Laos Part 2

Riding in to Luang Prabang, I was looking for a guest house called Clear Water GH that someone had told me about. I generally go with accommodation recommendations from other bikers as the place will have decent parking and hopefully no bed bugs. The Tourist Office is rubbish here, they have no leaflets and their suggestion of asking people on the street for directions to the hotel really wasn't that helpful. After riding around town for a while and getting nowhere, a guy on a bike arrives and knows where the guest house is- though it isn't called Clear Water, its called Cold River. I'd looked at the bit of paper with the name on only that morning and somehow during the ride there, the name had morphed into 'Clear Water' in my mind. I remember thinking on the way in, 'what a shit name for a guest house, the river's brown!'

I meet some German cyclists who've ridden all the way overland from Germany over 2 years. They came via Tibet and China, would be nice to do that too rather than shipping but I know its not that easy for a motorbike and would be very expensive. I stayed a couple of nights here and checked out some waterfalls but unfortunately missed the best one I'd been told about as my map had it marked in the wrong place. I then continued south to Vangvien, which I'd heard was a bit of a party town for boozed up young backpackers and it was. I found a really nice place to stay overlooking the river for 50,000kip run by a friendly Norwegian guy, Arne. I also met Grant, an Aussie tour guide who'd just bought a brand new moped there for $500. We rode over a rickety bridge and behind the mountains through some really stunning scenery to a small lagoon where we swam for a while. I'm not sure my photos do it justice but I took hundreds of pictures anyway. I also manged to get someone to repair my boots and Arne helped with the translations. 'Nam bo pai' is basically 'waterproof' so I managed to convice the woman that I didn't want here to sew the boots back together. The next day, when I picked them up, I was quite pleased with the results. A few days later, they got the ultimate test riding into Bangkok in during a torrential downpour.

I rode with Grant down to Vientiene, about 250kms away but following a moped isn't exactly exciting cruising at 30mph all the way though I got used to it eventually. I also couldn't believe my fuel economy, it had gone from an average of 20Kms/L to nearly 30! Unfortunately I don't think I'll be riding all the way home at 30mph though. On the way into town, we meet a couple on a hired dirt bike who invite us to a beer. Never one to refuse a free sunset beer (or any beer for that matter), we follow them to a riverside bar and end up meeting another guy who Grant knows so its quite nice. We eventually leave and look for a hotel, though not before Grants moped runs out of petrol. I go off looking for a garage for him but they all seem to be closed however an ex-pat guy on another dirt bike I meet at the traffic lights knows where to go and I follow him for about 10 minutes until we find some people selling bottles of fuel by the roadside.

We ride around the town looking at places to stay but a lot are full or too expensive. Eventually as is usually the case, we end up at the first place we looked at which is a bit of a dump but at least we can park the bikes in the reception area. After a fairly bland green curry, we find a bar and watch Germany getting beaten by Spain. Its a late night as the footy didn't even start till about 1am but in my windowless room the next morning, I'm unaware that its only 9am when I get up. Feeling pretty lousy, I pack up and get through the Thai border before filling up with gas and eating breakfast. I plan to ride all the way to Bangkok today so sense it's going to be a very long day.