Bikes, bites, bravery, boats and bears.

---

Following an interrupted night through coldness, the smell of smoke, some really strange dreams about people in the room and noise through the vent from the kitchen next door to us, we showered and left the horrid guesthouse (possibly the worst we have stayed in) to try to find somewhere that wasn’t completely overpriced. We had met a couple of girls the night before who were looking for a room at the same time as us, then found a room. They let us know what guest house they were staying in (I charmed them with my winning smile) so we went there to find that the room was only slightly better than the room from the night before and still was really dark with no natural light. Although we do settle for this sometimes, after the previous night and knowing that we didn’t want to really move guest houses again in Luang Prabang, we continued our search and eventually ended up back in the guesthouse that our companions from the slow boat had stayed in the night before which now had a room available. Yay!

We dumped our bags and decided to do our traditional first day in a place of hiring bikes and exploring. However, by the time we actually got round to finding somewhere to hire them from, it was getting a bit late so we thought we would just walk around instead. (Yes Mr G is a little tight at times.) We came across a super Wat Phou Si - we had to climb about 500 or so steps to reach it but there were magnificent views on the way to keep us occupied. We saw Buddha’s footprint, which I don’t fully understand, and lots of other different Buddhas. We wandered around the peninsular and took in the sights before deciding that we should organise a tour for the next day. After much deliberation (compromise and searching for the best price,) we booked our tour with White Elephant. Half day of mountain biking and half day of Kayaking on the Nam Khan stopping off at the Tad Sae waterfall for lunch.

The next day was another highlight of the trip, a great deal of fun, although some worry too, and a bit of an adventure. Sounds like a fun day doesn’t it? Mountain biking in the morning, lunch by a waterfall and then kayaking in the afternoon, lovely. Mountain biking started at the ungodly hour of 8:45 ... I can’t ever recommend doing exercise at any time of day, but this early in the morning was a shock to the system after nearly three weeks without doing any exercise bar walking. Still, we munched on a Snickers bar and got ready for a bit of adrenaline fuelled mountain biking ... after reaching our first stop (a Wat ten minutes out of town, and up a big hill) Cate declared that the steep incline had made her feel sick, good job we only have two and three quarter hours of biking to go then! The biking quickly went from tarmac to off-road and we saw some amazing scenery along with our very first snake (yellow and black) in the middle of the dirt track whilst giving our legs a mammoth workout.

*Dramatic voice* Then, about two thirds of the way through our ride through the Laos countryside, disaster struck! From out of nowhere I somehow contrived to throw myself off my bike and onto the dirt road. Now I’ll point out (before Cate does) that yes I might have been going down the hill a little bit quicker than I probably should’ve been, and yes I was “technically” on the wrong side of the road ... But I still think I pulled off quite an acrobatic manoeuvre to skid off my bike on the side of the road in order to avoid the truck that was heading right for me on a corner. Muppet. Showing a massive lack of concern the truck driver didn’t even slow down to see if I was alright, just carried on about his business while I lay there on the side of the road. Luckily I’m well practised at trying to save face after making an arse of myself, so I jumped up brushing the dust off my clothes declaring that I was fine, and went about being British and apologising profusely to our guide for falling off his bike and hoping I hadn’t damaged it.

By now Nurse Cate was on the scene and set about checking me over for injuries ... I’d pretty well snarled up my left arm with a couple of cuts and grazes, to be fair the amount of blood oozing out made it look worse than it actually was, but I was still very brave nonetheless. We hadn’t thought to bring a first aid kit with us but I can assure you that we have taken it everywhere since. I had some antisceptic handwipes in my bag and Savlon for bites but that was about it so we made the best out of a bad situation. Cate piled Savlon onto the cuts, the white cream mixing with my blood to form a lovely shade of pink goo on my arm, and we got back on to our bikes and carried on. I was slightly concerned that Matt was going to faint at the sight of blood and the shock of almost having a head on collision with a van. He claimed he felt sick and looked very pale but didn’t want to stop for a while so off we went.

For the remaining hour of mountain biking Cate got very annoyed with me as I persisted with my approach of taking right-hand corners on the wrong side of the road ... but luckily no more trucks interfered with my maverick biking technique and we made it to the river without any further incident.

We’d discussed on the way to the river whether we should do kayaking in the afternoon or not, what with my open wounds and Laos river water ... and on arrival at the river voiced our concerns to the guide. Previous to this, I’d thought that falling off the bike was quite a painful experience, however our guide had something far more painful in mind. He disappeared into a local restaurant/shop gabbling in Laos with the tuk-tuk driver who had brought two kayaks in his little van and emerged with two little bottles, that he ensured us would make it fine for me to go kayaking despite the obvious gaping holes in my arm. It was a graze Matt. Just a bloody one that’s all. What were these concoctions I hear you gleefully ask? Alcohol to clean the wound and iodine to disinfect it. Now apparently women have a rough time of it pain-wise, what with having to put up with childbirth and all that. However, I’d just like to say (with the greatest of respect) to all women out there ... try having pure alcohol rubbed into a freshly snarled-up arm and then come and tell me childbirth is the most painful thing you’ve ever been through! I am of course joking, but seriously, alcohol and iodine on an open wound ... so so so painful!

As we mentioned last time about bumping into people all the time, it was at this point that we bumped into a Canadian family of five who had been on the slow boat (and who we’d kept on seeing in Luang Prabang) who had some bandage material and waterproof tape to fix my arm up even better for kayaking, so I very gratefully had my arm taped up ready for some kayaking.

So now that Matt has *finally* stopped playing the brave warrior role, I shall tell you about kayaking. We were in a double kayak and were going on a grade 1 to 2 river so a few small rapids but mainly very calm. Neither of us had done kayaking before and therefore had no skill so we went about trying to practice using the oars (synchronised oaring) and keeping balanced. This practice definitely came in handy later on. We had been given life jackets and helmets to wear so that alleviated the fear of falling out of the kayak in rapids and also helped to stave off the sunburn as it was by now the midday heat. We kayaked for about five minutes to the waterfall and got out. Our guide gave us our lunch, rice in a chip shop box and two little bags of stirfry type stuff. After eating what we could, we wandered around the very beautiful but cold waterfalls - the bridges across them were again made out of bamboo and were quite insecure. At one point a middle aged man had a near miss with falling off the bridge into the water as it gave way on a corner. We decided to have a paddle rather than swim because of the temperature and the thought of sitting in wet swim suits for the following three hours, plus I couldn’t really go swimming as we were trying not to get my arm wet.

Did I mention that I injured myself and was very brave about it all?

Anyway, to cut a long story short we spent about three hours that afternoon kayaking down the river; which sounds nice and relaxing, but three hours of propulsion provided only by our meagre arm muscles led to a very weary end to the kayaking experience! We saw loads on the trip down the river, including people sitting on elephants in the river learning to wash them, loads of local people “fishing” for seaweed, (people who are very poor have to collect seaweed and fish for their dinner. They literally swim around, some with snorkels or sit on bamboo boats, hanging over the side, trying to collect/catch seaweed/fish - I’d like to see what they do when the river level is higher,) plenty of local people having their daily wash in the river, buffalo resting and bathing at the side of the river and being herded through the river, children swimming naked, fish traps made from bamboo, ducks swimming, machinery stone/gold mining, posh hotels being built on the river banks and some really beautiful scenery ... it was a really amazing afternoon (and day as a whole). As for the rapids, while they were only very sporadic, they were great fun and we (just) managed not to fall in with the help of the balancing skills that I mentioned earlier. Result.

Unfortunately the day ended with another injury, as I’d had an absolutely mammoth blister on my right leg for the previous 4 days, and on disembarking from the kayak I inadvertently squashed it and popped it (yuck!), cue lots more pain and annoyance! I now realise that I have the most brave and macho husband anyone could wish for. So now I had another open wound that needed dealing with and definitely needed to find a doctor once we were back in town. Boo.

So after getting some dinner down us (important things first) we found out where the local hospital was (the Lao-China Friendship Hospital) and got a tuk-tuk ride 5km out of Luang Prabang to go and see whether the doctors could speak English and see what they could do.

They didn’t speak a word of English (unsurprisingly really) but upon our arrival ushered us into an “operating room” and got me to lie down on the operating table. At this point an incredibly grumpy looking elderly woman doctor came in and (presumably) asked me what I’d done to myself ... I think I managed to get across what the mosquito bite blister was, but she’d probably no idea what my miming of mountain biking was supposed to mean. She got the nurse to get a few things out of the cupboard, and as various things were being arranged on the table next to where I lay, I had a sneaking suspicion of what was about to happen. Alcohol and iodine, and a whole lot of pain. Goody. But before that, the doctor decided that what she really needed to do was to dig around in my wounds with some forceps to remove little bits of grit, oh and she cut away the flap of skin that was gruesomely dangling from around where my blister had been.

On the plus side, inflicting considerable amounts of pain on me really seemed to lift the spirits of the doctor and considerable number of nurses (I think at the peak I had one doctor and four nurses all fussing around me). Can I just point out that it was not due to the severity of the injuries that there was this number of staff around? I don’t want anyone worrying about poor Matty. He is fine and I have seen worse injuries at school.

All in all, given some of the horror stories that you hear about the state of hospitals in Laos, it was a pretty good experience. The hospital was relatively new and relatively clean, and despite the obvious language barrier the staff all seemed to know how to deal with the silly Westerner. It amused me that when we walked into the ‘emergency’ area through big double doors, we were met with a patchy piece of grassland! Just not what I’d expected at all! I remember at one point lying on my back looking up at the tiled ceiling and cheap fluorescent lights and thinking how surreal it was that I was on an operating table in a hospital in Laos getting treatment for a mountain biking injury - that just doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d associate with either myself or Cate. However, the surreal feeling was always quickly swept away by the doctor inflicting a few more swabs of alcohol onto my cuts. Sadist. It is true, she really did seem to enjoy this and laughed out loud after she had done it.

So that was our time in Luang Prabang. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to go tubing in Viang Vieng like we’d already planned, which was a huge shame, but thought we would book to go to Vientienne, Laos’ capital city for a few days to see if Matt’s wounds would heal in time for us to go tubing before leaving Laos. So we booked our places on the “VIP” bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiane (10 hour journey) and the next day got up early to go.

Love Cate & (brave) Matt

---

Photos

Better rowing

Warming winter drinks?!
It's bloomin' 30 degrees, glad we didn't come when it's summer!

Wat Phou Si
The (many) steps

Worth it
The view from the top

High fiving a god.
Lucky buddha

Buddha's foot
Apparently.

Breakfast
The last item wasn't the nicest.

Brave Matty
Being doused with alcohol, ouch!

P1010525
Bear-y cute.

P1010527
Bear-y hungry

P1010529
A bear-y good photo. I could go on. I'll try not to.

P1010540
My t-shirt prompted a lot of attention that day.

P1010550
Cate Attenborough

Comments

[Anna]

Big brave lad, well done for avoiding hospital so far Cate!!
Sounds extremely exciting. How do you have time to write so much?! This is very well written both of you: A* from me! Where was this bear?! xx

[Matt and Cate]

There's always time for blogging and relaxing (with a nice cold fruit-shake in-hand) ... oh, and yep the bears is a bit of an oversight - no mention of them in the blog but a dozen photos of them! They were at a bear-sanctuary at our lunchtime waterfall, an unexpected bonus xx