Cambodia - first two days

Sunday night... in Kratie, Cambodia having left Laos yesterday.

First a couple of photos from Friday on Khong Island...

This is the agenda for the next four riding days... Stung Treng, where we spent last night, Kratie tonight, Kampong Cham tomorrow, then into Phnom Penh where we'll have a rest day. 

Yesterday was all on the highway. Not much traffic. Rough road surface. Hot. Humid... heard that before?

Initial impressions... surprise that the country appears noticeably poorer than Laos. Outside towns, there is no electricity. We saw several 12 volt batteries at the side of the road in front of houses - it appears that there is a pick-up, recharge, and return service. We passed one place with a generator going and a long line of batteries being charged. Satellite dishes were everywhere until here. Now they are much fewer and we saw some at places without outside electricity.

Today was a long day - 160 km and hot, partly on dirt roads, starting along the Mekong, then coming inland a bit to the highway. The highway was about half very rough dirt due to damage from recent rains. At parts, we were faster even than busses the road was so bad - and trust me, we are not fast in that heat.

After the dirt, the bikes and us both needed showers. Fortunately, the car wash around the corner from the hotel did a wash for 25 cents - well worth it.

 

mostly red dirt on Ursula's leg

the hotel, a bit of French style showing through, was a
welcome sight, on the river...

for a nice sunset across the Mekong

 Good night all... we'll sleep well tonight.

Muang Khong, Laos

Friday 8 November... resting today on Khong Island in the south of Laos after four days of riding down the Mekong valley.

Scenery has been much the same every day, a mix of bush and farm land. Weather has been hot and humid, temperatures in the thirties every day. Direct sunlight feels like it is scorching exposed skin... fortunately a bit of cloud has kept us a cooler some of the time. We have to get used to it as this is pretty much what it will be for the next six weeks.

we had the honeymoon suite in the guest house
we were at one night 

and a nice sunset over the Mekong from our
room in Savannaket

along the road yesterday, but we didn't see any monkeys

no, he's not drafting... he's about to overtake.
These farm vehicles are used by many as the principal
means of transport including taking kids to school...



...as are these.

typical scenery as we follow the Mekong.
We appreciated the cloud the last couple of days and on
Thursday got some light showers as well.

last night arriving on Khong island

'ferry' for bikes, scooters, and people to Khong Island...
but things are changing... bridge being constructed behind

Muong Khong Villas where we stayed for the rest day

looking up the Mekong from the hotel

Golden Buddha across the river

Tomorrow we get back on the ferry and continue travelling south along the Mekong. So tomorrow is farewell Laos and hello Cambodia.

Savannaket Laos

Monday November 4th... we're half way to Singapore. Today was the 35th riding day out of 70, and today we went past the 4000 km mark. A flat ride today down the Mekong to Savannaket. Temperature mid-30s, sunshine throughout. We appreciated the relative coolness of the first couple of hours. We didn't appreciate the wind when it opposed us for about 20 km after lunch, but we forgave it when we turned and it helped us for the final 25 km.

The early morning sunlight was also best for photos...

one of several monasteries along the route

typical house on stilts...

...this one with cattle beneath it, but we've seen cars and bikes,
workshops, laundry, pool tables, all the things we'd put in
garages and basements.

We get on the bikes and underway at 6:30 and people are always already out in the fields...

...and the kids are on their way to school by then too...

We've seen outdoor classes... this looks like flag-raising...
The kids all appear neat and clean in their uniforms...

...and all the schools have big bike parking areas.

One thing we noticed through China and Vietnam was how few birds we saw. So it was nice today to see all these swallows on a line over a marshy area beside the Mekong...

...and just after I packed up the long lens, this bird arrived and was nice enough to stay around long enough for me to remount the long lens and get the photo. Not sure what kind of bird it is, but it behaved like a kind of flycatcher, swooping down close to the water then back to the same perch. Whatever it is, we thought it was pretty enough to share.

from Vietnam to Laos

Our last night in Vietnam was at Pho Chou, less than 50 km to the Vietnam-Laos border. The highway that runs north-south through Pho Chou is called 'Ho Chi Minh' - surely that is the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail of Vietnam War days. 20 km along the road was Tay Son where we saw these piglets being prepared for market. They came out of the cages on the back of the scooters and were put into the individual wrappings and weighted.

Tay Son is where the relentless climb to the Laos border began... it is also where we would have started today had the area not been hard hit two weeks ago by a typhoon that brought with it more rain than they had seen in fifty years, washing out roads and putting our accommodation out of action.

travelling wishes as we head into the washed-out areas

one of the slides that had been cleared...

...and one that they're working to repair...

Ursula getting by the construction on a steep grade

Doug, our bike mechanic... that's actually a 10 present
grade that he looks like he's pulling the baggage cart up.

The Laos border post where as Canadians we pay 43 USD for a visa... no other nationality pays more than 35 USD!!!

We're immediately amazed at the natural beauty of Laos, the clear blue sky, water in the river that looked like it could be swum in...

There is evidence of the unfortunate lingering consequences of the conflicts in this region...

...looking into the valley where we'll spend the night after the 145 km ride. When the countryside is this beautiful, the km go by easily.

On our way the next morning with this rock formations lit by the morning sun...

... and a 9-km 650-metre climb brings us to this scene... breathtaking... 

 

...but then we left the spectacular scenery behind at 30 km and descended into the heat (meaning 35+ degrees with the sun beating down - good complaint to have I guess, but it's hot!!!) meandering through agricultural land in the Mekong valley for another 120 km before getting to Thakhek, on the bank of the Mekong to the Mekong Hotel where we get our well-deserved rest day.

Sunset from the hotel, looking across the
Mekong at Thailand... we won't enter Thailand
for close to another month.

Rest day was an opportunity to visit one of the closer caves in the area, caves that have served as holy places...

...and beside it we watched the beginning of a local wedding...

 ...So here I am, sitting in the outdoor corridor at the hotel... I'm out here in the heat because the wifi doesn't penetrate the room... watching the sun coming down...

Laos... If we had any preconceptions about Laos, they were vaguely that this little landlocked country with a currency whose value you can't find on the Bank of Canada website, a currency that you can't take beyond the borders of the country and exchange it for anything, a country that the tour guides say to stay on the road for fear of land mines... all of those things led us not to have high expectations.

What we've found is cleaner air, more beautiful landscapes, blue skies, friendly people. Sure, garbage is still a problem mitigated only by a smaller less-dense population, not by consciousness of the environment. And life for many is probably pretty basic, but it doesn't appear worse than anywhere else that we've been. There are many colourful, well-kept houses in towns. Older buildings in villages are usually wooden and are built on stilts, not so much for flooding as for cooling and keeping the vermin out, and providing space for carts and tools etc below.

So the last couple of days are the nicest we've seen since leaving Shanghai six weeks ago.

Tomorrow we start southwards along the Mekong.