On the road to Vang Vieng - Laos

More road works

Laos feels much poorer than any other country we have been in, this is Southeast Asia's most relaxing country to travel in with respect to laid back tourism where it seems focused in just a few specific towns.

Riding down towards Vientianne, the Capital, started out on a bit of a rocky, muddy road.  Ronnie had warned us but when he went thru it was also raining so made it a lot worse, i decided to dismount to catch a few pictures of how typical it is in these countries when they are doing road works and how awful it is for a motorcycle and dangerous.  We endured a few hours of this but then it got better and we relaxed into a lovely country ride meandering thru the mountains, coming around one corner we spotted two other BMW riders in bright yellow suits which we immediately recognized as Simon and Lisa from England, around the worlders out for 8 years, www.2ridetheworld.com.  we pulled over and Simon turned around to say hi and the first thing he said was, "Ronnie" says hi!  I tell you its a small world out here, it turns out that our South African friend Ronnie who we had spent a few days with in Syria was in a few towns ahead of us and they had just spent time with him.  So strange how in 4 months we were now back in the same country again,  pretty funny, they filled us in on their adventure, we exchanged emails and contact info and we said that we were sure to meet again.

Huston we have a problem!!
Note range in tank and nearest gas station

I did mention to Trevor at least 3 times that we would need fuel but he seemed confident that he had calculated correctly!!!

A small gas station not mentioned on the GPS

When I first came across these stops I actually thought they were some kind of drink, well they are just not for human consumption!

Five liters of the red stuff please

Village life in Laos

The smoke haze from burning the fields

The smoke haze from the burning that goes on here was awful, I guess it turns out that it happens at this time of year, it certainly doesnt seem like there is much planning, not sure what happens when it gets out of control because there is no firefighters coming to the rescue.

Kids looking after kids

We have seen more babies in this country than any other country in the world so far, it is very obvious that making babies is their past time.  As you can see from this picture, children taking care of children, I recently read in the local paper here that they were looking for food (rice) donations for over 111,000 people who's rice reserves were down in the north due to unusual early rain.  The children are very cute, they always have big smiles for you and wave, the adults however seem a bit more reserved.

Rice everywhere

The best deal yet $5.00 a night

This is definitely our cheapest home yet, when we bumped into Simon and Lisa they told us where they stayed  on route to Vientiene in a town called Vang Vieng so we thought we would drop in to see if it would be worth stopping at for one night, they said, "cross the bridge and immediately on your right is a place on the river with huts called "Paradise" for only $5.00 a night, well we should have known what kind of accom it would be.   As we turned to go down the road to cross this bridge who should be coming out with the bright lights of the GS starring at us but, "Mark" our Ausi friend who we had met earlier in the week at Luang Prabang, see I told you it was a really small world out here.  He turned around and followed us into the Paradise huts, that was interesting, cockroaches turned upsidedown on the floor riggling away, stairs that it seemed would fall down if both Trev and I went up them together, but hey, it had hot water, clean towels and a mozi net and it was only $5.00, it was ok with Mark so we showered and went out in search of food.

This is a party town for the young, known for its river and "tubing" hense lots of the restaurants full of westerners all under the age of 25 in bikinis and board shorts having had a little too much cold beer after a good day tubing - good fun to watch.

Another river crossing but with a bridge

After dinner we decided to hunt down some good coffee, well we didnt find that but we did find some good music playing at one bar and it turns out that that is Marks favorite subject so we had a nice evening discussing music and movies well into the night, a most memorable evening!

We meet Mark again from Australia