Stopping off in Pakse: A bit of boat research

January 13, 2015

For two people that wanted to cycle 130 kilometres Jin and Lee were certainly taking their time about getting started. As usual I'd woken as soon as daylight hit my tent - an automatic bodily reaction fine-tuned by years of wild camping in places where I sometimes shouldn't. Knowing that we were in a safe place this time, and that my own cycling ambitions for the day didn't exceed the ten kilometres to Pakse, I allowed myself an hour of snooze before leisurely getting up and taking down the tent. I had expected to see the Koreans up bright and early, keen to make headway and get some good distance in before the heat of the day, but there was not a peep from their red tent. I guessed that they just fancied a little extra sleep and so I sat and waited and did nothing. Finally at about nine o'clock Jin emerged and, wiping the sleep from his eyes, said "it's too late to cycle to Four Thousand Islands today, we'll just take the bus."

Finally ready to hit the road. At least as far as the bus stop

We rode together across a big Mekong bridge and into the streets of Pakse, an odd little town that seemed to be chaotic and hectic but at the same time completely laid-back. We went to the bus station, found out that actually they had to go to a different bus station, then stopped and ate noodles for breakfast, where my chopstick skills were shown up once again by the Koreans opposite me. Then I said goodbye to Jin and Lee, as they headed for a long bus journey under a hot sun and I headed for the cool shade of a guesthouse. It was the first one that I had dared to stay in since Alan had joined me, and I was worried that he might not agree to the expense, but luckily he was locked away in a dark pannier and he didn't notice until it was too late and I'd already booked in for two nights.

There wasn't much to do in Pakse, other than to walk around a semi-interesting market and be surprised by the sight of lots of white tourists again. With Pakse being at the crossroads of the north-south route down to Four Thousand Islands and the east route out to the Bolaven Plateau, it sees its fair share of tourists more because of being a necessary stopping-off point than anything else.

I found a cheap guesthouse that was hidden away from the most touristy area. Unusually for Laos it had excellent wifi, which provided me with a good opportunity to begin researching Australia and, perhaps more importantly, how I was going to get to Australia. Although South East Asia was proving a pleasure to cycle, and there were now no more strict visa deadlines to ruin anything, I still had one rather formidable obstacle in my way, that being the open ocean. I talked to my bicycle about it, but it was really rather adamant that it wasn't designed for water, and so I realised that I was going to need to find a boat. With no scheduled ferries running between South East Asia and Australia that seemed like it was going to be quite difficult. But I had some encouraging news, finding a couple of old blogs from cyclists that had successfully managed to hitch a lift on a sailing boat across this stretch. I also heard from Matt, the young chap I met in Mongolia and who will always have a very special place in my heart for his decision to stop his motorcycle to speak to me, a decision which afforded me the opportunity to meet the beautiful Danish girl that was riding a motorcycle just behind him. Interestingly Matt also tried his hand at bicycle touring after he met me (maybe I have this effect on people.) Unfortunately Matt made the mistake of trying to cycle from Beijing to Shanghai. Heavily-populated China would be enough to put anyone off bicycle touring and poor Matt gave up after a few days. But the most recent email from Matt revealed that he was back to backpacking and was now in South East Asia and his present news was that he had found a cargo ship that would take him from Singapore to Australia over the course of ten days for the princely sum of 950 pounds. "Can we afford 950 pounds Alan?" I asked my little pink notebook, who was still a bit mad at me for not consulting him on the guesthouse. "I don't know Chris, that's quite a large percentage of your thousand pound budget. Do you think you can live for five months and twenty days on 50 pounds?"

Alan can be such a killjoy sometimes.

Today's ride: 11 km (7 miles)
Total: 35,766 km (22,211 miles)

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