Firstly, thankyou to Martin (of Martin & Goi fame. I met this great couple at the hotel in Chiang Khong) who suggested this route. Your suggestions and interest have really helped and they’re sincerely appreciated.
Secondly, despite Martin’s suggestions, today was a big unknown. He did the trip in his car 😁
50kms of dirt road beside the Mekong sounded great, then some sealed roads up and over the hill to the beautiful city of Luang Prabang.
I had no idea about the state of the road, but it turned out to be a wonderful one day ride and I’m so glad I did it. However, calling it a road was a stretch at times.
The alternative was the main (as in the Laos version of main) road through the hills. Uninspiring.
I had omelette and rice at my favourite restaurant where the matriarch of the place wanted photos and selfies before I could leave. It’s just part and parcel of being a celebrity I guess 😂
I left town through a really interesting area. It had some fantastic old buildings but absolutely everything was dusty and dirty, while the road was muddy from the recent rain. In fact after a few kms, and lots of mud I was questioning my decision to come this way. However, my attitude is to get out of my comfort zone and see what happens.
It was slow going for the first 30kms as the road changed from muddy to rocky to rutted to washed out to all of the above, all the while going either up or down and never flat. It wasn’t relaxing but it was brilliant. And that seems to be a summary of Laos so far. Everything is more difficult here – riding, finding food, communicating, finding accommodation etc but the rewards are greater too. The experiences with the people, kids in villages going crazy, restaurant conversations and the scenery are all different here. These all seem to be more intense than I’m used to. Just like the pain in my legs 😁
Every few hundred metres there was more mud or water to traverse.
Nerd Alert ! I was so glad that I had the belt drive and Rohloff hub – almost weatherproof. I squirted water on the belt and it was as good as new.
There was some fun today as I descended to a creek and saw a motorbike on a bamboo raft being walked across the creek by three ladies. That’s an enterprising business probably only operating because the water has backed up from the dam.They motioned for me to put my bike on the raft even though I could have happily carried it across.As I neared the other side, I asked one lady, how much. She indicated 1,000 kip which is about 10 cents. One of the other ladies then interrupted and explained in sign language that she was wrong, it’s 10,000 kip. She had a look in her eyes that made me burst out laughing, and then they all did. I gave them 5,000 for the fun, and they were over the moon.
I went through many villages after the 25k mark, and they were all interesting. It was a hot day, and they were full of people and dogs lying around escaping the heat. So the kids were a little slow with their shouts of Falang, Falang, but they made up for that with the intensity once roused.
I stopped at 33km for an ice cold Pepsi which got me going again. After that point, the road opened out and became flatter and easier and at 50km became sealed. I wondered why there … until I realised that this was now the road to Kuang Si Waterfalls which is a big tourist attraction. I’ve been there previously and they’re well worth the trip.
As you’d expect, then, there were more stores and cafes (nearly all closed) to service the tourist trade.It was here I noticed a change – I was no longer a novelty. Nobody shouted Falang. For the first time in a week, I was part of the background and it felt good.
The final, gentle climb (by Laos standards) brought me to the hill overlooking Luang Prabang as well as a few kms of downhill on the best sealed road I’d seen for days.
On the downhill, two kids on a motor scooter were riding no hands and laughing, so I caught up to them and did the same – more laughter all ’round. They didn’t realise that I was only doing it to rest my back which had taken a pummeling from the rough road today.
I’m staying at the Mali House in downtown LP. It was recommended by Adrian, the bike tourer from Singapore and it’s a great place. The host, Andy, is an American and is so welcoming and helpful. The green machine is safely undercover and maybe tomorrow, I’ll clean the mud off.
I went for a wander and felt quite fatigued after the last 6 days, so I celebrated getting this far, with a Beerlao – very nice.
For any cyclists looking at doing this route:
Just do it. It’s a fantastic ride if you like riding gravel / fire trails and don’t mind some bumps and mud.
At 33kms the road gets wider and flatter and has far fewer ruts, but there are still plenty of rocks. It’s also more open, so it was hot when I was there.
From Muang Nan, there aren’t many shops until the 38km mark (but there was one earlier village that I didn’t go into). You can get water, fizzy drinks etc, fairly easily after that. At 50km, the sealed road begins.
There’s plenty of cows, goats and Water buffaloes along the way. I saw two snakes slithering off the road.