After our quick detour at the Plain of Jars, we headed back to Route 13 (the main road from Vientiane through Luang Prabang) via bus. We were dropped off in the middle of the night at the small junction town of Phou Khoun in the pouring cold rain. We had no idea where to stay and while I stood shivering in a small shack, Brian ran around the town looking for a guest house. We finally found a decent one and settled in for the night. Unfortunately we were stuck eating foe (pronounced fuh) for dinner which had been our meal for breakfast and lunch. Many times restaurants only serve foe, rice noodle soup with some mystery meat and your occasional ant. Brian and I have learned to love it (when we are starving while biking) and hate it so much!
The next morning we started our two day journey by bike to Luang Prabang. The day started out misty and it was drizzling, but after ten km of downhill we escaped the mountain haze. The downhill is always incredible, but it is usually followed by Uphill and those are the moments when I regret buying the bikes. However, at the end of the day we definitely feel proud of ourselves!
We had a short day of only 25 km from Phgou Khoun to a small village called Kioukacham. Halfway through, I was ready to give up when two old ladys came up to us and gave us two cucumbers with big smiles on their faces. This definitely brightened my day seeing people who had so little being so generous to complete strangers.
When we finally made it to our guest house our bikes were coverfed in mud (there are a lot of areas of the road that have been destroyed by landslides).
The next day we had 80 km until we reached the city of Luang Prabang and the majorit was uphill.
Luckly we made a stop at a waterfall on the way which was amazing. The water was torquoise blue and there were many tiers of waterfalls and pools where you could swim! We didn't know this before and had left our bathing suits with our bikes at the boat launch (you have to take a boat to get there). We were so hot that we jumped in in our biking clothes. We even got to see elephants forced to swim with the tourists riding them.
Eventually we made it to the beautiful quiet "city" (only 70,000 people live there) of Luang Prabang. Here we relaxed for a few days while Brian learned how to fix the gears on our bikes (which were an absolute pain in the ass) through the most versatile teacher ever... youtube. Surprisingly he did a great job on my bike, but his is still quite finicky.
The backpackers section of Luang Prabang has a very Euopean feel to it. It's on the Mekong River and has multiple temples to visit. Our favorite thing was to get up at dawn and watch the procession of saffron clad monks collect alms (sticky rice) from pious locals. It would have been ever morespecial if there weren't so many tourists snapping photos during it. We felt a little bad adding to the crowd, but it seems the monks have become accustomed to the paparazzi.
After much debate we decided to take another detour from our cycling and head to the small river villages of Nong Kiaw and Muong Ngoi. At first we were planning on taking a seven hour boat ride up the Nam Ou River to get to the first town of Nong Kiaw, but the n we realized that a bus would be half the price and half the time.
Nong Kiaw was beautiful. It is situated on the Nam Ou River and we thought it was what Vang Vieng would have been like before the partiers took it over. From Nong Kiaw we took a two hour boat ride to Muong Ngoi. The only way to access this roadless village is by boat so we expected it to not be very touristy. Unfortunately, every other tourist thought the same and the small village was full of westerners.
However, we ended up having a great time and met a really cool couple from French Canada! The only downside to our visit was our decisionto hike to a nearby waterfall. Everyone had warned us about the mud and the leeches, but we were strong willed. We ended up hiking in ankle deep mud for 45 minutes and reaching a small pool of water with a very underwhelming stream of water coming off some rocks. I decided to take a dip since we hiked all the way and destroyed our shoes. When removing our sneakers we realized that leeches were a lot smaller than we thought and had made their way onto our feet. At this point we decided to turn around.
We were very disappointed that we had paid for a boat to drive us up river for the hike and angry that our guesthouse had advertised it. Although the owner did advise us to take a guide. When we returned he looked quite shocked that we were back so quickly and asked if we had made it to the waterfall. We told him yes and explained our experience. He then said, "So you didn't make it to the limestone cliff with the 20 meter waterfall and the large body of water?" At this we looked at each other and were even more disappointed. We definitely should have takedn a guide. We probably had made it almost the whole way to the falls and turned around right before we got to it!
The next day we headed back to Nong Kiaw on the boat and started the next leg of our journey towards Oudomsay. Another junction town near the border of China where there is a lot of Chinese influence.
It took us two days to cycle the 110 km. I had read mixed reviews on the town, but we heard that the best restaurant in all of Laos resided there. The town ended up being our least favorite place in all of Laos. People were very rude and unfriendly (very different from everywhere else in Laos). The hotel we stayed at made us pay when we checked in and we then discovered hundreds of little fleas covering the bed spread. When I told the guy at the front desk he just shrugged refused to change the sheets. Lets just say I had a moment and threw a little temper tantrum. Brian was slightly embarassed by my actions to say the least. But somehow it worked as the terrified Laos man brought in a new sheet. The restaurant we were told was amazing was mediocre and all in all it was a bad experience.
At the present moment we are on our way to Pak Beng where we will take a day boat to the border of Northern Tailand.
It will take us three days in total and we are currently on our second leg after biking 100 km from Oudomsay. I was very happy to leave the town and even just outside of the city limits, the people were so much more friendly.
Everywhere we go children in the small villages always yell falang falang (which means white person) and start running when they see us coming on our bikes. They always are smiling and waving and they love it when we slap them five while biking by. It is very cute and always puts a smile on our faces, even when we're exhausted from biking.
Our first stop was in a small village with only one guesthouse called Muong Beng. We were famished when we arrived and began hunting for food (not literally). We finally found the only place in town serving foe, of course, with the added protein of ants and flys. I tried to eat as much as I could, but mainly just pushed everything around in my bowl and dropped things into Brian's when he wasn't looking.
Lucky for us this restaurant was also a Karaoke bar. Karaoke is HUGE in SE Asia. The owner was very friendly and forcibly coerced us to partake by shoving the mic in Brian's hand (his first karaoke experience) and randomly putting on an english song, which happened to be, John Denver's Country Road, Take Me Home. This would have been somewhat normal if it weren't for the video that went along with the song, which was a bunch of white female strippers in American flag shirts. I kept wondering what they must think of our culture. The women in the bar looked horrified and I couldn't help but laugh hysterically.
Anyways we ended up staying at the bar into the night. The owner who spoke no English treated us to many a beerlaos and we continued to sing every English song they had on the machine. It was one of our favorite nights thus far.
The next morning we started our two day journey by bike to Luang Prabang. The day started out misty and it was drizzling, but after ten km of downhill we escaped the mountain haze. The downhill is always incredible, but it is usually followed by Uphill and those are the moments when I regret buying the bikes. However, at the end of the day we definitely feel proud of ourselves!
We had a short day of only 25 km from Phgou Khoun to a small village called Kioukacham. Halfway through, I was ready to give up when two old ladys came up to us and gave us two cucumbers with big smiles on their faces. This definitely brightened my day seeing people who had so little being so generous to complete strangers.
When we finally made it to our guest house our bikes were coverfed in mud (there are a lot of areas of the road that have been destroyed by landslides).
The next day we had 80 km until we reached the city of Luang Prabang and the majorit was uphill.
Luckly we made a stop at a waterfall on the way which was amazing. The water was torquoise blue and there were many tiers of waterfalls and pools where you could swim! We didn't know this before and had left our bathing suits with our bikes at the boat launch (you have to take a boat to get there). We were so hot that we jumped in in our biking clothes. We even got to see elephants forced to swim with the tourists riding them.
Eventually we made it to the beautiful quiet "city" (only 70,000 people live there) of Luang Prabang. Here we relaxed for a few days while Brian learned how to fix the gears on our bikes (which were an absolute pain in the ass) through the most versatile teacher ever... youtube. Surprisingly he did a great job on my bike, but his is still quite finicky.
The backpackers section of Luang Prabang has a very Euopean feel to it. It's on the Mekong River and has multiple temples to visit. Our favorite thing was to get up at dawn and watch the procession of saffron clad monks collect alms (sticky rice) from pious locals. It would have been ever morespecial if there weren't so many tourists snapping photos during it. We felt a little bad adding to the crowd, but it seems the monks have become accustomed to the paparazzi.
After much debate we decided to take another detour from our cycling and head to the small river villages of Nong Kiaw and Muong Ngoi. At first we were planning on taking a seven hour boat ride up the Nam Ou River to get to the first town of Nong Kiaw, but the n we realized that a bus would be half the price and half the time.
Nong Kiaw was beautiful. It is situated on the Nam Ou River and we thought it was what Vang Vieng would have been like before the partiers took it over. From Nong Kiaw we took a two hour boat ride to Muong Ngoi. The only way to access this roadless village is by boat so we expected it to not be very touristy. Unfortunately, every other tourist thought the same and the small village was full of westerners.
However, we ended up having a great time and met a really cool couple from French Canada! The only downside to our visit was our decisionto hike to a nearby waterfall. Everyone had warned us about the mud and the leeches, but we were strong willed. We ended up hiking in ankle deep mud for 45 minutes and reaching a small pool of water with a very underwhelming stream of water coming off some rocks. I decided to take a dip since we hiked all the way and destroyed our shoes. When removing our sneakers we realized that leeches were a lot smaller than we thought and had made their way onto our feet. At this point we decided to turn around.
We were very disappointed that we had paid for a boat to drive us up river for the hike and angry that our guesthouse had advertised it. Although the owner did advise us to take a guide. When we returned he looked quite shocked that we were back so quickly and asked if we had made it to the waterfall. We told him yes and explained our experience. He then said, "So you didn't make it to the limestone cliff with the 20 meter waterfall and the large body of water?" At this we looked at each other and were even more disappointed. We definitely should have takedn a guide. We probably had made it almost the whole way to the falls and turned around right before we got to it!
The next day we headed back to Nong Kiaw on the boat and started the next leg of our journey towards Oudomsay. Another junction town near the border of China where there is a lot of Chinese influence.
It took us two days to cycle the 110 km. I had read mixed reviews on the town, but we heard that the best restaurant in all of Laos resided there. The town ended up being our least favorite place in all of Laos. People were very rude and unfriendly (very different from everywhere else in Laos). The hotel we stayed at made us pay when we checked in and we then discovered hundreds of little fleas covering the bed spread. When I told the guy at the front desk he just shrugged refused to change the sheets. Lets just say I had a moment and threw a little temper tantrum. Brian was slightly embarassed by my actions to say the least. But somehow it worked as the terrified Laos man brought in a new sheet. The restaurant we were told was amazing was mediocre and all in all it was a bad experience.
At the present moment we are on our way to Pak Beng where we will take a day boat to the border of Northern Tailand.
It will take us three days in total and we are currently on our second leg after biking 100 km from Oudomsay. I was very happy to leave the town and even just outside of the city limits, the people were so much more friendly.
Everywhere we go children in the small villages always yell falang falang (which means white person) and start running when they see us coming on our bikes. They always are smiling and waving and they love it when we slap them five while biking by. It is very cute and always puts a smile on our faces, even when we're exhausted from biking.
Our first stop was in a small village with only one guesthouse called Muong Beng. We were famished when we arrived and began hunting for food (not literally). We finally found the only place in town serving foe, of course, with the added protein of ants and flys. I tried to eat as much as I could, but mainly just pushed everything around in my bowl and dropped things into Brian's when he wasn't looking.
Lucky for us this restaurant was also a Karaoke bar. Karaoke is HUGE in SE Asia. The owner was very friendly and forcibly coerced us to partake by shoving the mic in Brian's hand (his first karaoke experience) and randomly putting on an english song, which happened to be, John Denver's Country Road, Take Me Home. This would have been somewhat normal if it weren't for the video that went along with the song, which was a bunch of white female strippers in American flag shirts. I kept wondering what they must think of our culture. The women in the bar looked horrified and I couldn't help but laugh hysterically.
Anyways we ended up staying at the bar into the night. The owner who spoke no English treated us to many a beerlaos and we continued to sing every English song they had on the machine. It was one of our favorite nights thus far.
i just had a karaoke night at the italian school and had to try singing an italian song... needless to say it was horrible but still loads of fun. also i loved the part about brian trying to learn to fix the bikes on youtube! the leeches sound horrible! gahhh
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