Riding in Laos

I love, absolutely love, riding my bike in Laos. On our first ride out of Muang Khoa we didn't see a single vehicle for the first half-hour, we owned the road for the better part of our 5 1/2 hour ride into Udomaxy. Laos is empty roads and super-friendly people. It's impossible to pass through a village without having hordes of little kids run out to the road with big toothy smiles and hands waving energetically, letting out a chorus of Sabiadee's (hello in Lao) as we roll by. You just feel the warmth of the local people every time you ride through a village. Every once in a while the kids line up on the side of the road and hold out their hands for high-fives as we pass, like running out onto a field for the big game. I can't say enough about how absolutely awesome it is to ride here.

Besides loving the roads in Laos, the ride to Udomaxy was pretty quick, 100k in about 5 1/2 hours and access to an ATM. From Udomaxy we ditched the bikes for a few days for an adventurous bus ride up to the mountain town of Phongsaly. First, if you're going to take a bus in Laos you better show up early. A late arrival at the station results in either an awful seat crammed on the back of the bus, or more likely, a seat on a bag of rice somewhere in the aisle. Unless it's a foreigner trying to ride the bus, I don't think they ever deny refuse a paying customer, since I imagine it is the only way for some villagers to make it into town. What this means for those on the bus is that everything becomes a seat: stools, sacks of rice, the floor all of it is fair game. For the claustrophobic there are usually plenty of spots available on the top of the bus or hanging off the back. If there is an open space to wedge a body into, than that space will be occupied.

Our ride to and from Phongsaly consisted of a combined 13 hours on some of the bumpiest, dustiest, and windy roads we have travelled on. For shorts stretches of the ride we passed through beautiful groves of old growth jungle, explosions of green draping hillsides. The town itself wasn't all that great with most of the surrounding mountains obscured by smoke. Despite the epic trip to reach the town we stayed only a day before making the return trip to Udomaxy. Maybe the views were disappointing but the bus ride each way at least made it a bit of an adventure.