the ups and downs of motorbike travel in Lao

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I couldn't get the bike to start when I returned from Don Det. This would have been relatively simple if it hadn't been parked in the sand down at beach level.

Fortunately, like much of southeast Asia, there are always curious people hanging around doing what appears to be nothing, so two guys helped me push the bike up the short but steep hill to a level street in town. They gave me a good shove, I popped the clutch (something I did not know I knew how to do) and I went flying off down the road.

Riding in Lao is a real treat after most of Thailand and Cambodia. There is so little traffic and what traffic there is is quite mellow. With the habits I've picked up, I am now the crazy one on the road!

Of course, there is always a trade off, pigs and goats have now joined the buffalo, cows, dogs and chickens on the road. The kids, of the goat variety, are the worst for randomly darting into the road while play-fighting.

Spent an afternoon riding around the Bolevan Plateau, a blissfully coolish place east of the Mekong and Pakse where coffee and other crops are grown at a higher altitude. There are lots of little villages, waterfalls and hikes.

I tried to stop for lunch one day in Paksan and found myself dragged into a random market hallway party. The vendors were quite ignoring their shops while chomping on satays, sticky rice and green papaya salad and washing it down with copious amounts of Beerlao in the dusty inside hallway to bad covers of "Hotel California" etc. It was difficult to make my escape.

I made my way to Vientiane and spent a couple of hot days checking out the markets and bumping into friends. Vientiane is the sleepiest, and possibly friendliest, nation's capital I've ever seen. It definitely reflects what Lao in general is like.

I headed north from Vientiane on the lesser-travelled route 10 which was great until I got quite lost on some dirt track with a slowly flattening back tire. I wobbled my way around, stopping periodically in front of people's shops and houses, pointing to the tire and them responding with pointing one way or the other down the road. If there is one thing around here people understand, it's motorbikes.

I eventually wobbled to a small shop and the situation was quickly addressed. As usual, the greatest issue was not the tire at all, but the fact that noone could communicate with me, so someone was quickly dispatched to find the repair guy's wife's brother who now lives in New York state that was in town on holidays with his family. I had a pleasant conversation with the Lao family from New York while sipping a surprisingly refreshing glass of sugar cane juice on ice in the shade.

A metal staple was identified as the culprit. The repairman managed to pull the tube out, treat and hot-patch it without having to remove the wheel from the bike. It was well done!

So after an hour's worth of sweating over the job and help from two of his friends wrestling with the tube and tire, the repairman announces that it will cost me the equivalent of US$1. What a deal! Have I ever been paying too much for breakfast!

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Photos

Tat Fan
Bolaven Plateau

Tat Lo
Bolaven Plateau

river
route 13, southern Lao

market party
Paksan

the fix
somewhere near route 10