After Ponsavan we follow highway 7 East, then 6 North until we hit 1C Westward, and we encounter many gorgeous little mountain villages. Riding through here is a joy! Bamboo village after bamboo village. Children wave and cheer as we pass. We stop somewhere to check the map and an old lady who looks like she may have nothing to eat herself brings us a plate of baked sweet potato to nibble on. You really fall in love with these people as you’re passing through; especially the kids.

Vieng Thong is the first stop. There are a two or three guest houses here as far as we can make out and we stay in one directly in front of the main village market (Sou Sa Khone, 60000LAK). It’s been a long ride and after checking in we head straight off in our dust-caked gear in search of food.

We cross a concrete bridge and as we’re taking in the scenery I meet a fella who points out the hot springs about a kilometre out of town – the local bath – and says he can take us there. We’re just hungry right now so I decline.

Across the bridge we find a few little bamboo food shacks, one of which operated by two lovely sisters. They cook us up some great local BBQ skewers (buffalo beef) with a delicious rice noodle and veg dish and we dig in.

What a meal! It’s so tasty we immediately go for seconds and of course there’s some beers to accompany.

As we sit there sipping away in the sunset I notice more and more people humming by on their bicycles and scooters with towels around their necks. They must be going to the springs for a wash. I put the idea to Ebru but she’s set on her hot shower in the guest house. No deal.

Well, we get back to the accommodation and immediately have a power failure. So much for hot shower. I exercise a bit of persuasion and soon Ebru and I are on the bike, towels in hand, headed for the hot springs. About a kilometre down a sand road after the bridge (you only have to follow the towels) we arrive there and check it out. It’s a hive of activity! In the car/bike/torch light you can see men, women, children, all bathing in the steaming water. They’ve built a dam wall against the springs with thick metal tubes extending out of it, bringing the water to various bathing spots arranged downstream.

At first we’re a bit nervous as we’re the only white people there and everybody’s surprised to see us. But soon we’re down to our underwear, being blasted by the piping hot water flowing from the end of the pipe and we’re all giggles and gasps. It’s absolutely awesome! The water is so hot at first it takes you a while to adjust, then afterwards you just sit there as it flows over you and you can feel how your muscles relax. Coming out you’re glowing and your skin is radiant and smooth. Just what the doctor ordered! Needless to say Ebru loves it! We haven’t found so hot a shower since we hit the road in August.

All shiny clean and recuperated we head out to a (the?) local establishment in town to enjoy some beers. We meet a nice Austrian couple who started from Burma and are now traveling through Lao with their 3 young kids (4, 7 & 9) – they couldn’t have made a better decision! He’s recently left his job in waste recycling in Austria and took the opportunity to take the family on an extended trip. They teach the kids three times a week to keep up with school work. Of course all the folks back home think they’re mad and it’s all far too dangerous, but no doubt these kids will remember this as one of the most exciting and valuable adventures that will have helped shaped their minds.

We talk about the metaphorical RESET button that was unexpectedly pressed whilst traveling through this country, bringing on deep questions of what really makes us happy in life and whether we were attaining it in our past routines. It’s a really pleasant evening of conversation and stories while the children are playing card games. The youngest of the children, Ferdinand, has been asked his name a few too may times on this trip, so we all take great pleasure in asking him again and observing his irritated reactions: “FERDINAND! Dad I’m telling these people for the thirty sixth time now and they still don’t get that it’s FERDINAND! …”

Well, our Austrian friends, I hope the reset button serves you well and you find that new rythm of life you are seeking. All the best and may we meet again.

Next stop is Nong Khiew. We stay here for a few days and relax. It’s a small village along the main road, either side of a long concrete bridge. There is great food and drink here: Steamed bamboo and fish in banana leaf, TomYam Lao soup and Lap (minced meat with plenty of fresh herbs served with sticky lice) make for a taste sensation and a couple of glasses LaoLao (potent rice schnapps / rocket fuel) deliver a hangover of note!

One night after dinner we’re talking to a local lad by the fire outside the restaurant, practicing his English and him teaching us how to count in Lao. Suddenly there’s a bit of commotion and he tells us that there’s been an accident on the bridge, so we go there to see if we can help out. I was expecting some gashes or scrapes which we might be able to treat with the medikit I brought along. However when we get there it’s tad more serious.

Two guys must have been flying along on their scooter and baled. The scene is hair-raising: the one chap lying on the kerb, grunting in pain, the other on the street, seemingly lifeless except for a shallow breathing, his scalp parted like a well-creamed hair style – not most confidence-inspiring sight when you’re soon about to be biking long distance yourself! Lucky for them there are three American chaps there – doctors I guess – who seem to know what they’re doing, latex gloves and the lot. We help them keep the spectators out of the way, stabilize the bodies and lift them on to a truck to get them rushed off to “the Clinic” (there is no hospital in this town). Last I hear a day later from the young chap at the local restaurant is that they both survived, “nobody die”.

There’s a little cafe called Delias where Ebru meets some interesting folk from Oz and Ireland and helps them build a stone oven! Result of a spontaneous decision made that morning when the right people happened to be present and the owner mentioned how fed up he was not to be able to get decent bread in the area. Sadly no photos of Ebru in action as I was busy elsewhere.

On the final night we go for a walk aroud town after dinner looking for a nice place to settle in for a sundowner. Just about everything is closed but as we walk past a side street we hear the thumping of loud music which seems unbelievable. We follow it and find what we’d have least expected: a real shabby little nightclub where it seems every local in town and neighbouring towns has come for a piece of the action. We can’t account for one western face but we go in anyway and order a beer. The place is heaving and the music is blaring – not just Lao tunes but western club music and even Nirvana! Everyone’s drinking and jumping around, the young girls are kitted up to the eyeballs – high heels, tight minis and T-shirts, hair mousse and make up. And there’s lady-boys galore! Well I love it, this is great – what a jewel!

Fortunately, my responsible other reigns me and shields me from the terrifying dangers of having another drink there, so we call it a night and hit the sack.

Recommendations:
– Bathe at the hot springs in Vieng Thong. Especially after a day’s biking!
– Eat whatever you can in Nong Kiew!
– Try the LaoLao with mint at Sabai Sabai restaurant. Also they have a steam sauna and massage, but we didn’t try.
– Party at the local nightclub!

It’s quite a way to go and though the roads on the second half between Vang Vieng and Ponsavan are excellent, the first half is a dangerous combination of asphalt followed by dirt road around every unsuspecting corner, so going is pretty slow and we don’t make it to Ponsavan in one day. Before sunset we stop in a tiny village called Nam Chat. There is a guest house there which has 3 very basic bungalows next to the lake and we check in there for 50000LAK. We love it.  

There are local restaurants on the roadside and we settle in at the first which is run by “Mama”, a lovely, lively Lao woman who speaks no English and loves loud music and karaoke. She keeps dead squirrels and ferrets in the fridge – mmmmmh – as we find out the next morning over breakfast. (What was that we ate last night??)

At Mama’s we meet some extreme cyclers, two from Belgium and two from England, who have checked into the other two bungalows, so that takes the area’s foreigner-count up to a grand six. We have a great evening together eating local noodle soup, drinking beer and exchanging stories. Oh and did I mention Mama’s karaoke? The English couple are lawyers and have taken a year’s sabbatical to ride around the world by bicycle. So far they’ve only completed 14000km of their ordeal, through places such as Turkey, Iran, Khazakhstan, China and Vietnam.

(Interestingly they seem to have bees struggling with the same sharing-a-laptop problems.)

They run a blog at (http://odycycle.wordpress.com) for anyone who wants to check it out. Probably the highlights here are when Mama masters the word “lettuce”, which we teach over the course of our evening there, and her excitement when Ebru sings her a Turkish song on the karaoke box. LOL!

With the roads from around Nam Chat much improved, we get to Ponsavan before noon and have breakfast at CRATERS cafe, what looks like a hippie little bomb storage facility.

We check into a small guest house around the corner and make our way to tourist attractions. Ponsavan has temples, the plain of jars (hundreds of huge, ancient stone jars with unknown origins and purpose), fields of bomb craters galore.

Then there is the MAG information centre for that “wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee” experience. Really recommend a visit here as the harsh facts you learn here are mind boggling and add some perspective to your view of the country.

Even the tourist information office is a shocker!

There’s so much horrible bomb material around Lao and, surprisingly, they’ve used it in the most creative ways: garden fences, school bells, flower pots, furniture, ash trays and various other decor. You have to see it to believe it! There is hardly an establishment you can visit which doesn’t have mortar grenades on the bar or huge n-ton warheads balancing out the Feng Shuei. In fact, there are villages here where they make spoons and bracelets out of molten down bomb casings to try and earn some money!

If you’re coming to Lao, Ponsavan is a must visit!

Recommendations:
– Visit the MAG centre in Ponsavan town.
– Check out the plain of jars.
– Go to the tourist information centre and look at all the dead war munitions piled around it.
– Check out the old Buddha statue a few km further down the road from the POJ.

What a great decision! Riding through Northern Lao on a bike allows us to experience more of its beauty and learn more about the country than we may have doing bus tours. It’s simply the best way to travel, FULL STOP! Even if you take buses to main hubs and then ride out on day trips from there it’s possible, but chances are you’ll get a scooter for about 150000LAK/day and the ride will be VERY bumpy.

Lao is about the size of Britain with a population of only about 6 million. It’s lush, it’s green and rocky mountain faces pierce vertically through the ground, absolutely breathtaking! There are lakes, caves and rivers (the main one being the Mekong) and all over the place you’ll drive through little villages, often mere bamboo huts, where women (those not in the field) laze around and children play and wave with excitement as you pass by – really stirring; they’re so sweet and innocent; poor yet happy.

People are very poor here. Laos is one of the 20 poorest countries, corruption is rife, and its more powerful neighbours are apparently taking more and more control over the economy. They were bombed to smitherines during the Vietnam war – the US dropped more bombs here than on any other country, ever. Apparently more than were dropped on Germany and Japan during WW2, or all bombs dropped on Europe combined, which equates to about a half ton for each member of the population, thank you very much. The worse part is that an estimated 30% didn’t explode; thus cluster bomblets, warheads, grenades and mines (so called UXOs) are buried all over the place and to this day sending kids and farmers up in smoke. Also these UXOs are keeping the country in poverty because they prevent people from using a huge amount of their arable land. It’s amazing that in the face of this these people are so welcoming and friendly.

Where did we learn this? There’s a group which deserves much admiration called MAG, which is doing the risky business of finding and defusing this stuff so that land can be reclaimed. Many of them young local women. Check them out on the web; make a donation perhaps; or even better come here, visit their centre in Ponsavan and do it there by buying a T-shirt or some postcards or something.

Our bike ride takes us up highway 10, then 12 to Vang Vieng. The journey takes more than the estimated 4 hours and this leaves us riding in the dark for an hour or two, definitely something to avoid down here.

Vang Vieng is best known among backpackers for its excellent TUBE infrastructure! It’s a small village with one main street and is basically a large cluster of guest houses, restaurants and bars. It seems this place has been built primarily to accommodate the tube system and not the other way round, but this has its reasons – more about that in a minute. The atmosphere is as can be expected – loud and full of drunk young travelers looking to burn the midnight oil. Hotels are pretty reasonable – we had a riverside room with balcony and great view for 100000LAK/night in the Grand View guesthouse. We travel by tube the next day; not very cultural I warn you, but still much fun and not to be passed up if you’re here already.

Basically here’s the procedure:
1. You pick up a truck tyre tube in town (50000K + 60000K deposit), catch a tuk tuk a few kilometres up-river where you’re greeted at the first riverside bars with free Whisky Lao, pumping music and as much drink behind the bar as you desire.
2. As you tire of one place, you just hop into the river with your tube and float downstream until you grab on to a line thrown from the next bar that takes your fancy and get pulled ashore for the next party. Hilarious! And the scenery is stunning!
3. At the end of the day you hop on your tube and either float all the way back to Vang Vieng or come off early and take a tuk tuk back. (Don’t forget your tube!)
4. At night there are a few late night bars and plenty of restaurants for good chow. Party on until you’ve had enough.

(Sadly no photos of the tubing as the dry bags are not always reliable and our camera is very dear to us!)

We leave the last bar at about 5PM and an hour later find ourselves slowly downstream drifting in the dark, a drunken French lass who’s lost all her friends latched onto our little convoy. We should have left an hour earlier to make it back to Vang Vieng by tube during this low water season, but we decide to come ashore where we hear some tuk tuk drivers offering a ride. Great decision: because they’ve got a little fire going and as we’re drying off at the fireside, waiting for any additional passengers to float by, they share some of their LaoLao (moonshine) and buffalo hide with us, which is a treat! The hide looks like finger-thick strips of powdery rubber; it goes straight into the glowing embers and after a few minutes when it’s all crispy the ash is beaten off between a couple of stones and it’s ready to eat. Try it if you can.

Aside from tubing (which will probably cost you a day plus a morning due to hang over) there are loads of activities around here: kayaking, climbing, caving, trekking… did I mention drinking? Just a few kilometres out of town you can visit caves, waterfalls and the Blue Lagoon which you absolutely MUST visit but make sure it’s the real one (7km from town).

On our last evening in VV we meet Sam, a Hawaiian bloke, long-time traveler of these parts. After many successful years spent in a less than reputable trade in the USA, he’s now seeking to establish a new venture in Lao, but this time one from which prosperity will flow to local workers as well as his business. We have a really good night; he’s a really decent and intelligent bloke and it’s great talking to him. It turns out he’s also traveling by motorbike, but in the opposite direction so, sadly, we’ll be parting ways. The next morning we meet up at the bakery in town for the Fruit-Yoghurt-Muesli breakfast Sam recommends and say our good byes.

Sam, thanks for the tip. The breakfast was excellent and kept us riding for the rest of the day. Good luck with your project and hope to meet you again!

Recommendations:
– Go tubing in Vang Vieng but try not to make a nuisance of yourself back in the village.
– Keep your brain on: during low water people have broken themselves by swinging or diving into rocks; during high water drunken people have been dragged under and away in the muddy rapids (your friends can’t swim that fast to save you).
– Visit the Blue Lagoon near Vang Vieng & take your cozzie.
– Take at least one decent torch along if you’re visiting caves or you’ll have to rent one (though this isn’t expensive)
– Though drugs are available and a lot of people are looking for them here, it’s probably not a good idea: We heard a few stories of tuk tuk drivers or dealers in bars selling to travelers and tipping off the police moments later; at the time we were there a couple of girls took magic mushrooms and got caught, and while they were spending a night in a cell and paying hundreds of dollars in exit fees, the room at their guest house was being conveniently stripped of their belongings.
– You can buy buffalo hide at the Luang Prabang food market if you want to take some with you.