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Published: April 9th 2007
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tour de laos
sven, zoey, kelley, sarah, and me whats up? happy easter! i had one of the best times on my whole trip this past week. it all happened so fast that i really am now just looking back on it right now. after getting to luang prabang on the slowboat we found a hostel called coldriver. a really chill hostel with free water and free bananas! how can you beat that. there were some other pretty cool travelers there too.
we wanted to go out a lil bit since we were on a boat for the past two days. we went to a bar called laos laos. i ended up talking to this girl named kelley from england at the bar for about 5 minutes. she was talking about biking 225 km in 3-4 days down to the next city. i told here that i would think about it and meet them the next day. everything in luang prabang closes at 12 except for the bowling alley. so 15 of us went bowling until 3.30 in the morning. i don't have any pictures on my camera but i will definitely get some from my friends and post them on my website.
so at 1 the next day
roadsign
this is a road sign that told us how far we were from vang vieng i met up with the group that was going. they didn't think that i would show up but i wanted to see whats up. after thinking about it for about 30 sec. i was in. so the next step was to buy the bikes. we went to a travel agency with bikes and they ended up selling us bikes for 130 us dollars. we got ripped off but they started off at 400 so we feel that we did ok. we decided to meet at 6.30 the next day....
so sven and sarah from holland, zoey and kelley from england, and me set off the next morning. we had no idea what we were in for. the first two days were going to be the hardest we heard, but we didn't realize that they were not kidding. on day 1 right outside the city zoey's chain had fallen off...not too big of a problem. so we started going down hill for about 10 min. we were all smiling and thinking this was too easy. for the next 4.5 hours we headed up a different mountains without going down hill. talk about crazy and having no legs left. at the top
eating
this is day 1 when we were resting for 4 hours. sven and zoey eating noodles of the last hill of the day sarah's tire popped. that was the last thing we needed...we ended up walking about 15 min. to the first village we saw....the first house of the first village was a german guy who fixed the tire, had drinks, and let us stay at his place for 4 hours!!! thank god! so we decided to take a bus to the next city 20 km because there was supposed to be a monster hill. thank god that we did because it would have taken us another day just to get over that hill.
the first night we stayed in kiu kacham for $1 a piece. we walked the city and found some locals playing bochee ball. they gave us free beers while we watched. it was a lil crazy with two guys in uniforms with machine guns sitting around us though.
day2... we were not sure if we should leave or not. the skies were grey and we thought it would rain. it turned out to be fires from everybody buring the trees and grass.
in april a lot of farmers are buring the land in order to restore the nutrients to the ground. most
me on a mountain
me over looking one of the many mountains on my bike of the days are covered in smoke so it is hard to see long distances in the mountains.
day 2 was so much better. we actually climbed hills and went down hills. so it was a relief. the best part of the whole trip was when we would go through these lil villages and everybody would run out of their hut to say hi (sab a dee). it was like we were celebraties. the girls gave out candy to the lil kids and they loved it. on day 2 i was taking a picture and left my sandals on the ground. i would have gone back to get them but i would have had to bike up a mountain 30 min to get them. after going down a mountain half way through the day sven's tire popped (num. 2 on the trip). he started walking with zoey and kelley for about 2k while sarah and i rode to the next village to try and get a repair kit. we found one and started to ride back...but by the time we found it they had made it to the village. so this guy actually repaired the tire for us....he was like
fires
this lady is one of many that we saw buring the countryside for the burn and slash method of farming magyver with some of his tools. so we still had about 10 k to make it before we got to the next city. we had to race the sun before it went down. the last 7 k were up hill. we were all dying. the last part of the mountain i had managed to hold on to a truck..i was so happy. we had made it to phou khan. we rode 65 k that day! there was no electricity in this city so we sat by candle light and listened to an ipod and drank beer. a perfect ending to a great day.
day 3. our butts were so sore by this point when we would sit down. we had heard great news from the locals that it is all down hill and flat from here. they were right. it was so great to go down hills and coast for a couple of km at a time. we were all so happy until zoey got a flat tire about an 1hr into the trip. so her and sven caught a taxi to the next city. sarah, kelley, and me rode the 15 k to meet them. on the way we
me crossing into vientiene state
this is me crossing into the vientiene state. getting closer to the end stopped at hot springs and i met a lady that lives in baltimore, ba...about 45 min. from my house in virginia. it is a small world. she invited me to stay with here that night (the people in laos are so nice).
on this leg of the trip we started to see a lot of rebels on the hillside. they had made lil huts with leaves on top of them to kind of hide them. they were in street clothes with automatic guns too. a lil scary but they all waved to us and smiled thank god!!
we meet up in the next city and zoey's tire was fixed. so we decied we were going to try and make it to vang vieng...55 k in 3.5 hours. we started out and were not going to make it. we all were catching rides on trucks by then. we all grabbed a huge log truck to go up another mountain. it was great until sven's tire popped again. we were still 25k outside of the city. we didn't know what to do until the beer lao truck pulled over and gave us a ride to the city! we made it in 3
bathroom
along the trip these were the bathrooms. disgusting. you take a shower by pouring water on you with a bucket...the same bucket and water you flush the toilets with! days. it was an unbelievable trip with unbelievable new friends. it was so hard, but every minute of it was so fun...
i just got back to chiang mai, thailand. i am off to vietnam after this!
peace
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