November 26, 2014
Another day in paradise...: Now with rats!
The next morning the road became even more fabulous, as we passed through several small villages that were alive with people. "Sa-ba-dee!" cried the children, their faces filled with joy as they waved and held out their hands to high-five us as we passed, "Sa-ba-dee! Sa-ba-deeeeee!" And the adults smiled too, and encouraged the younger children to wave to us, and held toddlers on their knee and moved their arm up and down for them. There were so many young children it was incredible - it felt like they were the dominant force in this nation, where the average age of the people is just 21 - and the villages sparkled with the energy of this youth.
As we passed through one of these villages we were stopped by a young man who could speak excellent English. He was formerly a monk in Luang Prabang, and over the ten years that he spent there he had honed his language skills. Now, at the age of 24, he had recently moved back to the village to look after his mother, and was happy for the chance to speak English again. He told us more about the villages and the local people, and that of the many different ethnic groups in Laos there were two in this very village, but that, despite different beliefs, these groups coexisted and mingled with one another and were friends. I wished all the world could be like this. Then the young man noticed my Barcelona shirt and pointed to it, and I thought he was going to compliment me on how brilliantly orange it was, but he was actually pointing at the word 'Unicef' which was emblazoned across the front. He told us that Unicef did a lot of good work in Laos and that he himself had worked for them raising HIV awareness. He was such a good guy, no doubt about that, and raising HIV awareness is unquestionably a noble and extremely worthwhile undertaking, but judging from the rats (yes, I said rats) that the people next to him were barbecuing for breakfast he possibly should have spent more time raising bubonic plague awareness.
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We continued and soon found ourselves cycling along with a group of youngsters, also out and about enjoying the sunshine on their bikes. There were three boys and a girl, the latter of whom attached herself to Dea and cycled along with her whilst I raced the boys. They went along with us for quite a while, seemingly impressed by my few Lao phrases, and thrilled to be riding with the foreigners. I was reminded of Bryon's suggestion that the only thing that could make cycling in Laos better would be riding in a peloton and, whilst this probably wasn't exactly what he meant, I had to agree that he was right.
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But then, sadly, the boy in yellow in the above photo got too close to the edge of the road and his bike slipped on the leaves and debris there, bringing him crashing to the ground. Everyone stopped and gathered around to make sure that he was okay, which he was, except for a slight gash on his knee. Probably the biggest injury suffered by the poor lad was to his pride, as he stood there all embarrassed about his mistake whilst everyone crowded around. 'Well, kid,' I thought, 'you should be embarrassed, you've got a pink bike.'
A little later we all stopped to admire a new bridge that had been built across the river and I went to see if I could cheer the boy a little. His bell had broken off in the fall and I helped him to reattach it, but it wouldn't ding now. I tried for a long time to get his bell to ding again, thinking that this would lift his mood, but I could not. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it probably didn't even ding before the accident, and tried something else, offering a cookie to the boy. I only meant for him to take one as I held the packet towards him, but he grabbed the whole lot, ate them all, and then dropped the litter on the floor behind him. And still he sulked! I gave up on him, appalled at his behaviour. I'm serious, I was appalled - there were two whole cookies in that packet when he took it from me!
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We stopped in a little place called Pak Nam Noi and lunched in a restaurant where Dea once again moved for the veggie option, despite that fact that this place also had some rats sizzling away on kebab skewers. After the restaurant Dea was just a little ahead of me as we turned right at a crossroads to head towards Muang Khoua. Across the street I noticed three women dressed very brightly in what looked like the authentic traditional dresses of some local ethnic group and they were waving and calling me over to them. Dea was too far ahead to call back, but I went over to say hello anyway. As I got closer I saw that these women were actually out to try and sell me something, as they had with them a variety of woven bracelets and other things. As I knew that Dea had a collection of bracelets on her arm and that she would probably appreciate one as a gift from me I was interested and took a closer look. Two of the women, sensing the opportunity for a sale, closed in on me. They came at me from either side, jabbering away and busily tying a bracelet on each of my wrists. "No, no, it's not for me!" I started to feel a little trapped. The old women were chattering away, no doubt about how great their bracelets were. "Okay, okay! How much?" I asked. The woman to my right held up four fingers. The woman to my left two. Naturally the bracelet on my left started to look much nicer than the one on my right. I found 2,000 kip in my wallet and offered it to the woman. She shook her head and showed me a 20,000 kip note. That was way too much so I decided that Dea had enough bracelets, put my wallet away and then tried to get the bracelets off, something that I had very little success with. The women weren't going to help me; they were still out to make a sale and had no desire to let me get away that easily. I fiddled with the knots and looked around desperately for help. Where was Dea? Surely she would eventually get worried about me and come back to release me from this hostage situation! The woman kept blabbering on, holding up more bracelets, waving them in my face, trying to tie these ones on too. I resisted and then, by some miracle, I found a way to freedom which was somewhat akin to one of Harry Houdini's great escapes. Almost suffocated by these woman I nevertheless managed to finally free the shackles around my wrists and, because the women wouldn't take them back from me, I threw the bracelets at them, and the shock this engendered amongst my captors provided me with just enough time to reverse the bike and swing around in one swift movement to the other side of the road where, narrowly avoiding a stall of dead rats and even managing to shoot a quick photo of my torturers, I made good my getaway.
It was a relief to catch up to Dea after this ordeal and to see her smiling face once more, and we agreed that it was good that we had each other, and we really should stick together in case anything like that happened again. And so we cycled on happily in this way for the rest of the ride to Muang Khoua, and I could relax again and enjoy looking at the beautiful scenery and waving to the darling children.
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We arrived to Muang Khoua mid-afternoon. It was a town, but not a very large one, set on the appex of the two rivers. Dino and Suzy had recommended to us a good guesthouse which was 'across a swing bridge' and, because there were two big rivers and both were not viewable from the middle of town, we thought we would ask someone where this swing bridge was. As it happened there was a foreign couple at the side of the road and so we stopped and asked them if they knew anything about it, or if they knew anywhere that had Internet, because Dea needed to change the date of her flight home (to spend more time with me! 😃)
The couple were from Germany and, although they knew of no swing bridge, we nevertheless fell into conversation with them. Michael and Gisela were their names, and they had driven their campervan here, which was nice because it meant that they were more like travelers than tourists, and we got on very well with them. They told us that they had left their vehicle in Nong Khiaw and chartered their own boat for two days, which had brought them up river that morning , and on which they planned to return the next day. Seeing as Dea and I had just asked about the public boat, and explained that we also hoped to sail downstream to Nong Khiaw in the morning, the kind-hearted couple asked if we would like to join them on their boat instead. They asked if we would pay 50,000 kip, pretty much a nominal amount considering Dino and Suzy had paid 130,000 each on the public boat. It was an offer too good for us to refuse.
Pleased with having sorted out our boat so easily, Dea and I cycled off and soon located the swing bridge. It was a terrifying one too, spanning a large distance across what was now a wide river, and being positioned very high above the water between the opposing banks. The wooden boards beneath us looked relatively solid, but in places they had been patched up with new pieces of wood nailed in place where the old wood had obviously fallen through. Which was plenty enough to make me nervous about the fifty foot drop to the shallow water below as I pushed my very heavy bicycle tentatively out and onto the bridge. What made matters much worse was that we were not alone in trying to cross this bridge, and every few moments a motorcycle would whiz across, the wooden boards rattling noisily like a train beneath them, as if traveling at speed was the only way for the bike to make it across without the bridge collapsing beneath their weight. I, however, was not traveling at great speed, nervously pushing my bike carefully over the rickety boards. Dea laughed at me. She wasn't the least bit scared.
We found the guesthouse and it was a great one, with a window view across the river from which we could observe others risking life and limb on the swing bridge. There was also a terraced area to sit and have the same view, surrounded by palm trees and other tropical foliage, where a friendly cat came and sat with us and said hello. For two pounds each we had our own little corner of paradise.
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After settling in we went out to meet Michael and Gisela for dinner, which meant walking twice more across that bridge. In the dark it became particularly terrifying, especially when a motorcyclist had the not-so-very-sensible idea to zoom across without any lights, but somehow we survived and made it to the restaurant. Dinner was a further event in itself, although the company made it thoroughly enjoyable anyway. Michael and Gisela were an older couple but they certainly seemed young at heart, especially Gisela whose playful excited smiles reminded me of the children that we had been waving at all day. After we ordered our food but only Michael's had been delivered all of the power in the restaurant went out and we sat in complete darkness for a moment. I told Michael about an expensive restaurant in the UK where people actually do eat in the dark in order to fully appreciate the flavour more, and he said there was one in Berlin too, and I told him not to complain then, and to savour his fried rice all the more.
Some lighting was found and the food was cooked somehow, and brought to us in stages. We all got something, although there was no sign of the eggplant that Dea had ordered, or my mango shake. Still, we didn't complain and it was a nice evening. I liked Michael and Gisela very much. Of course they were older than us, having done the parenting thing, the working thing, the retiring thing, but now they traveled properly, overland, the right way, with the right outlook. This put them higher in my estimation than most of the other tourists in the restaurant, those that I would describe as the 'Lonely Planet crowd' that had come here because the guidebook told them too. Me and Dea weren't doing that, we were going where Suzy and Dino were telling us to. I believe Suzy and Dino were using a Lonely Planet, but that's not important. It was a lovely evening and the four of us sat and talked for perhaps an hour after we had finished eating. And then, out of nowhere, the young waitress brought me over my mango shake. Oh, how we laughed. "Haha, next they'll be bringing the eggplant!" we all giggled, "Oh look! Here it is now!"
Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 34,291 km (21,295 miles)
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