loas to vietnam

---

well we have know left laos and entered vietnam. It has been a hard hilly ride to get here but after a few massive passes we made it. we left luang probang heading south down route 13 towards the capital. with the original intention to do a short day when we left we arrived at the guest house to find in wasnt too good. so we decided to press on for what the map said was 25 kms to the next town. although the problem was that the map wasnt right and the actual distance was 55km. this comprised of a 10km pass then followed by a 20km pass. at night fall we just managed to arrive at the guest house only to find it was as bad as the first and expensive.
anyway after another slog the next day we arrived at the town muang phu koun on the junction of route 7 which would then take us all the way over the border to vietnam and down to vinh where i am at the moment. both of these roads in previous years have also been bad for hijackings when bus loads of passengers have been shot. we found this bit out whilst mid route. where was also a swedish cycling couple shot a couple of years ago. afetr another 2 days pushing on throught the hills we arrived at phonsaven which was the biggest town on route and also the place the field of jars are. we stayed here for 2 nights to have a bit of a rest. on the rest day we hired a couple of 110cc motorbikes and went out to visit some of the sites we went to the field of jars. these are large jars weighing between 600kg and 3 tonne and chisled out of solid limestone. these are estimated to be 2000 years old. althopugh nobody actually knows. we also did about 50 kms of dirt track on them to go and see a russian tank that was bomb during the war. some more jasr and a water fall. after this we then spent another 2 days getting to the border. getting into vietnam wasnt quite as easy as getting into laos as we had to hang around for about an hour whilst the checked our passports. afetr the border point we had a long awaited decent and decended for about 20km down the valley to river which we would then follow into vinh.
after anothe 2 days of steady roliing terrain with every vehicle pipping its horn and doing your head in we eventualy made it to vinh with the temparature yet again getting close to 110 degrees F.at the momemt we are just hanging around in vinh. there isnt much to do here as it isnt touristy at all. and is just a big dirty city. although tonght we will be making the 8 hour train journey hue.

---