February 26, 2013

The bus arrived at the Vientiane station a little after 5am. It took us about 20 minutes to get the bikes back together and get on the road. The bus station is a couple kilometers outside of town so we road in as the sun was rising.

We had breakfast at a nice café and waited until the Chinese embassy opened at 9am. We arrived along with a few other foreigners and chatted about the visa process. Everyone else was there for round two or more after finding out they were missing some critical piece of paper. A French guy told us that they were put through the ringer a bit more than other folks apparently because of a row resulting from a controversial state visit to France by a certain regional leader in exile…

The embassy opened at 9am and we handed over our applications and our photographs. We read that they would want two copies of the applications, which we had, but they actually only wanted one. The official quickly looked through all our paperwork, gave us a receipt, instructions to go to the Chinese bank for payment and told us we could pick up our passports on Friday morning. We walked out a little stunned as the whole process only took about 3 minutes. Now we wait, and hope that our applications are in order.

We found the bank on the main road into town and made our payment ($140 each since we’re American, $32 for everyone else).

We found a nice guesthouse and spent the hottest part of the day inside relaxing. For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant and ordered a feast.

Birthday feast

After dinner, we went bowling. We used to go bowling in the winter in Anchorage, so it seemed appropriate. It was so much fun, but we were both a little out of practice. The best part was the bowling alley here played the same American dance music as back home. Because it was Chan’s birthday, I let him win all three games.

Goofy shoes

Like a pro

Laying down another strike

We fell asleep quickly and early as we hadn’t slept well on the bus. Around 2am, we are both awoken by a dog, directly outside our window, howling. The guesthouse owners had about 5 or 6 dogs that they fed and kept in the courtyard. The howling lasted a few minutes before a staff member came out and started hushing the dog. The dog then started running around the courtyard howling. The person was eventually able to quiet the animal down to only have it start humping another dog. The humping continued until we both fell back asleep. Then for the remainder of the night, the dog started howling every half hour or so until 5am, with someone continuously and futilely shushing it. It was by far the worst night sleep we’ve had on the trip. Although the place was really nice in every other way, we had to find another place where we could sleep!

February 24, 2013

We already knew that we wouldn’t find breakfast in this weird little town so we starting riding right away. Chandler was already hungry (he is usually hungry, or almost hungry) so we stopped at a mini-bus station a few kilometers down the road and he finally got some meat on a stick, which is so common throughout SE Asia. This was a whole chicken leg BBQ’d and tied to a stick. He passed on the skewered BBQ beetles, though they were a steal at 5000 kip ($0.60) for a baker’s dozen of them. Chandler gave the chicken a thumbs up while munching away at it as he rode along. We were also able to catch a big accomplishment on camera, 2000 miles ridden!

Chandler's 1st breakfast

2000 miles!

Soon enough we came upon a road sign pointing out a nearby attraction, dinosaur footprints. We followed the arrow off onto dirt road that led us to the river where a number of people were bathing. It wasn’t clear where we were supposed to go, but a friendly man clearly realized why two goofy looking white folks were wandered down his road and pointed up the river. We took turns staying with the bikes while the other went to look at the prints. Someone had spray painted red circles around the prints, otherwise I never would have noticed them. But upon further inspections, it was clear that they were in fact footprints of some sort. Chandler assumed they were velosaraptors, but most of his paleontological knowledge is from multiple viewings of Jurassic Park (AND he read the book), but there wasn’t any information on display, so who knows what made the prints.

Looking for dino prints

Dinosaur prints

Back on the bikes, the road condition quickly deteriorated and we were in the middle of road construction. Not only are crappy roads rough to ride on, but it is very mentally draining weaving around holes and oncoming traffic also weaving around holes. I wasn’t going to make it very far without something to eat and pulled off at the first restaurant. We had our usual breakfast of omelets and steamed rice (no coffee, so a pepsi was offered and accepted, $2.50 total) and were now more ready to tackle the construction.

Lao surveyors

The construction lasted for about 20 miles when we reached a town with a guesthouse. It was hot out and the sun was broiling me alive. I made a comment to Chandler about stopping for the day, but he didn’t think I was serious. At 130pm, with 20 miles left, we hit another town with guesthouses. I made another attempt to stop for the day. At this point, we got into a bit of a disagreement. I wanted to take a break until it wasn’t so hot. Chandler wanted to either stay where we were in the little crossroads town or continue to Savannakhet. He didn’t want to take a long break and end up riding into a city as the sun was setting. Somehow it was decided we would get something cold to drink and figure out what we would do then, stay or continue. I pulled up to a place, but they only served beer. I was so hot, miserable and pissed off I continued to ride right out of town. I was pretty far ahead of him when I felt something hit my arm hard. I looked down and might have given off a girly little shriek, stopped and waited for Chandler to get the thing off me.

My attacker

That helped lighten the mood. We found a store with a cooler off the road right away and had a cold drinks and some ice cream. We were both feeling much better and ready to finish the ride to Savannakhet. We rolled into town a little more than an hour later. We found a guesthouse, took showers and checked our email. We were both happy to be in a larger city, it had been a week since we had access to the internet.

Finally made it to town

We set out for dinner pretty quickly after getting settled. The café we originally wanted to go to was closed, so we wandered around for awhile. We read that Savannakhet was quiet and not very touristy, but this was a bit of an understatement. The place was really quiet with parts of town feeling abandoned. Our Lonely Planet was outdated with most of the places listed to eat, not there anymore. We ended up at a French restaurant, which we later found out was the most expensive in town. It was worth it though. We got rolls with real butter and a big fresh salad. I had a bunch of small vegetarian morsels like stuffed tomatoes and a potato croquette, Chandler had tender beef served in a wine sauce. The meals were awesome, total bill $19. Budget blown, but feeling great we ended the evening with a walk along the Mekong River as the sun set.

Sunset

February 23, 2013

We woke up in wonderful moods and excited to cycle. We had a short day planned of only about 20 miles. When we rolled our bikes out of our room, we were surprised to see the sky was completely gray. My dreams were finally coming true! We headed back to the restaurant we ate dinner at and had a solid omelet and rice breakfast, minus the squid.

War monument

The ride was easy going, rolling hills with a tailwind. We were flying down and up every hill. The scenery was not as lush as Vietnam, but still mountainous and beautiful. Children and adults called out to say “Sabaidee” to us in each small village we passed. Laos is the first country that people mostly greet us in their own language, not in English. It is surprisingly refreshing. We saw lots of goats and pigs wandering on the side of the road and sometimes in the road. We passed through a village where everyone seemed to be making charcoal. Tractors piled with wood that smelled like cedar frequently passed us, delivering their loads to the villagers. We saw piles of smoldering sand where they had buried the burning wood slowly transforming it into charcoal. Villagers with black hands raked the sand away from the finished piles, and extracted the blackened remnants of the wood. The charcoal towns were full of dense sooty smog and were not all that pleasant for riding.

More goats

Typical home and charcoal pile

Another charcoal production technique

After a while we stopped at a café for some coffee and enjoyed watching some puppies wrestle with each other. We got to our original target destination after less than 2 hours of riding, but were still feeling fantastic. It was barely 1030am, so we decided to keep going for a little while longer. A little while longer ended up meaning that we would nearly triple our distance. We had entered a particularly rural stretch of the road and the only guesthouse we saw was abandoned. With the blanket of clouds overhead and a tailwind at our backs, we contemplated going all the way to the next day’s destination.

Buddha

Cute puppies

We were getting a bit hungry, so Chan stopped and found some local food products for our lunch. I turned this down, much to his disappointment.

Squirrels for sale

In the end, we found a decent guesthouse in a random strip of development that seemed to exist only because of a small market that mainly sold parts for motorbikes.

It was another newly built or remodeled building, so the room was very clean. There was nothing around though. The only restaurant was closed and we didn’t have any fuel to cook with our stove. Chan walked around the market and besides spare electric starters and motorbike rims only found a pretty sad collection of wilted vegetables and the inevitable gray chickens. So, we dined on Ritz crackers, tuna, spreadable cheese and Oreos, which was becoming our signature dish. Knowing we would probably end up riding the entire distance of 110km to Savannakhet the next day, we went to bed early.

A few hours later we both woke up to loud, angry men’s voices outside our window. Chandler groggily asked me what was going on and I replied that people were arguing. Luckily all our gear was inside, including our bikes, so we just sat and listened. Things started to get really heated, with furniture being shoved around, then a glass shattered which raised the shouting to a crescendo. Next, we heard the dudes start slapping each other. The sound of open palm slapping is unmistakable. Any of our feelings of nervousness were gone. Chandler and I whispered words of confusion due to the unexpected turn the fight had just taken. Slapping? Really? As quickly as the fight started, it was over. Engines revved and cars peeled out of the parking lot. It was perfectly quiet and we fell right back to sleep.

February 22, 2013

If we weren’t so intent on getting out of Vietnam, we would have hung out at the hotel working for another day. We got up early, dressing in clean and dry clothing and tried to find breakfast. Again, we went to three or four different restaurants asking for bread and eggs. No, just the lovely grey chicken soup. How is it possible that there is only soup? We had no problem getting eggs and baguettes everywhere else, but not here in this strange place. We were both so frustrated with the situation- we just hoped there was something over the border.

We headed to the border and were immediately descended upon by the money changer women. The Laos visa is $35 USD per person which should be paid in US dollars for the best rate. Chandler was prepared to deal with ladies, knowing the current exchange rate and having a high end he was willing to sell our Vietnamese Dong for some bucks. The first offer was for 2,500,000 Dong for $80 USD. This is about $125 so, their first offer was a $45 overshot. Chan made a brief attempt at getting them close to the real exchange rate which yielded $5 deduction, which might as well have been a shot across the bow for Chan who had completely lost what little patience he had with this sort of thing after a few weeks in Vietnam. He gave them a polite “thank you very much” and pedaled off while they desperately and futilely called off counter offers. We’d have to deal with the official’s exchange rate, which couldn’t be worse than dealing with the scammer ladies at the border.

Goodbye Vietnam

Getting stamped out of Vietnam was pretty straight forward. We tried to go through the wrong gate only twice, but everyone was pretty cool with our incompetence and we finally ended up at the right booth. The guard studied our passports quite intensely, then took them into another room for a while before returning them and allowing us to walk out through no-man’s land and through the Laos gate. The Lao visa upon arrival desk was deserted so we waited, and waited. There was a small group of women selling pirated DVDs, books and candy on one of the waiting benches in front of the border station. One of them encouraged Chan to push the sliding glass window open to grab the necessary paperwork we had to fill out. After we filled it all out, there was still no one in the office. Chan walked to the immigration office, but they were too busy playing solitaire on the computer to acknowledge him. We spotted a bank right across from the station on the Laos side and since no one seemed to care what we were doing, Chandler walked over and exchanged our Vietnamese Dong to USD and Lao Kip. The Lao tellers were super nice and even spoke some English. They exchanged the money at nearly the exact rate, and we basically only lost about 20 cents from the rounding. While he was away, I noticed an older man who was perusing the DVDs, selected a porn and then participated in a detailed discussion about his new film with one of the sales ladies.

Hello Laos

Eventually, the official returned to his desk and gave us our Laos visas with zero trouble and we were on our way. There was a little casino right on the border with a restaurant that was open. We immediately sat down and had a delicious past due breakfast of Thai style omelets over rice. We ate quickly as we were excited to be in a new country.

The differences between Laos and Vietnam were obvious right away. There was less traffic and it was blessedly quiet. The affluence was gone but the people were much friendlier. We were immediately bombarded with smiles, “hellos” and “sabaidees” from everyone. It felt like a leaden vest had been lifted off us, with the constant traffic anxiety gone. Shop keepers were friendly and gone was the suspicious banter between the proprietors when we asked how much something cost.

Giant pig at the gas station

Cute Lao boys

Sepon wasn’t too far from the border, so we arrived in the early afternoon. Chandler had read an old blog that said there were only two options for lodging, but that info was clearly dated. We had at least a dozen of guesthouses to pick from. We found a brand new one on a side street that was still partially under construction. For $8, we had a brand new tiled room, with spotless white sheets and a huge comforter. There wasn’t any wifi, but this place ranked with one of the absolute cleanest placed we’ve stayed so far.

Cleanest guesthouse in Laos

Interesting bathroom tiles

We went through the normal routine of showers and relaxing before setting out in search of dinner. The first restaurant we went to was run by a Vietnamese woman who was not friendly and not interested in helping us. We got a little worried about what Laos was going to be like from the encounter with her. We walked up to the next restaurant and they ended up being really great folks.

I had kept my sign that Areeya made for me in Thailand on very first day of biking. Apparently the Lao written language is similar to Thai and the Lao people watch a lot of Thai TV, so we figured the restaurant owner would be able to understand my sign. My sign says: I am vegetarian, but I eat eggs, shrimp and fish. This means people interpret how they want to. The owner made us fried rice with veggies, egg and squid. Chandler loved it, (he declared it the best squid he’d ever had, not sure how much squid he’s actually ever had…) but I had a little trouble with the chewy texture and was not able to eat it all. It was still a very filling meal, and very cheap.

We left feeling full and happy to be in Laos. We really felt released from a lot of tension we had been harboring, and were so happy to be in a new place with really friendly people. We spent the remainder of the evening watching a show on Chan’s computer and reading.