127km day today, and yes you’ve guessed it – it’s been another stunning riding day in Laos 🙂

We had a lazy start to the day today with Karen and I surfacing about 08:10am to be greeted by Mike preparing a pot of porridge for us all to share on the balcony overlooking the river. We didn’t have enough UHT milk for porridge and ovaltine so after we’d had breakfast and packed the bikes I led Aad and Mike back across the Nong Khiaw bridge to Delilah’s cafe for a hot chocolate which was a bit of a mistake as it took ages for our order to be taken and then even longer for our drinks to arrive.

It was 10:15am or even later when we finally rolled out of Nong Khiaw and started on our 167km ride to Vieng Thong, which would be made more interesting as Aad and Mike didn’t have sufficient fuel to ride the distance and we weren’t sure if there was any fuel along the way.

Just like yesterday we took the opportunity every now and then to stop and say ‘Sabidee’ – ‘hello’ to local children as we passed by, and snapped a few photos. In one village we passed by the primary school just as class finished for the day (it was the middle of the day) and all the kids came running out of the school yard to say hello and to see the bike – or perhaps take a closer look at the Batman Minion we’ve cable-tied to the crash-bars.

We also stopped for a drink and some just out-of-date biscuits at a little stall, staying a little longer as Mike wasn’t feeling too good. Aad and I put on a bit of dance to try and cheer Mike up but this impromptu entertainment failed to impress.

Despite not feeling 100% today Mike was loving the riding as the road surface had been ripped up in many places and we had a fair bit of unsealed crap to ride through. In one place Karen and I had to dodge between some earth-moving equipment as they worked on the road – no such thing as flag marshals or safety procedures here !!!

My GPS showed a fuel stop ahead so I pulled into that, with Mike and Aad not far behind. The girl who pumped the fuel was a bit gobsmacked when she filled the bike – and it only took on 10L of its full 30L capacity, as the little scooters here in Laos have much smaller fuel tanks that can be filled much much quicker.

A bit further down the road we saw a sign for a restaurant so we pulled in there and ordered lunch, but the chicken, sticky rice and soup that was served up didn’t appeal to either Karen, Aad or Mike, so by and large I ate my lunch whilst they just picked at theirs and they left as hungry as they had been when they arrived, and at this stage it was about 3:15pm and we had approx 70km still to ride and two hours before sunset.

I picked up my pace a bit and when Mike pulled over to take a photo we slipped into the lead position on the road and we didn’t see the other guys again until they arrived at the designated guesthouse in Vieng Thong. Karen and I had a six minute lead over Aad and Mike, but Mike explained that he’d lost a bolt from his chain guard after hitting a big pothole in the road, and he’d spent a few minutes fixing that with the help of Aad. Karen and I had hit the same pothole earlier and she had hurt her arm in the process so neither of us were too happy about that – we’d managed to weave and duck around every other pothole today, but this one was laying in wait for us – perfectly camouflaged and stretching the width of the road. We ground out our centre stand on it, and I was thankful we didn’t get a puncture.

Just after we arrived at our guesthouse a young couple – an English lady and a French guy arrived on two clapped out 100cc motorbikes they had bought in Vietnam and had ridden across the border. Karen was chatting with them at it turned out that the lady is Stephanie Rowe – a participant in ‘One World – One GS’, and Vincent – who races his GS in rallies in Europe.

We went out for dinner with Aad and Mike about 6:30pm but it was black outside and most of the shops were closing for the day. We walked back to the place next to our guesthouse where we ordered some meat and noodles, and shortly later Stephanie and Vincent joined us, unable themselves to find anywhere else to eat. We had a good chat about bikes and riding with them before retiring early to bed as tomorrow will be a long day and we’ll need an early start.

Vince and I started the morning with a walk to the bridge to see the early morning light on the mountain…followed by a latte and hot chocolate at a little cafe called Delilah’s. The had some eclectic furnishings and interesting offerings….such as Lao Lao Whiskey (which I have still yet to try) with added benefits of centipede and scorpion or if you prefer snake!

I took some nice shots of the Nong Khiaw Resort (the nice place with four poster beds where Vince said last time…..we had hoped to stay there but it was booked out) from the bridge. There was the odd bit of boat traffic on the river but most of the action was in the local wildlife…a cat on a motorbike and a very vocal Cockerel!

We had a very quiet day and just had lunch at our hotel….we went back to the bridge in the early evening to try and get some good sunset shots. Dinner was at a local Indian place and was very tasty!

Stunning ride today. 113km of awesome riding roads and fantastic scenery.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs at Souphailin’s Restaurant about 8:00am, and then we were on our bikes and heading out of town with just a quick raid on an ATM to make sure we could pay for the next few days.

Just south of Oudom Xai we passed through dusty Houaylin and turned eastwards up into the mountains again, and immediately the road started to twist again as it followed the contours of the hills. Very quickly we were riding into the mist that clung to the top of the mountains, and this provided some eerie sights as we followed Mike along the road.

Yesterday I’d slowed down a lot as we passed through the many villages dissected by the road so that Karen could photograph people and places but even at low speed some of the photos hadn’t been as clear as we’d hoped, so today’s plan was to come to a complete stop. The little children in the villages here in northern Laos are very friendly and often run out to the road verge and wave at us as we pass by, and Karen was keen to get some good photos of these tikes. One village we stopped at had some young ladies dressed in traditional dress and playing catch with a ball – Karen alighted from the bike here and joined Aad to take some close up photos.

The next village along the ridge had a number of little pigs running around which delighted Karen as she took their photos, and a big porker that snuffled up to us to have her back scratched. Aad bought some drinks from a roadside stall here and I could see that the next stall along was selling a squirrel and some small colourful birds, all tied up and hanging from the roof.

In many places the road was being repaired or upgraded and we had to contend with some quite slippery and muddy riding conditions.

(Beer Lao is stifling my writing here so to conclude ….)

Rode into Nong Khiaw across the bridge, stopping briefly to enjoy the river scenery below. Followed Mike down a rocky road to our guesthouse, the Mee Xai Guesthouse, and carried our gear upstairs to our near new and adequate if sparsely furnished room. A late lunch was had at the pizza place at the eastern end of the bridge where I’d enjoyed a nice pizza five years ago – in 2015 it took the restaurant about two hours to make and serve a cheese and ham sandwich for Karen, a burger for Aad, and a pizza each for Mike and myself 🙁

Just after sunset we went for a stroll across the bridge and watched the remnants of a lovely sunset, and then wandered down the main street on the other side of the bridge, soaking up the atmosphere as Nong Khiaw tucked itself to bed for the night. Dinner was had back at our guesthouse – chicken fried rice eaten on the balcony overlooking the black Nam Ou river.

230km ride today, including a 120km side trip (return) to Muang Sing that started and ended in Luang Namtha, before we started our 110km ride towards Oudom Xai in earnest.

Our morning started with a 7:00am wake-up call from the iPad, followed by a flurry of packing and loading of the bikes, ready for an 08:00am departure – our first destination “Lai’s Place” – the small restaurant down the side street that we ate at last night, and would return to today for breakfast.

Karen had a mango with a sticky rice pancake, the rest of us had Lai’s “Lao Omelette Surprise” – tasty and filling, with all sorts of interesting edibles in it. After a quick refuelling stop we were ready to head off to Muang Sing about 09:00am, taking the twisty mountain road that leads there. The first 15km of the road was quite chopped up with the road surface ripped away and replaced with a clay base. The sky was grey and threatened rain, and I was concerned that if it did start raining then we’d have difficulty retracing our steps as the clay quickly turns to a very slippery mud, but after a quick chat with Aad and Mike we decided to push on all the way to Muang Sing.

The narrow road twisted up and down along the mountain sides, following a river. We slowed down at one point as the road ahead was blocked by cars – a little people-mover van had slipped off the road into a deep gutter and people were trying to get the van back onto the road. Just a short distance further on an ambulance passed us heading towards the accident, but we hadn’t seen anyone injured in or around the car when we rode slowly past.

Just south of Muang Sing the road left the mountains and dropped down to the paddy fields, with little wooden houses built along the roadside a clear sign that we were approaching the town. We rode into Muang Sing and I stopped out the front of the old two storey building that was Tailu’s Restaurant & Guesthouse, but when Karen questioned a guy out the front he just mumbled incomprehensibly. Directly across the road we saw another building labelled Tailu’s Restaurant, but the man there said that the restaurant was no longer open. Oh well – I’d enjoyed a delicious banana pancake and Lao coffee here five years ago but it wasn’t to be today.

Mike spotted another small restaurant a little further up the busy main road of the small town, but when we rode up there the ‘Doof Doof’ music blaring out was that loud it was almost deafening, so we went a bit further again to a small Chinese restaurant and enjoyed some nice spicy minced beef and rice, along with a cup of hot tea.

Our early lunch over, and Karen having completed her rescue mission that involved picking up a big beetle that was slowly trudging down the road and risking getting squashed flat and relocating it to the tall grass on the other side of the road, we remounted and headed back to Luang Namtha. The return trip seemed to pass by a bit quicker – the road had dried out a bit and we could ride with a bit more confidence.

Just out of Luang Namtha we stopped briefly so Mike could check his GPS and then we headed east along Route 1 towards Oudom Xai. I spotted a water buffalo and its calf in a paddy field just near the edge of the rural road, but I was a bit slow in stopping the bike so Karen could get a good photo of it, nevertheless upon checking the photos later in the day she has snapped it quite well. The first 40km of the road took us out to Nateui and the open road allowed us to set a good pace.

Beyond Nateui the road started a bit more twisting and turning and narrowed a bit, so more concentration was required – validated by some of the missing sections of road that we had to skirt around to avoid.

We arrived in Oudom Xai around 4:30pm and made our way to our guest house that was a bit set back from the centre of town, dropped off our soft luggage and then rode back to Souphailin’s Restaurant back on the other (northern) side of the bridge, for an early dinner. I’d eaten a few times at Souphailin’s when I’d passed through Oudom Xai years ago, and this small, quaint and quirky place is listed in Trip Advisor as the #1 restaurant in town. Souphailin recognised me from the previous trip, (despite my long hair and beard now) and we settled down at one of the two outdoor tables located on the verandah surrounded by tall plants.

Karen wasn’t feeling hungry so she just had some mashed potato whilst Aad and Mike shared a delicious vegetarian dish of fried vegetables with pineapple and peanuts, and I had a traditional northern Laos dish – chicken cooked in banana leaf. Desert was banana in caramel (Mike), and Aad helped me finish a bowl of mango with sticky rice and coconut milk.

Riding back to our guest house in the dark gave both Aad and Mike a chance to test their new spotlights in the darkness, and they were very impressed. Aad had been quite impressed with the auxiliary headlights – the spotlights – on our BMW and had bought and fitted lights to his Triumph and Mike’s Yamaha in Chiang Mai. During the day these LED’s are much easier to see than their standard headlights, and at night they are great as well.

And so ends another great riding day in Laos. Great roads, great company, great food – it’s like a food safari over here 🙂

This post will be a brief account of our two down days in Luang Namtha – Friday 18th and Saturday 19th December. In my rough plan for Laos Saturday had been earmarked for the short 60km ride through the Nam Tha National Park to Muang Sing, but it was raining quite consistently on Friday into Saturday morning and Aad had a bad headache from Friday morning that he couldn’t shake, so we opted to have a second off-bike day.

Friday morning – our first morning in Laos – started with a simple pre-breakfast of tea and Nutella on Digestive biscuits at our chalets, before I led the four of us to the local markets so we could have a look around. The markets were fascinating – a photographers delight, and it was great to see Aad, Mike and Karen take such interest in the local produce for sale. Karen and I bought some mandarins and mangoes whilst Aad and Mike bought some grapes. The range of vegetables and fruits available was astounding – both in colour and variety – and everything looked so fresh as if it had just been plucked or dug up that morning. We saw large fungi the size of dinner plates, chillies, basil, tiny apples. Aad and Mike were the first to see frogs for sale, sitting patiently in plastic basins, and also a dead cat being sold by some people selling some roots.

The largely covered markets were organised into different sections – vegetables and fruits, rices, live animals (fish, eels, chickens), meats, clothing, etc. A large dining area consisting of trestle tables and chairs was surrounded by women who displayed banana leaves piled high with noodles and greens ready for reheating and serving.

We watched one man carefully examine a big rooster from every conceivable angle as he decided whether or not to purchase it, and a lady gave us a small disc – maybe 6cm in diameter – of pressed curry paste (perhaps ???) that had a very strong after taste to it !!! Nearby I saw a woman selling some vegetables – on her table she also had a headless snake coiled up, and a blue kingfisher for sale.

Some of the sights in the market were a bit confronting for us all, but it was a special experience for us as well. We walked on a few blocks past the local motorcycle markets and a very noisy electronics store that was blasting out music from giant speakers so loud it felt like it would make your ears bleed, and out onto the main road and in the direction of the main part of town.

I was looking out for a cafe I’d been in on my last trip but couldn’t see it down the side streets so we stopped at the Bamboo Lounge Restaurant – set up as a training venue for local people to help them learn both hospitality skills and English, with profits directed towards buying books for the local school. We enjoyed a late breakfast and I savoured my Lao coffee – coffee with sweetened condensed milk, whilst the others had a hot chocolate each.

After our meal we strolled up the main street, taking in the sights and sounds. We heard a collision between two small motorcycles – a local rider and a foreigner had collided. Neither of them were seriously injured, so after checking on them we continued on our way. Skid marks on the road showed that the local rider had dropped his bike and slid across the centreline into the path of the oncoming rider.

I took our merry band up to the Luang Namtha Museum – this had been closed on my last visit. Aad headed back to the chalets whilst the rest of us went into the small musuem. Initially it was locked up but a young lady opened the door for us, charged us our small entrance fee and then watched us as we spent an hour or so walking around the single room that was the Musuem. Items on display included old brass drums recovered from temples in the area, traditional clothing of the various local tribes (both male and female variations), wooden implements such as fish and eel traps, crossbows, baskets – all the way up to ox ploughs, as well as rifles and other weapons used by the French and other colonising forces, and local militia weapons and home-made rifles used in the fight for independence. One display board showed photographs of local industries – rice growing, fishing etc, and another board showed photos from significant municipal events such as meetings with foreign dignitaries.

We walked back to our chalets, where Karen and I spent the afternoon catching up on a few chores – in the evening the two of us returned to the Bamboo Lounge for a dinner of wood-fired Hawaiian pizza and a bacon carbonara, whilst Aad and Mike tracked down a couple of hamburgers a bit further down the road.

Saturday morning we weren’t in a rush as we had already decided to not ride to Muang Sing today and instead we’d booked a third night’s stay at Taidam Guesthouse in Luang Namtha. Mike boiled some water and we had a cup of tea, and then we headed down to the Bamboo Lounge for breakfast. All of Luang Namtha was without electricity this morning – we were told that power would be off til 1:00pm. We had a pleasant breakfast of crispy bacon, bread (as the electric toaster wouldn’t work) and eggs, and sat on the comfy lounge chairs watching daily life go by outside and chatting about nothing and everything.

Late in the morning we headed back to our chalets for an afternoon of Big Bang Theory episodes from Season Nine and then blogging (Vince) and sorting photos (Karen). We had thought about having an afternoon ride out to Muang Sing today but it was still drizzling and Karen’s broken arm is giving her a lot of pain this afternoon so it was decided that it would be better for her to rest today as tomorrow we need to push eastwards on to Oudom Xay. It’s about 4:00pm now, Karen is still working hard on her photos and I’m starting to chill to a bit of Pink Floyd on the iPad. It’s been a quiet but pleasant day – a chance to rest and relax. Tomorrow is Oudom Xay and Souphallin’s Restaurant – the best chef in northern Laos and the best chicken curry and Laos Whisky – I can’t wait 🙂