To the southern most tip of Laos and our golden rules of cycle touring

We have been about a month now in Laos, and have pretty well cycled as far south as you can get. It took us 7 solid days of cycling to get from Tha khet to here: an area known as the 4000 islands, so named because its an area of 4000 islands in the Mekong river, and very pretty it is too.

I doubt it's exactly 4000 islands...

Maybe about 10 of the 4000 islands. I suspect the definition of "island" might be a bit tenuous.

North from Vientiane to Vang Vieng.

This place has quite the history: it was easily backpacker central for many years, fuelled by the legendary "tubing"trips that you can take down the Nam Nung river. A truck dumps revellers about 4km upstream of the town complete with lorry inner tube and they float down the river. Enterprising Laos people built bars along the river, and would throw ropes towards the tubers, who would grab the rope and be pulled in to have a beer. The problem was that what was for sale wasn't controlled, and hard/soft drugs were readily available under the pseudonym of "happy" snacks. It was only when people started drowning whilst under the influence of booze and the other stuff that the Laos government stepped in and closed any unlicensed bar. It's a lot tamer now so I believe, but more of that in a moment.

The town itself is not much to speak of, but there is some wonderful karst scenery around  that you have to get to by some of the bumpiest tracks yet (we call them nun's joke roads. Google to see why because I'm not telling you here!)

Power lines getting in the way of a good shot again..

This was a bit of a steep climb which we had to ourselves for a while, before all and sundry arrived to view the.......

rather glorious sunset.

Two contrasting photos taken from the same site - where the tubing starts. Looking to the right a peaceful scene with Lao children swimming in the water, and the odd kayaker and then looking to the left...

Tubing madness! This bar was only about 100m from the start, and the youngsters were in full party mode. Quite what state they were in at the end I don't know. They are plucked out of the water about 500m before the town starts, but we failed to witness that event. Shame.

Cycling rule #5. Get up early in the morning - the air is crisp and the views brilliant with  the contrast and the shadows.

More placid Lao cattle. They survive close to the roads because they don't panic and are entirely predictable as to what they are going to do next. Which is usually just to remain still, turn their heads toward you as if to go "What?". Think Dylan from the magic roundabout and you get the drift. Man.

South back through Vientiane and to the Tha Khek Loop

This is a well known circular loop, normally done by hired moped, but obviously in our case by bike. Some tough climbs and poor road conditions, but easily some of the best views to date. The total highlight of this was a side trip to the Kong lor cave. This is a 7.5km underground cave formed by a river running through it. You take a longtail boat from the start, come out the other side and then return. The place puts all other caves to shame - great cathedral like caverns and spooky shadows like none other. 

So having stumped up all of £11 for the entire trip we follow our boatman past this lagoon

and enter the cave where the boat is moored.

A fuzzy picture alack, but you get the idea.

 

Sian took this video - the occasional flashes are the boatman's head torch. It's worth watching to the end where we come out of the cave

And yes, we did the trip to the caves ( some 80km of a return journey) on one of these. Impossibly uncomfortable and both of us felt more knackered having done this on moped than on bike. Yes, I know I look like a dork. You will also notice that in Laos all hired moped helmets have a large pylon like structure attached to them so that the locals will know that you are foreign.

Another example of #rule 5 - get up early for the views.

These are known as "bomb boats", but putting my nerd hat on they are  made from the fuel drop tanks of B52 bombers during the Vietnam war.

These are the moments that make it so worth while. Just sitting in the shade opposite a lively village having a break watching all and sundry.

Like so many pictures this just completely fails to do justice to the view. From the top of a climb, overlooking miles and miles of jagged charcoal black rocks where I can't imagine any human being has ever been.

Boy jogging with cow. You don't see much of that in Surrey.

The Nam Theum reservoir. Laos is now a major producer of hydropower. These trees got drowned when it filled it, leaving a ghostly landscape

This chap was clearly thrilled with his catch of 4 minnows. Catching them involved gay frolicking with a net in the  mucky water that you can see behind him. Definitely a spectator sport!

This 2m long beauty shot across the road in front of me and then was slowed trying to get up a steep bank which allowed me to get the camera out. I was of course hoping that it was some viciously venomous species, but is a reticulated rat snake and quite harmless. I was quite astonished by how fast it moved though.

Another sunset, complete with French lady floating around lazily in an inner tube.

And so to what we have learnt in the form of our golden rules (at least so far!)

Rule #1: Food

Anyone that tells you that you will adapt entirely to native food I suspect must have had their tastebuds removed. There are only so many noodle broths, fried rice and scrambled eggs that you can go without developing a massive craving for western food! So rule #1 is never ever pass by something delicious without buying some in the belief that you can always buy it later. I promise you - you won't- at least not on that particular day.

Yummy. Two of our favourites - sticky rice in the bamboo tubes, and barbecued chicken.

We can forgive the spelling ( this is enormously common) because this place sold croissants and buns.

And the joyful sight of the "stop me and buy one" moped man. You can literally be in the middle of nowhere, but find one of these, flag him down and buy fresh baguettes/buns/doughnuts. It's a lottery where you find them, but generally they will slow when they see a westerner as they know what you like............

Rule #2. Go with the flow

The mood of the day can turn on a sixpence. Sometimes rides can be what we call "A to B rides", where all you seem to be doing is cycling all day and really getting nothing from it. You can start from this

A truly grotty guesthouse, where the coup de grace was the water pipe bursting. Note the colour of the water! Fortunately this was in the morning and rather than try and explain/get sorted, we just legged it.

To this

all in the space of a couple of hours!

Rule #3

Have some equipment that will make your life easier!

A travel kettle. Few guest houses have these, but you can make pot noodles, jok ( a packet form of rice porridge), the obvious tea and coffee and also boil eggs - there being no local shop that doesn't sell eggs. Try and buy one though with a long lead though as no Laos powerpoint is ever at floor level :(

Water filter. See the previous picture on grotty guest houses to  explain why this is  so necessary.

Terrano helmet intercom. I cannot praise these  highly enough! Long battery life, make cycling as a pair so much more interesting, plays music from iPhone and totally self contained. It took us a while to get the voice activated feature to work properly until I saw some goats and made a loud "baaaaah" noise which worked perfectly. So I have got a few curious looks as a result of rather random "baaaahs"

Rule #4. Don't overplan.  Some of our best views and experiences have just come from random route decisions. So here are some equally random pictures......

Washing your moped Laos style

This wasn't the first time we saw this! Available from Toys'R'Us anytime soon.

A malaysian moon moth. About 6" long!

A monk and following monkettes negotiating a taxi ride.

The mind totally boggles as to what you will see in the more provincial markets. We saw dead beaver, squirrel and sadly in this case I think a civet, which if it wasn't an endangered species soon will be.

Boy with puppy. Awhhhhhh

And a new addition to Laos road hazards, the unfeasibly fat piggy.

Rule #5 : Get going early. I rest my case, m'lord.....