Fixing the bike and moving on

After a few days of staking out the lone western bike shop in Lao, hoping to find a solution to my current equipment problem, I was finally rewarded today. I assumed that I would need to buy a new crank set to replace the one stripped out arm, but it turns out the friendly owner of the bike shop can simply re-thread the arm, which means I only have to buy a new set of pedals. Now that we have our Thai visas in hand all we have to do is hop on our bikes tomorrow and head out of Lao, and start biking in a new country. It works out well, because our Lao visas expire tomorrow, so if my bike breaks again we could be SOL.