Today was the best day of riding! A ridiculous amount of driving and the first half was rough, but the second half brought me exactly what I was looking for on this trip. The section of the road from Phonsavan to Phou Khoun for about 120 km were absolutely gorgeous. They followed the ridges of the mountains and gorgeous little villages lined the top of each ridge.
People in these areas were much friendlier and the kids were hilarious. They all waved and looked in awe at me riding by. I pulled the drone out to film a few of the villages and the kids from the villages would swarm me to look at the drone. When I was flying it down the road once this little kid maybe 2 or 3 years old saw it and sprinted towards his house so fast he could have outrun Usain Bolt. I’ve never seen little legs move that fast.
I also took a break about halfway through the day and looked at some old ruins. The history is pretty interesting here as the people were taken over a few times by different cultures just like Vietnam. There is a lot of Thai influence and a lot of the language sounds like Thai.
Today was all about riding, and at many points it felt like I was flying as I skirted across the tops of the ridges of the mountains. They are absolutely massive and it is such a cool feeling to see so much below.
I was hoping to make it all the way to Luang Prabang which is really the first notable checkpoint on my trip. But at the end of the day I was still hours away. I ended up rolling into a town in the pitch black and stayed at a place crawling with cockroaches. I ended up waking up 3 times with enormous cockroaches crawling in the bed. I’m pretty used to that type of thing, but it makes it impossible to get great sleep.