Advertisement
Published: November 21st 2008
Edit Blog Post
(Day 230 on the road)Wow, I have just bought a motorbike here in Laos and will be riding across the country for the next month or so - I am extremely excited! Actually, we have bought three bikes, as it is three of us: Karen, Harriet and me. Karen and I had been travelling together twice in China, and Harriet and I climbed Hua Shan together and did a Yangtze river cruise back in June. Whilst I travelled in Japan and Korea, they met and went to explore Vietnam and Cambodia. Now, we found ourselves to be in Laos at the same time, so we decided to team up and meet here in Savannakhet.
To get to Savannakhet from Vientiane, I took a bus. As there are absolutely no trains in Laos, the decision was an easy one. Now I have been on quite a few buses in my life, but I have never seen anything nearly as funky as some of the VIP long distance buses here in Laos. They are little pieces of art really, with immaculate paintings on the outside, hidden neon lights behind the cooling system (so the bus appears to glow), and also underfloor lights
(so the bus also glows from underneath). Cool.
Buying the bikes was much less straight forward than we had thought when we set out: Legally, foreigners cannot actually own motorbikes in Laos; instead, they have to be registered in the name of a Laos person. Also, there is no such thing as a second-hand market, as they ride their bikes until they fall apart. New bikes were out of the question, as were are planning to only ride them for about four weeks and then sell them in the north of Laos (unfortunately, they cannot be taken across the border into Thailand, a we had initially planned). We however got a lot of help from a very friendly guy at the tourist information. He went absolutely out of his way to help us, using his free time from work to find used bikes for us and also finding a good mechanic to help us check the bikes before committing to buying them.
In the end though, it was all good. It took us three full days to buy three bikes and get them in working order (amazing how much was wrong and needed repairing with every one of them), but we were happy with our purchases and somewhat confident that these bikes would actually carry us the 1000 km or so north.
So on day four, we were finally all set to go and started our trip north.
Next stop: Tha Khaek (Central Laos).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.427s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 42; qc: 153; dbt: 0.2264s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
luke
non-member comment
price for bikes
hey! great story. my girlfriend and I are currently in Vientiane and are looking to buy bikes to ride into Vietnam. How much did you pay for your bikes? Did you get any paperwork with them? From what I understand, we'll have no find a Lao citizen to help us out. Do you remember the name of the place where you met your friend? Any information would be extremely helpful. Thanks!