The plan today was to get over into Laos, a new country but i wasn’t buzzing with anticipation to get there. The day started with a decent climb but despite fearing it was going to be hilly today this turned out to be the only one and there was a pretty good down hill afterwards. After a stop me and Russell swapped bikes for 5 minutes just so we could test out each others bikes. I must say Russells bike being much lighter than mine was so much easier to ride, i flew up the hills but coming down being unable to stop pedalling as its a fixed gear bike wasn’t much fun, i was glad to be back on my own tank of a bike.
This was to be the last day cycling with Russell and i must say I’m going to miss him. It’s been great having someone i can just take about everything and nothing with and generally get on easily with. Riding we were talking and i was discussing the possibility of cycling Japan which is something i wanted to do but it didn’t seem to be on route and i didn’t have enough time. Something inside me decided to change my plan of cycling straight up to Bejing and now i decided to cycle to Shanghi, catch a boat to Japan, apply for a second Chinese visa, then meet up with Russell and Murray for a week in southern Japan before catching another boat back to China.
We were getting close to the border but Thailand decided it wasn’t going to let me leave easily. First while taking a picture i unwittingly rode straight into a brick in the road and just managed to hold the bike without falling off or ending up in a ditch, then i got the tyre caught in a slit in the road and went hurtling across the road, i managed to stay on the bike but i was super lucky there wasn’t anything coming from behind otherwise i would be road kill.Crossing the border was strange to say the least, there were signs saying no bikes across the causeway to Laos but we just cycled across with nobody saying a word. On the Laos side we took our bikes into Laos then went back into no mans land to get our visa’s. I sat with the bikes, people here were a bit more curious and suspicious than they were in Thailand, with Laos being much poorer, (i got this impression as the immigration workers uniforms looked tatty and things appeared much less organised) i sat with the bikes till Loon came through Immigration. It was my turn and not having the required passport photo i was worried they might make me go get one somewhere but when he asked for the picture i just said it was with my bike but he didn’t seem bothered about it so just took the 315000 Kip ($45USD) for the visa. The money in Loas is crazy, why they have to have so many 0’s is beyond me but to make things worse they also have their own unique numbers on to, to give you an idea 1 in Laos is 9 so on the 1000 note it also has a 9000 printed on to.
Riding in Laos was instantly different, Laos they drive on the right hand side of the road the first time i have done so and its weird, instead of checking over my right shoulder for cars i check over the right one and turning corners is all back to front, i did take a right turn and ended up with 2 lanes of traffic heading straight for me. Riding into Vientine it was obvious this country was behind anywhere else i had been to so far. I also did not realise how pro communist Laos is, with every national flag there is the hammer sickle, the flag of the Soviet Union, hanging right alongside.
We did find our way to a guesthouse, it was the main centre where all the travellers were and we grabbed a beer then join by two Danish girls. A few more beers we went for some food then had a few more beers. Everybody went to bed but i was in the mood for beer so kept drinking with nothing but the prostitutes to keep me company, most of them did appear to be ladyboys, i was joined by a French guy who i got chatting to, he left then there was a Scottish guy who was lost, i decided to save him from the prostitutes and gave him some beer and pretended to be old friends. He had his own business down in Ko Tao and was a sound guy. While talking we heard a crash, few hundred meters down the road a crowd had gathered and there was a motor cyclist who had just been knocked off. We went over and nobody was doing anything useful, the Scottish guy told somebody to call an ambulance as nobody appeared to have thought of that yet while i tried to talk to the guy who appeared to be struggling to keep consciousness. I tried to get someone who spoke Laos to speak but no one again seemed to get this concept. They then made an attempt to move him until me and the Scottish guy stopped them from doing so, but they soon did again and this time i got into a full blown argument with a local, it was looking like escalating until the Scottish guy pulled me away, he had lived out here for a while and said that these people are not to mess with when angry. I agreed, he then told me the value of human life here seems much lower, its crazy to say but for someone to just die in a motorbike crash isn’t a big thing, everyone will just carry on. Of course people try their best to help but things are different here, the whole episode got me upset. We were joined by an Irish guy and we all got in a deep conversation about conspiracies and what can you really believe in the media etc, it was one of those conversations that makes sense after a few gallons of beer. They left and i carried on drinking till 430am where drunk as a skunk I climbed into bed with Russell, we only had two beds and the floor wasn’t inviting.
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