locals would hope, but of course we don’t always receive the same courtesy. How one deals with these situations is a potential minefield in itself.

I was less than impressed and was quickly going off the idea of the homestays – experience the ‘real Laos’ indeed!

Andrew wasn’t going to go through the same rigmarole, so he just stripped to his cycling shorts, had a quick wash, and made me promise to remind him to wash himself properly in private tomorrow! With that, we wandered back to the house.

Here, the lady of the house indicated that one of her daughters couldn’t speak – then started to make some confusing gestures – hands in prayer, sleeping, then pointing at the feet. We found it all incredibly confusing. Eventually, another daughter was sent off, and came back with a note of money. We realized she was talking about payment for the night, and she indicated 10,000 kip (just short of ₤1 – not a lot)! We quickly handed the money over – but this didn’t seem to be right. We were lost – couldn’t understand what she was saying, and she gave the money back to us and signed food and sleep and pointed to the end of the room. Was she offering us free lodging? Or was she wanting more money for the daughter? Eventually more girls arrived and I got out a pen and paper. On it, they wrote the sum of 100,000 kip. This is just short of ₤10 – a huge sum here – much more than we would pay for dinner and lodging in a proper hotel, let alone a piece of floor in a house shared with several others, no washing facilities and the most basic and simple food. We checked and checked to make sure we understood and when we were sure, we packed up our things and left. They didn’t seem particularly bothered!

(ed. note – here’s a moral conundrum for you - ₤10 is technically affordable for us and these people are absolutely subsistence-living. So, should we pay inflated prices and see it as a worthwhile contribution to the local poor? Or is this helpful? We feel that we are contributing to the economy in many ways, simply by being here. After a huge amount of thought and discussion during this journey, we have concluded that it is not good to give out sweets, money or gifts of any sort to local people – but to buy all our goods locally at fair prices, stay in locally-owned hostels and behave respectfully at all times. We see this as sustainable and fair.

Others wouldn’t agree of course – many tourists come armed with pens for school children, bags of sweeties and will willingly and knowingly pay over the odds for goods and services as a way to inflate the economy. However, many or all of these countries have excellent schemes in place, if you bother to research them, whereby school books and supplies, for example, can be given to a local organization or charity for more formalized distribution. This way individual tourists are not expected to give gifts directly to locals and a culture of begging or pestering passing tourists doesn’t begin. Where begging can become excessive, tourists are made to feel uncomfortable and are less likely to enjoy their visit and less likely to return – hampering the economy in a much greater measure over the long term. It’s a complicated subject, and one we are still discussing and thinking hard about – we may change our ideas as the journey progresses…)

So – looks like our attempt at homestays in Laos is over and done with! We headed up the road, buying more water along the way and soon found a place to pitch our tent out of sight of the road and away from any villages. I collected wood and Andrew built another fire and cooked supper while I set up home.

And so here we are, on the edge of the Laos jungle (on the edge of the road!... it’s not wise to venture far off the track for fear of unexploded ordinance from the massive American bombing campaign back in the 1970s – half a million bombing raids) snug in our tent with full tummies. It’s steamy hot, but we know the temperature will drop quite a bit in the night – but it all makes for the most splendid adventure!

4.2.09 Viang Phoukha, Northern Laos
We passed through some very rural villages filled to the brim with over-excited kids screaming saa bai dii to us, and lots of women smoking very long pipes (possibly opium – although the government is working hard on alternative crop projects, opium is definitely still in production and usage in remote villages, largely by elderly women apparently)! The houses were all wood and bamboo, up on high stilts. All along the roads are the feathery fronds of something similar to pampas – they are being dried on the roadside, then rolled and beaten on the road to get rid of the dusty pollen. They are then bundled up and fashioned into a small broom. We have seen this process taking place everywhere for about the last 4 days – in Thailand too. The kids in these villages were friendly but feral and again, we felt pretty far from the rest of the world.

The road is incredibly quiet – virtually no traffic at all – just a few pick ups, one or 2 trucks, and several minibuses, often carrying a few westerners. It makes for glorious cycle touring.
Shops were very few – it took most of the morning to pass through a village with any shop at all in it. By the time we did find one, we were absolutely ravenous and under the stares of many pairs of eyes, we bought some crisps and a can of drink each.

In town, we quickly found a decent guest house and settled into a lovely wooden room, whitewashed, with the ideal verandah for drying tent and clothes, and extra clothes washing we have done here, all beside the river.

When we headed off to find food, we discovered that there are 2 weddings taking place – at either ends of the little town (one main street). Both seem to adore karaoke and hellishly tuneless songs are being yelled into very loud microphones: all very amusing, except that everyone is also getting a skinful of beer. We are always cautious when alcohol is in high consumption – we don’t yet know the Laos psyche, and to add the unpredictability of alcohol to the equation can be a dicey thing, so after a look around and some supper, we have headed back to our room to keep our heads down.

11.2.09 Wednesday Keukacham, Laos
It’s a good job we didn’t appreciate just how tough today was going to be before we set off! After an initial 25km or so on the relative flat, we then hit an enormous 18km climb. It was absolutely huge. Fortunately we stopped for good noodle soup at the bottom before the climb started, so were well fuelled. It took a pretty long time to reach the top, but then we were rewarded with a fabulous 15km descent. At the bottom of this, we stopped again for more noodle soup and soon enough we were joined by Marius and Andrea (2 Swiss cyclists heading our way as far as Vientiane) who we had seen below us on the climb much earlier in the day and had expected them to overtake us long ago (they are much faster than us!).

We left them to their lunch and started the 2nd climb of the day just after 2pm. All we knew was that there was a further 22km to cycle to reach our destination and that the map suggested the village is at the top of the hill. Our lunch stop was on the river and the road rose up from there. In denial, we couldn’t believe that the entire 22km could be uphill, but we decided that we needed to crack on with the climb, despite the heat of the day.

It’s a darn good job we did! 21km of the remaining distance were a long hard climb. The heat was serious and I was finding the ride increasingly tough. I was roasting hot, my knees were becoming pretty painful and my backside was aching badly on the saddle. I don’t cope with serious heat very well – I think I prefer the cold if anything, and I was beginning to really struggle with my morale. Then we came around yet another bend and could see the road winding higher and higher up above us. This just tipped me over the edge and my morale plummeted. It was very interesting – I have done pretty well, I think, over this journey with keeping morale high. It has been very rare that I have felt daunted or demoralized by a climb.
I thought hard about how to switch my mindset back around to taking it in my stride: there’s really nothing to be done about a long climb. Getting angry or upset doesn’t help at all; it just makes the job harder. Stopping, getting off the bike and having a strop won’t get you to the top any quicker. You can’t blame the climb on anyone. There is only one thing to do, and that is to get on with it.

Andrew suggested we pull over at a little bamboo shelter to get out of the sun but as I ducked under the roof, I felt an agonizing pain in my elbow and howled my head off – something had stung me really viciously and it was burning hot. I leapt out from under the shade but hadn’t seen what had stung me. Then Andrew spotted a nest of hornet-type insects on the roof strut – nasty looking things with big stingers on their bums. I was lucky really that only one stung me! If I was struggling mentally before, I was furious now! The sting started to calm down after a few minutes and fortunately the red dot only swelled a tiny bit before calming down completely – I was glad that the pain was all in the sting, and not in a prolonged itching aftermath.

With all those nasty insects around, we didn’t linger and just carried on and on, up and up. This had turned into probably our biggest climbing day of the whole trip and with the extra challenge of the heat, was also turning into the toughest day of riding yet. It was approaching 5.30pm by the time we crawled our way up to the top – a full 10 hours of cycling (including stops) and the vast majority of this had been spent crawling uphill, albeit it on good gradients most of the time. We were absolutely knackered by the time we trundled into the village of Keukacham which is a very small place sat on the saddle – basically a refreshment stop for passing trucks, busses and minibuses. It was also sundown – we had made it just in time!

So – an enormous day – and we understand that tomorrow is more of the same! How my knees will cope I do not know – I am lying here now with them throbbing away – normally I think I would have to have a day off, but we just need to get the next 2 days out of the way to reach Vang Vieng, after which the going should be much gentler on flatter terrain by the Mekong (though a lot hotter, which will present its own set of challenges, we are well aware).

We’ll leave as early as we can tomorrow to beat the sun and do the best we can!