Heroes Of The Road

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Hi. Greetings from Luang Prabang. My new favourite place name in the whole wide world. It is in the middle of Laos and is their second city for those that don't know. It's pretty cool, and very small so it is easy enough to walk around.

Wondering about the title of the blog..? Today, I continued the only Botley tradition that I can think of that isn't farming, by renting a motorbike. It was a great idea. What could go wrong?

It was a great way to travel actually. We went to this waterfall which was about 30km away from the city centre and we both picked it up quite quickly. Chris took the trip there and I was in charge of the journey home.

It was all going swimmingly apart from the fact that my overly large legs struggled to change the gears down. This meant that we almost crashed on this narrow bridge we had to cross and then on a tight, uphill, right handed hairpin we just came to a complete stop. Which wasn't ideal.

I got us back into town and Chris took over for the last little spell from the bus statin back to the guesthouse. He was feeling pretty good about himself by this point. All ready to boast about being the superior motorbikist. One turn into the guesthouse was all that separated him from a large amount of bragging. So he drove us into a wall. Hard. An ignoble end to our biking adventure.

What else have we been up to?

Well, we had to get a slow boat down here from the border crossing in Northern Thailand. That took 2 days and was amazingly uncomfortable, but the scenery was fairly immense on the way down through Laos on the Mekong river so it was definitely well worth it.

The day before the boat ride started was another travelling day, on a bus from Chaing Mai to Chaing Kong, which was a nice little place on the river where we had the best meals of our trip. They were awesome.

Our last few days in Chaing Mai since the last blog were taken up by looking at a temple, watching some Thai boxing (which was brutal (more so as we paid for ringside seats)), and saying our farewells to all our friends from the jungle, which was fairly sad considering we only knew them a few days!

I think that just about covers everything. We're having loads of fun anyway. I hear that the weather isn't so nice back home. That's a shame. I have to keep reminding myself it's January.

Hope all is well!

Speak soon,

Si

X

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Comments

[mum]

Si, can I just say, you have only been there two weeks are you intent on trying every mode of transport imaginable ... first you tell me you're going to ride an elephant, swiftly followed by some sort of raft ride (probably on a raging river yeah?) and now its a dodgy motor bike - with Chris driving! What's next I ask myself - I eagerly await the next instalment! Don't do anything daft now will you!!! Speak soon xx