We had hoped to travel to the border and cross into Laos today but an early email from Aad (Art) let us know the weather forecast was not good for today (clearing tomorrow) and as we had sent our wet weather gear home from Chiang Mai we thought a down day would be in order. In addition, Aad had twigged to a space problem with their laptops – with Vince now providing Mike with GoPro footage every day, and then with Aad now using our spare GoPro they were accumulating video much faster then they had anticipated and it was pushing their laptop storage capacity to the limit, so they needed to make more space available.
Aad and Mike jumped on their bikes and rode down to Tesco’s to get some supplies whilst Karen and I walked down the main road, passing a brightly painted tour coach parked on some vacant land. We made our way to Cafe Lao in time for lunch, removing our shoes as requested by the sign outside and sitting at a low table on the verandah, ordering the spring rolls and Lao noodle soup. The spring rolls (not fried) were delicious, served with two small bowls – one with a dipping sauce in, the other filled with crushed nuts. The Lao noodle soup was accompanied with a bamboo pot full of basil and lettuce leaves – Karen immediately ripping the leaves and dunking them into the soup bowl, which tasted delicious. We had a slow and leisurely lunch, then caught a tuk-tuk down to Tesco’s and did some shopping for ourselves before going back to our guesthouse for an afternoon of light chores.
Towards sunset Mike joined us for another stroll into town, firstly however we walked down to the banks of the Mekong and looked across the water to Laos on the eastern side before walking back up to the small ramshackle shops, squeezing between the narrow aisles jammed with multi-packed products and looking for a few supplies for our dinner.
Dinner was almost a repeat of yesterday – a joint effort involving our MSR Dragonfly cooker and Aad’s Coleman stove whipping up a combination of baked beans, two-minute noodles, eggs, tomatoes and onions.
The rain had held off for the day – whilst the grey sky had threatened rain for a lot of the day it had been quite dry. Late in the evening however it started to bucket down – not an auspicious sign for tomorrow but we’re now a day behind and we can’t stay here in Thailand indefinitely so tomorrow we ride …. hopefully !!!!
