Here Be Elephants

One of our friends requested a general rundown of a day. Although a ‘typical’ day doesn’t really exist, we’ll try to give some idea. If anyone else has any questions or requests for what you’d like to see more of or know more about, please leave us a comment or email us.

If we don’t already have a plan, the night before involves figuring out where we’re headed next. The only planning we did before leaving for this trip was the general order of countries we would visit. Other than that, we’re figuring out our next destination on a weekly, or sometimes day by day basis. Blogs, road mile markers, and google maps distances are used to figure out plausible nightly stops. The majority of the time we know where we’ll be staying the next day, though sometimes we set off in the right direction with fingers crossed that we’ll find an appropriate place to sleep.

Our wakeup times vary greatly and are dependent on how lazy we are and how far we’re planning on going. We’re usually up sometime between 6 and 9 am. From what we’ve read of other cyclists, this is far from typical for cycle touring. Most people are moving by the crack of dawn.
It’s something we’ve attempted, but our natural schedules refuse to cooperate. Once we drag ourselves out of bed, it takes about a half hour to re-pack and get out the door.

First stop is breakfast. In touristy areas this is invariably some variation on bread and eggs, in ‘local’ areas almost always soup and rice noodles. In China it was dumplings for breakfast, which are cheap, delicious, and greatly missed now. Three solid meals a day has become absolutely necessary and we’re both surprised by how much food we put away now versus during our previously sedentary lifestyles. We carry our Camelbaks (1.5L) and two spare Nalgenes (1L) of water at any given moment, and filling those up with preferably cold water is the last step before setting off.

Within an hour or so of waking we are able to set off on the road. In Laos we set off earlier to avoid the baking midday heat. In China and Vietnam this hasn’t troubled us, so we can sleep later. Lately we’ve shot for getting at least halfway to the next destination by lunch.

Between 12 and 2 pm we stop for lunch. In Laos, we tried to have a break in the shade for this whole period. In China and Vietnam, Lunch will be at some point in this time frame. In built up areas we will stop in a restaurant for rice and dishes (or sandwiches in touristy areas). If we can find a nice clear patch in the shade by the side of the road, we much prefer to cook our own lunch on our tiny camp stove. This is always either packet noodle soup or pasta and sauce (packets of dried pasta and cheesy sauce were a welcome addition to our larder in Vientiane). We supplement these bases with vegetables or barbecued meat bought that morning in the market.

The sun sets by 5.30pm in these parts, and cycling even in full daylight feel a little unsafe at times. As a result, we start worrying about a place to stay around 4 pm, especially if it’s one of the rare times we don’t really have a target destination in mind. There’s only been two times when we needed to turn on the headlamps and finish up the last few miles in the dark. Usually this makes for 5-6 hours spent on the bicycles with another hour or two for breaks or food during the day.

So that’s a typical day, minus all the interesting stuff you hear about on the rest of the blog.

AW + MD

Posted in Uncategorized

Lak Sao is the town closest to the border with Vietnam, and was our final stop in Laos. It was an uneventful day, but the 58 km journey was made harder by an increasingly strong headwind. There was a long climb out of Ban Na Hin’s valley, which afforded great, but misty views. The rest of the day was gentle, skirting south of a pretty magnificent mountain range. Lak Sao was a hole, but surprisingly flooded with foreign motorbike tourists, who had rented bikes in Na Hin and were doing a four-day loop of the region. Why anyone would choose to stop here is beyond us. We had dinner in the appropriately named ‘Only One’ Restaurant, which was truly diabolical, our worst meal in Laos, and also horribly over priced. Not a great goodbye to Laos.

The last 32 km to the Laos border, though flat, were difficult as the headwind of the day before had increased to gale like proportions that really had us struggling. The last few km were uphill to the Nam Phao border crossing. Traffic was virtually nonexistent on the road, and the border itself was also very quiet. On the Laos side, service was pretty poor; we had to call the border guards over to stamp our papers and let us through. They also charged us 10000 kip each as it was Saturday, and they felt like it. However, the Laos guards were a model of efficiency and customer service compared to those in Vietnam. The only guard manning the stamp was soundly asleep. We coughed and shuffled with decreasing politeness and increasing volume. He awoke, saw us, and went back to sleep. Yay Vietnam. Only when our camera came out and was focused on him did another guard appear at some speed, and our border crossing was enabled. We had to pay a dollar each for the stamp though.

Entering Vietnam was like re-entering China. The sun disappeared behind a veil of smog and grime. But Vietnam has a small gift for anyone entering at this border by bicycle – 17 km of gentle downhill. This first 17km were also almost completely devoid of life or habitation…though we did see a truly enormous tarantula crossing the road. Similarities with China only increased as we got deeper into Vietnam. Overly loud greetings (with overtones of mocking), incessant honking, and pollution coated vegetation were the standard once again. Gone were the joyful ‘sabaidee’s’ of Laos children who high-fived us as we passed, replaced now by obnoxious teenagers on motorbikes harassing us.

Laos is slightly larger than Great Britain, with a population of 7 million. Vietnam is slightly larger, but with eleven times the number of people, and it really shows. We crossed paths with some German tourists on our second day in Vietnam. They were heading towards Laos, and asked us hopefully ‘Is it quiet there?’. Vietnam is not quiet, and the area we are in is not designed for tourists. It is rapidly industrialising, and could probably be compared to China 20 years ago, before they put the gloss on. It must seem that we are being pretty harsh to Vietnam, but the contrast with laid back, going nowhere Laos is intense and hard to deal with. It doesn’t help that this part of Vietnam is one of the poorest, and least attractive. Our guidebook skips over this region entirely, as it seems do most tourists. We’re going to steam on down Highway One as fast as we can to get to something nicer. Perhaps we should also invest in face masks and earplugs. The traffic isn’t too bad, but the noise and pollution are obscene.

AW + MD

Sorry to flood you with so many posts. Vietnam is more industrialized so internet access will be more common… hopefully there will be more frequent and smaller updates now. Photos from this leg will follow in the coming days. Thank you and goodnight.

Posted in Uncategorized

The Kong Lor Cave was 25 miles from Nahin in a direction we didn’t want to go, so the bikes weren’t a great option for the day trip. Our alternative transport options were renting motorbikes or tour buses, and we woke up too late for the latter. I had never ridden a moped before so a quick lesson was necessary by the lady renting out the bikes, whose english was not great but sufficient. After a quick drive up and down the street I decided I could handle it so we paid our money, Alison jumped on the back, and we set off for Kong Lor Cave.

The road to Kong Lor is flat, small, and well paved. The traffic is virtually nonexistent; we were passed by maybe a dozen cars and two dozen other motorbikes on the entire 50 mile roundtrip journey. Our blazing 25 mph got us to the caves safely within an hour. The only danger seemed to be to the animals that haven’t figured out what a road is, instead confusing it for a nice place for a stroll or a nap. A group of chickens on our return trip decided our moped was of no consequence and risked life and limb to cross in front of us. One chicken was less fortunate than the rest and was lightly clipped, only suffering a loss of feathers as she quickly made the rest of the journey to the other side. We’ve heard tell of people hitting cows, but they mostly just stand there and stare so avoiding them is trivial on moped or bicycle.

Kong Lor Cave is a massive 7.5 kilometer river tunnel that provided, for a while, the only connection between two villages. Since 2002, it’s only been used as a tourist attraction. A number of boat operators wait around at the entrance for tourists, and it seems there are many more operators than tourists so there is no waiting or booking necessary to get a guide. Alison and I were given our life jackets and hopped into the wooden longboat with our two guides to travel through the cave.

The start was initially a little scary, thinking of all the possible things that could go wrong on a river and then adding the pitch black surroundings, but that quickly passed once we were moving and distracted by the cave. At any rate, the river seemed extremely shallow, in some places no more than a few inches deep. The main selling point of Kong Lor would be its size. Some of the spaces within are so large that our flashlights could barely reach the stone ceilings and walls. It’s an epic space and travelling through it on a small motorized boat with nothing but a couple of torches is brilliant. I thought the best sense of scale was when you passed other boats in the cave, which begin as small pockets of light dwarfed by the surrounding darkness. The guidebook describes it as something out of an episode of Star Trek and the comparison to a television or film set is definitely apt. At one point you leave the boat to see some formations that have been lit up tastefully, but compared to the boat trip itself these are a minor attraction. We both agree that other than the Elephant Village, this was the highlight of Laos.

MD

Photos from this post can be found here

Posted in Uncategorized

Our first stop on the way out of Vientiane was a bike shop run by an expat Frenchman who was involved in competitive cycling. He pulled a few sharp wires out of Alison’s front tire, which will hopefully stop the continual punctures. We paid him with a spare saddle and set of pedals that we had been lugging around for no discernible reason since Kunming. His description of the first 160 km of our journey west was not tantalizing in the least. Flat, featureless, dusty and urbanised, it sounded just as dull and unattractive as the 160 km north of Vientiane had been. On his recommendation, and with our soon-to-expire Laos visas in mind, we decided to take a bus east and save a few days.

Looking out of the window confirmed his warning, so the bus was definitely a good idea. The bus also provided confirmation that our decision to ride bikes on this trip was generally a good idea. It was cramped, crowded and noisy. After we pulled out of the bus station, the bus immediately stopped and filled up the aisles with more passengers on plastic stools. Thai pop music blared for the entirety of the trip, toilet stops were scarce and the bus station sandwiches were not good. But then, the last one is probably true in any country. We got off the bus in Pak Kading, and were surprised to discover we had only been on the bus for three hours. It felt longer. Pak Kading had a reasonable guesthouse, so we decided to stay there.

The next day we hoped to make it 90 km, which was an ambitious target. However, as it was almost entirely flat for the first 70 of these we thought we’d be able to manage it. It was a pretty route, and it got prettier the closer we got to our target, Ban Na Hin. The road wound through quiet villages, none as poor as we had seen in the north. After about 50km, we started to see small limestone ‘mountains’ jutting out of the plains, and a picturesque back drop of steep mountains to the north. These were made more picturesque by the knowledge we wouldn’t be climbing them. At about the 70 km mark, just as we were tiring, a road sign warned us of a steep ascent. This was no joke, and the 6 km of super steep road nearly did us in. Frayed tempers were soothed by the reward at the top. Sala Viewpoint overlooks the ‘limestone forest’ of crazy jutting peaks and jagged edges stretching over several kilometres. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset there, and then dropped the last 10 km into Ban Na Hin in the dark.

Ban Na Hin lies in a large valley, and is popular with tourists due to its proximity to Kong Lor Caves. There were at least 10 guesthouses, and even an excellent Italian restaurant where we stuffed ourselves with pasta, pizza and tiramisu.

AW + MD

Photos from this post can be found here

Posted in Uncategorized

Finding a hotel in Vientiane at 5pm on a Sunday was hard. We knew the centre of town pretty well by the time we found anything at all, and the first few places with empty rooms were way out of our price range. In the end we forked out big kip for a room in an over-priced medium-fancy hotel. Which has wifi in the room and free breakfast and a nice hot shower and even gasp a bath.

Having spent most of the day’s budget on the hotel, we set out to have a cheap dinner…but were tempted by one of Vientiane’s many ‘French’ restaurants and instead went for tiger shrimp and cordon bleu. If you’re going to break the budget, may as well do it properly. It was delicious. The touristy centre of Vientiane, like other urban areas in Laos is stuffed with French bakeries and restaurants of every nationality and style. I am slightly confused by what ‘French’ cuisine actually is, as all of the offerings at La Terrase, La Provencal, and La I forget what seemed Italian – pizza, pasta, and meat/fish with fries and salad or ratatouille. Any clarification on this would be much appreciated.

Vientiane seems pretty nice. There’s a lot of traffic, but that’s mostly because the roads are very narrow. It’s also very low-rise here, which two facts combined are probably what give it the small-town feel. We spent a happy rest day wandering around and looking at wats and thats (temples and stupas). Wat Si Saket was particularly nice, and also the oldest temple in Vientiane still in its original form. Its cloisters and main building contain 10,000 buddhas of various sizes. They were originally solid silver, but these were pilfered over the years and have now been mostly replaced with clay replicas coated with gold foil. The nearby Haw Pha Kaew was originally a temple built to house a giant emerald buddha…which is now ‘in the foreign abroad’, as the sign rather diplomatically put it.

And so it goes for this country. As the area we now know as Laos has been so pillaged by its neighbours and by European adventurers over the years, there isn’t much left in the way of original buildings or treasures and artefacts. As we know nothing, the statuary and temples that are here just seem to be pretty generic and unsophisticated buddhist stuff. Although we didn’t see anything especially unique, it was all quite pleasant and quiet. I’m not sure what all the tourists that are filling up the hotels are doing, but they weren’t visiting temples today.

We could only manage one rest day in Vientiane, as our Laos visas are running out and we still have 400km to the Vietnam border. Our budget probably couldn’t take a longer stay anyway. It is unfortunate that our ‘rest days’ usually end up as anything but – with tourism, bike tuning, shopping and errand-ing these days are busier and more stressful than days when we can just get on a bike and go. We’ve been on the road for six weeks now, and it has become clear that we have a lot of unneccessary excess baggage, so a lot of today was spent posting 7 kg of it back to Shanghai. Hopefully that will make our next 400km over the Annamite Mountains and into Vietnam much easier.

AW

Photos from this post can be found here

Posted in Uncategorized

It was pretty exciting to be heading towards our first capital city. Everywhere we have seen so far in Laos has either been variations on an incredibly poor village, or an isolated pocket of ‘city’ which seems to be completely reliant on tourism for its income and existence. We saw two smoke-belching factories in the valley as we were cycling out of Vang Vieng, and it was only then that we realised that we hadn’t seen a factory since leaving China.

We haven’t even seen a sign for a university or college. What society and education system produced, for example, the educated and English-speaking Laos lady doctor that was so kind and helpful in Luang Prabang’s hospital? Presumably she was the product of Laos’ tiny upper class, and most certainly educated abroad. Every area we pass through seems to be going through a population boom, with children of all ages dominating. I wonder what the future holds for them; there certainly doesn’t seem to be enough cultivable land in this incredibly mountainous region to allow them all to be subsistence farmers like their parents, and the numbers of new schools we have seen suggest they will have a higher level of education. Yet the only other jobs available seem to be in the tourist industry, which will surely soon fall victim to its own success, marketing itself as it does on Laos’ ‘pristine and unspoiled’ nature.

Laos has agriculture and it has tourism, and I thought that in Vientiane we would finally see some evidence that this place is actually a functioning country with a chance of pulling itself out of poverty. But we didn’t really. We did see the first traffic lights, and the first traffic jams not caused by cows since entering Laos, but Vientiane itself doesn’t feel like a capital city, rather a provincial town. There is a lot of tourism, and there is the business of government, but not much else in the way of business, commerce or industry.

But then again, I don’t know what else I expected from a the capital city of a small mountainous communist country with only 7 million people. Speaking of mountainous, this part of Laos, which again borders Thailand over the Mekong river, really isn’t. We covered the 160 km from Vang Vieng to Vientiane in only two days, and not particularly tough ones at that. Sadly, they were also pretty dull and not very attractive. It seems in Laos you can have pretty cycling or you can have easy cycling, but not both at the same time. There was also fairly consistent passing traffic most of the way – trucks and buses, but also more and more privately owned cars. So not the nicest of cycling, and not the nicest of scenery. Which explains the lack of photos, sorry.

AW

Photos from this post can be found here

Posted in Uncategorized

While planning our trip, most people had little to say about Laos and the few that did said it was awesome but only discussed the “tubing” in Vang Vieng. Tubing involves floating down river 5 km on an innertube while partaking in various offerings from riverside bars. More than any other place we’ve been to, Vang Vieng exists purely for tourists. It was at one point just a tiny village, but has exploded into a town entirely made up of guesthouses and restaurants playing Family Guy and Friends on loop.

Vang Vieng, like Amsterdam, has developed a reputation for freely available drugs, to the extent that many bars have a separate ‘menu’ for weed, mushrooms and opium. Unlike Amsterdam, it has no other redeeming qualities in its culture or architecture, though the surrounding landscape of mountains and rivers is rather beautiful. It’s not the most beautiful we’ve seen, so its unclear why Vang Vieng has become so insanely popular. The guidebook describes it as an irredeemable ‘paradise lost’…which is ironic as it is probably a glowing review in the Lonely Planet ten years ago that gave the village its reputation and made it what it is today.

The karst mountains surrounding Vang Vieng are, like many mountains in Laos, honeycombed with caves. On our way into town, we stopped to see some that were just off the main road. Laos tourist attractions seem to enjoy micropayments so we were charged to park, charged to cross the small and only bamboo bridge over the river, and charged once more to actually enter the caves. They were also charging for toilets. The area boasted four caves, though one was only 20 feet deep into a pillar of rock and dominated by a massive Buddha. Once you’re able to find the larger caves, a man at the entrance hands you headlamps, and then waves you in the direction of the cave mouths.

We’ve both entered numerous caves in our travels, though never unguided and unlit. As we went down the tunnel of the first cave, the light from the entrance faded entirely away and we met up with two other tourists who said they were unable to find the end. We didn’t go much deeper ourselves, and 5 minutes of very slow, slippery walking in the darkness revealed nothing new. The other cave was only a single very large room, lacking the infinite tunnel of the first cave. The rock formations were nothing spectacular, but still created the appropriately spooky atmosphere. The experience of entering caves like those alone was unexpected and awesome, since we’re used to caves in Asia being lit up like Vegas and packed with tourists. It’s worrying that tourists are given free will to potentially destroy the fragile caves, but they were surprisingly clear of graffiti or damage… probably thanks to the fairly light traffic they receive.

We only have a couple pictures of Vang Vieng which we might put up at a later date. We’ve spent most of our day off lounging in cafes reading so there hasn’t been much to capture. Tomorrow we head toward Vientiane, which we hope to hit within two days. Hope everyone is well.

AW + MD

Other Pages Updated: Pictures, Maps, Statistics

Posted in Uncategorized

We ended up stuck in Luang Prabang longer than expected since Matthew got a throat infection, but since it presented as a fever and body ache the more exotic possibilities sent us running to the local hospital. Although it’s one of the bigger hospitals in Laos, and was constructed by the Chinese, the facilities were not encouraging. The doctor was pleasant, professional, and spoke good English so the trip wasn’t all bad. A prescription of antibiotics and paracetamol cured what ailed him within two days.

So we were back on the road and headed for our next destination, the hedonistic backpacker’s favorite, Vang Vieng. There was about 150 miles and a mountain range in our way. Not wanting to kill ourselves, especially after such an extended break, we took it slowly over four days. The first day was spent climbing to the top of the range, which was about 5000 foot of ascent… probably our most intense day yet. The second day was spent going up and down ridges and valleys to cross the mountains, and the last days we slowly biked back down to near sea level.

As usual, we passed through many small villages along the way. The effects of outside aid can be seen in many of these villages, with many ‘sponsored’ by NGOs and charities. Most towns have wells, standpipes and reservoirs provided by World Vision Australia or the French Red Cross. The schools also seem to have been built fairly recently, and also with outside aid. However, the more we pass, the more it becomes evident that in a lot of these schools it is always play time. Perhaps there is a shortage of qualified teachers in Laos…certainly we have never seen one.

The vast majority of tourists to Laos visit only four or five major sites, including Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Luang Namtha, Vientiane, and Huay Xai. When we cycle between these main sites, we see no other tourists except for occasional other bicycle tourists. The towns are barebones with one street (the highway), one or two seedy guesthouses and a couple of restaurants that appear to have been designed for lunch stops for buses, though are always empty. The fact that most foreign tourists stay in just a few areas accounts for the excitement of the children in every village we cycle through. Even just a few kilometers outside of the main tourist cities, they are unused to seeing foreigners, and seeing us is a big event.

The places where tourists go are clearly richer, and are benefitting from the foreign money. This wealth is sometimes apparent in villages very close to the touristy areas, but just 5km outside of Luang Prabang, with its French villas, boutiques and fine dining we saw some of the poorest and most run down villages we have seen. The contrast is somewhat shocking.

AW + MD

Posted in Uncategorized

Our minibus to the Elephant Village contained only four other tourists, so we were somewhat disappointed to find the village overrun with more. The place was much busier than we expected, as tourists were constantly coming and going for their single or half day visits to the village. But the elephants seemed pleased with the attention (or more specifically, the bananas), and as it turned out we got to spend a lot more time with the elephants than the other tourists since we went for the vastly more expensive “mahout package.”

Our first experience was some quick “training” in which we were told a list of commands, including go, stop, kneel, left, right, etc. We were then instructed to climb onto an elephant by shouting “seung” and reaching up for its right ear. Hopefully, the elephant then lifts and bends her right leg, allowing you to scramble up to her head. It feels a bit strange riding on the neck/head of the elephant, but that is apparently the most comfortable location for both the elephant and the passenger. We were initially worried about learning the commands in 30 seconds, but in reality it turns out the elephant will only listen to the mahout, who is always present.

Due to our guide’s lack of organization, a brief two-minute introductory ride around the compound was all we had before lunch. As we had gone for the swanky package, lunch, dinner, and breakfast were all included and were all very delicious. After lunch, we enjoyed two hour-long rides on the elephants. The first we shared an elephant, sitting on a saddle (see: park bench strapped to the elephant) while the mahout guided it, though Matthew was allowed to change places with the mahout for most of the journey. We were then assigned to our own elephant and rode them bareback into the jungle where they would spend the night.

In between rides, one of the highlights of the trip was feeding the elephants. For 5,000 kip (about $0.62), they sold you a bunch of small green jungle bananas which you could then feed freely to any of the elephants. If you managed to get past the smart one that stood closest to the banana stand, you were faced with a gauntlet of snotty trunks reaching out in hope of a delicious banana treat. Some were more aggressive than others, and there were warnings not to tease the elephants. The less aggressive elephants would just hook their trunk and wait patiently for you to place a banana on it. Seeing the different personalities and interacting with them face to face was one of the nicest parts of the trip.

As the elephants “go to bed” at 3 pm, we were then taken upriver by boat to Tad Sae waterfall. This was a very beautiful place – and looked so much like the fake waterfalls you see at water parks that at first we weren’t even sure if it was real. But I suppose they must base those things on something. The water was incredibly blue and clear, and smelled like minerals. The waterfall in fact consisted of several layers of small, wide waterfalls with deep pools in between. Yet more elephants, from another ‘elephant village’ were being bathed in the lowest of these pools, whilst humans swam in the higher ones.

We spent that night at the lodge, which was very comfortable, and a higher class of accommodation than we have become accustomed to. It was very enjoyable to sit on the balcony overlooking the river, reading and listening to unidentified things in the jungle going ‘Whooop’.
Next morning we had to wake up at 6 to go and collect the elephants from the jungle. Turns out elephants can be very grumpy in the morning, and don’t much like being woken up for their baths. Can’t really blame them. Our elephants preferred instead to stay in the jungle chomping on the foliage. Matthew’s elephant frequently nodded off mid mouthful. You can’t really argue too much with a hungry sleepy elephant, so it was seven-thirty before we got them down to the banks of the river.

Once we got going, the elephants woke up pretty quickly with our elephants vying not to be last to the river. Generally they take on the slow, lumbering pace you’d expect but at opportune moments they would speed up to try to pass one another. Between the speed, the steep incline of the slope, and the precarious position atop their heads, staying on the elephant at times felt challenging though never felt dangerous. Your knees are braced behind their ears and actually keep you rather secure.

Bath time was a lot of fun, if rather wet, as the elephants seemed to enjoy submerging themselves at random intervals regardless of the load on their backs. They also seemed to like pooing in the river, and Matthew narrowly avoiding being hit in the face by one of his elephants floating presents. The skin is very strange and artificial to the touch, dry, wrinkly and almost papery, and covered with thick bristles. We cleaned them with scrubbing brushes, though their size and their tendency to remain mostly submerged made it hard to do a thorough job.

This was our last real chance to interact with the elephants. Once bath time was done (too soon), we went our separate ways. Them to start their days work with a new load of tourists, and us to a rather wonderful breakfast of fresh baguettes, eggs, and ham. After breakfast we managed to get in one more banana feeding before heading back to Luang Prabang. It was an outstanding experience, even though we have still yet to see wild elephants. Given their numbers in Laos, it seems unlikely that we will.

AW + MD

Photos can be found here.

Posted in Uncategorized