Laos continue 3

We left Luang Prabang, a very nice place, to go north to try to get into China. We drove to Luangnamtha a town 70 km away from the Chinese border and our plan was to try to get in there the next day. The road was similar as the last drive, really twisty road and it took us long time to cover those few 270 km that day. But as before the scenery was beautiful because of how high in the mountain the road is. 

Our plan for the next day was to try first a go road that goes over the border but no border crossing is shown on the maps and then if there is no luck there try the international border at Boden. It’s the only crossing between Laos and China. We walked around the town when we got here and it seems to be not much to do or see. But we spent the evening talking to some travelers.

We woke up early and drove to the small border. There was a border control there and the guards told us this crossing was just for local people. So we went back to try to cross at Boden. Our plan was to take the motorbike gear off and park the bikes so the border gards would not see them. Get our visa stamped and get on the bikes and try to cross as the guys inside don’t often know what is happening on the outside. As we got close to the border we stopped and took all our motorbike gear off and put our normal clothes on. Viggo also took a back pack he had to try to look more like normal tourists. After checking out of Laos we had to dive 1 km to get to the Chinese border, and the difference.

There was one small building at the Laos border but when we entered China, large buildings and just a highway. So weird, even both sides on the road were decorated with flowers, all looked so modern and “nice”. As we got close to the gate we parked our bikes behind a parked car on the side of the road and walked to the offices. 

After security and swine flu tests we could proceed to the check in. The officials took our passports and asked us quite a few general questions that we answered and never lied but we never told them about the bikes. Except he asked me where my luggage was and I told him it was at the back on the bike. We passed and were in China now. But now we walked back got on the bikes, but the guy was watching us the whole time and just said you are not taking those in, sorry. And that was it. He was very friendly and even withdrew the arrival stamp so our visa could be used later. We went back to Luannamtha, sad and disappointed. Went to the pub that night in hope to find some information on how to smuggle the bikes over the border. No luck that night.

Next day we went back out, trying to find someone who could help us out. After speaking to a guy at one travel agency we had not much hope that this could ever be possible. He told us that trucks from Laos could not enter China and they unloaded the trucks at the border to put the cargo into Chinese vehicle. Chinese trucks can though cross both borders but we were not keen to put our bikes into Chinese truck as he could so easily steel the bikes and we would never see him. Also Chinese driver keen to do this would be very hard to find. We meet up with really cool Australian couple that night. It was good to forget about China laughing with them. We made decision we would need to go back to Thailand to organize transportation for the bikes over China.

We got up the next day and got straight on the bikes again and headed to Thailand. The road to Thailand there is a good road, the biggest and best road in Laos. It was build to connect Thailand and China. We got to the Mekong River to cross over to Thailand in small town I don’t remember the name of. There are two harbors there, one for people and the other for vehicles. We got over the river on a big “platform” along with trucks. But before leaving there we had to drive to the other harbor and check out of Laos. 

When arriving in Thailand the clock was getting late and the customs office closes at 6. It tool us maybe an half an hour to get us back in the country but then the bikes were left. The customs people were so nice to keep the office open for us and the filled in all the forms for us, and all got sorted in 15 min. Didn’t need to pay anything just one signature on the form. This took few days to do in Bangkok to do and did cost quite a bit for the same form. Found a nice accommodation but black out in the evening prevented us to go to the internet. 

The end of the begining!

Hi folks,

Just to keep you up to date and show you we are still alive. Now we are finally on our way again. We are taking an over night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok leaving soon. Then we will fly to Shanghai at midnight tomorrow. We will stop in Shanghai for a day, two or three to get the Russian visa. It is supposed to be easy to get it there so we are not going to risk that. Then we will take train to Beijing to get the train to Ulaan Bataar Mongolia. Our bikes are leaving as well and will they be in Mongolia around 23 Mai. 

Take care,

Ingo

Some videos

Here are two videos from Laos. Sorry they are in Icelandic.

Laos continue 2

Hi guys,

Sorry how lazy Im putting in blog. Now we are in Chiang Mai - Thailand and have sorted out transportation for our bikes from here to Mongolia. We have to do this since we could not get

 into China and Mayanmar (Burma) is also closed for motorbikes. But more about this later as 

we shall now go back in time when we where still in Laos.

Wednesday - Thursday,

Drove from Vientiane after a great brekfast at the scandinavian bakery. After just 170 km we got to our next stop Vang Vieng. This is a really touristy small town with lots of activities around it. The town lies by a river and beoutiful mountains. 

The first day we took it easy but the next day we drove around the area and looked at three caves on the way. After caving went swimming in creek coming from cave so it was possible to swim inside. I got really sunburn this day after riding for long time and forgetting the sunscreen. The nightlife is lively here as there are som many young tourists and on an island in the river are many pubs that the police leave alone. One the law in Laos for example is that all pubs has to be closed at 11:30 PM. 

Friday - Sunday

After a bit of a struggle geting Viggó up and to leave Vang Vieng we finally left. I dont know if it was the great number of pizza resturants that made him want to stay, who knows!! We set off not too early as there was not many km to next destination, Lunag Prabang. Just 230 km. After just few km the road the road the road got really twisty and started to go up the mountains. Our average speed this day was around 50 km/hour on the main road that has

 good tarmac, crazy. Just break, turn, gear down, trotlle on, throttle off, break, turn. I was just so glad we were not in car as they went even much slower. But the senery on this road is great. It goes up to 1300m elevation and then it goes on top of the mountain for quite long time. Also interesting see that people live in such high elevation on top of the mountains.

 

The next day in Luang Prabang we went elephant riding. That was great fun as we controlled the beast most of the time, not the guide. It was really hot tho and lot of flyes. In the evening we walked around town as well as up a high hill in the middle town and has good views. 

The last day in Luang Prabang we just hang around. The town is nice as it has old French colonial buildings, is clean and people are nice. I think it is like beeing in nice town in europe exept everyting is much cheaper so you feel like king, except Viggó is prins. 

OK I promish to finish the last days in Laos soon :-)

All the pictures from Laos are in now, see here.

Cheers,

Ingo

Laos last day?

Hey,

Now we are in north of Laos, really close to the Chinese border. There are border in less than 100 km distance that we are going to have a look at tomorrow. They are small and probably not for foreigners. But we will see. We are thinking of finding a truck driver that is keen to "smuggle" the bikes over the borders. But we might also just give it a go and see if they let us in. We have also been thinking turn the bikes into cows and ride the cows over. I’m sure you can take a cow over. Any ides on how to get unseen into China? 

The trip has been going really well so far. No problems I remember at all except my wallet got lost in Thailand. We have not slept in the tent yet. There are just no camping grounds here!!! And we have not even tried our cookers yet. It is so easy to get cheap food everywhere here in SE Asia. If there is road then there are people. 

Vietnam fell out of the loop before we left Bangkok because it is impossible to get bikes with larger than 200cc or something like that in there. We have totally enjoyed Laos and hopefully I will be here again. Now as we are in north of Laos we notice the people are different. Lots of Chinese have immigrated in here. Apparently the US did train immigrated Chinese people to fight the N-Vietnamese in Laos, the secret war. 

The bikes have been really good. No problems at all. We just lubricated some cables and washed them yesterday and that is all we have done. We have driven almost 5000 km so far. 

We have uploaded some photos from Laos here, but there is more to come. 

We will also finish the Laos blog very soon. 

Well good night from Laos,

Ingó

Laos Continue

Saturday,

We woke up early to go to Savannakhet, the second biggest city in Laos. It is not big though, more like an average town. Left early in the morning after a good sleep with all the insects probably crawling all over us when a sleep. The weather was great and it was nice driving past so many people walking on the road to work. Carrying baskets and there tools heading to the field. Later in the day we went past many rice fields. Where people were cutting the rice plant, all done by hand. Drove on gravel roads most of the day. Arrived early and walked around town and had dinner on a floating restaurant on the Mekong.

Sunday,

We did catch up with a French guy Jerome over breakfast. He joined us and took us to monkey forest near by. We had bought bananas and Viggó and the monkeys were all happy getting them. The monkeys were cool and we took some back road twist with Jerome back to the main road were he went back to Savannakhet where he lives and we continued up to Thakhhek.

Monday and Thuesday,

We woke up early, well 8 o’clock to do “the loop”. It is a loop recommended to on motorbikes in the lonely planet. It is recommended to do it in three days because there is lot to see and the road is in bad conditions in places. The main thing for us in this loop was to see a hydro power plant they are building up there. Apparently there have been a lot of arguments regarding this plant. So we started by heading east and got soon surrounded by beautiful limestone mountains.

And after a few hours ride we came to the power plant. It was nothing spectacular, looked like an average Icelandic power plant in size. Then we started to drive up the mountain, up beautiful twisty tarmac road that did turn into a beautiful gravel road at the top. We covered I would guess around 100-200 km at the top before getting to the dam site. But the funny thing is that all the time driving up there we were driving by the lake made for the power plant. Then the dam was a big disappointment, just a tiny dam. This lake is huge in size but very shallow. After leaving the dam site the road got really rough. Nothing so bad but the instead of driving maybe 80-90 km/h average on gravel road it probably went down to 40-50 km/h. It was probably fine road when it was built long time ago but not been maintained for decades I would guess. But finally around 100 km later it turned into tarmac again. We decided to try to reach the capital city that day and went for it. It got dark we getting into the city and it was so hard to drive. Lot of dust, many without a light and cows made the driving hard. But we made it fine and did manage to drive the three day loop plus another 200 km to the city in one day. Totally we drove 530 km that day which is our record. Sore and tired we went to bedNext day we took it easy in the capital, Vientiane. I did spend most of the day trying to sort out papers to be able to apply for new drivers license that I lost in Thailand. The city is really nice to hang around in, but there is not really much to do there.

Laos

Hello friends,

Now we are in Laos in a very touristy town 150 km north of the capital. Really beautiful place, surrounded by high mountains and lying by river. This town reminds me of Queenstown in NZ, really touristy and very beautiful. But back to where we were. 

Thursday,

After out from the Cambodian border we drove 100m to get into Laos. After filling out one arrival card and pay $1 we got our visa stamped and the gate was opened. They did not care we had motorbikes at all. So we kissed Laos soil in only 5 min after arriving at the border. 

Laos immediately showed that this was different from the other two countries we had been through so far. We arrived in remote area of the country but somehow we both felt that this place was nicer then the other two places. Beautiful landscape, cleaner, better roads and almost just everything made this please my favorite so far. Just compare to Cambodia where every second house has the rubbish just piled up around the house. This people don’t seem be w

ealthy but they seem to have a lot of pride. Every town we drive through there are smiling curious children wondering who in the hell those creatures are. 

We went to see waterfalls in the Mekong River after getting into Laos and then we drove to town called Pakse for the first night. Also one of the great difference between Laos and the other two is it is cooler. We are normally not suffering from too much heat here all the day.  

Friday,

Today we left for a mission to see one of the greatest waterfall in Laos. After driving first on a nice tarmac road that then turned into a tarmac road with almost more holes than not. The road then turned into gravel but still passing trough many towns. But after quite longer drive the rode was getting really narrow and we did not see any sign of life for long time and with the day getting short we where getting a bit worried. But then a locked gate prevented us to go further. And weirdly probably some tribe woman was standing by the gate and kinda pointed us we could not go further. It was getting a bit creepy!! But by putting our minds into race mo

de we got into civilization just before dark. People in Laos seem to do a lot of hunting because that day and the next we sew quite few guys carrying rifles, normally on there scooters. So we did not manage to see the waterfall :-(