Author: ajgaines

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.

Today was the first day of challenges. The first half was beautiful easy riding where I got some amazing drone videos, but the second half was rough. I started the morning in the hostel, had breakfast with a couple; a german girl and french guy. Breakfast was eggs with some really good homemade bread. I said my goodbyes and hit the road.

I wanted to cover lots of ground today to get to Luang Prabang ASAP and at first I was doing an amazing job, whipping and weaving through the turns. While watching myself fly on the map, I passed numerous caves. Around lunchtime saw one right off the road so I figured I would check one out because it kind of seemed like the thing to do in the area. I saw lots of monks walking around and Buddhas were carved into many of the rocks in areas along the road and around the cave. I walked through the cave on my own which was extremely terrifying because the ceiling goes so low at some points you have to crawl through. I then had some lunch and a coffee. The coffee was on a level much lower than Vietnamese coffee. I ordered espresso and it would have more aptly been named coffee water. 

I hit the road again and I made a decision to take a back road that I thought would be okay and would take me to some cool untouched villages. The road started as a nice clean dirt road with young elementary-aged monks walking on the outsides.

Very quickly the road got gravelly. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous and as I continued I found myself very deep into the heart of Laos country. The surprise on peoples faces was amazing. Every group of kids I passed would poke each other and point at me and look a little intimidated. The road turned to absolute shit but I stubbornly pushed on sure that I was going to continue no matter what. When I was about 1/50th of the way through I realized just what a challenge it was and I was smacking the motorbike’s oil pan on rocks. I wasn’t even able to maintain 10 km/h because of the road.

All of a sudden the motorbike started making terrible noises in 1st and 2nd gear. Slipping and clicking. I knew it wasn’t good so I turned around immediately. It took a long time to get back to the main road but it was all downhill so the motorbike managed, slipping and spinning erratically the entire way back. When I got back to the main road the way on was all uphill and at first she was doing okay but then the same clicking and slipping where it wouldn’t do anything in 1st or 2nd gear. I had decided that since this was a YOLO trip I would not bring a single tool so I would be forced to fend for myself. Dumb pilot.

I was deep into the heart of the Laos jungle and had not seen any sign of other humans the entire ride. I was a little bit terrified at the prospect of sleeping in the jungle by myself so I pushed the damn motorbike up the 12% grade and by some miracle of God after only 10 minutes of sweaty misery I ran into a broken down truck. There was a small man running around black from head to toe in grease.

I walked the bike up to the guy, showed it to him, and in about 10 minutes he had it fixed. I guess the rocks knocked the back tire loose which loosened the chain so that is why it was making the noise. I started driving again and after 2 minutes found the steering bouncy and uneasy and the first sharp turn had me skid out to the outside of the road. I sat down, saw the totally flat front tire, wallowed for a minute, took a drone video, and then turned back driving in first gear back to the truck guy. His buddy had come by then and they were both working on the truck. I felt like a dick going back for help but the guy smiled, laughed, then dropped everything to help me. It took about 10 minutes but he rigged this tube to one of his truck tires and fed my tire some air.

The connection that went to my tire was no more than a hose, a piece of cloth, and a small rock from the side of the road. I’ve never seen anything like it but it gave me just enough pressure to drive about 20 km to the next village where I rolled up to the only shop in the village.

The attendant was a 5 year old girl who walked up to me nervously to help. I pointed to my tire hoping she could point me towards the closest mechanic but as there was none she walked out with a new tire tube and bicycle pump. I accepted that I was going to have to figure out how to get the tube on with my hands when she walked out with a bunch of tools.

As I tried to wrestle the old tire off the bike her Dad showed up and got super excited to help me. He took over doing all the work and I tried to talk to the group of kids that showed up interested in what the hell I was. They were all very shy. When I said hello to each one they would all turn to each other, giggle, and shy away. I showed them the rubber duck I had been traveling with and they liked it. I threw it to them to try honking it themselves and they liked it so much I left my loyal travel companion with them.

The guy finished helping me change the tube, tire, and front brakes. It cost a whopping 100,000 which is like $10. I don’t know how they can afford to sell the tire for that alone…I gave him a few extra bucks for the help changing everything and went on my way with the kids honking their new toy.

When I left it was already getting a little dark and I could not find a guest house anywhere as I was in the middle of the jungle still. The bike transmission was sounding worse and worse and after about an hour driving in the pitch black I finally found a guesthouse.

The lady was nice, pointed me towards a place to eat and left me to do my thing. I drove to the restaurant which was really just some people’s house. It was closed but they opened the door for me, poured me some of their Laos Pho and made some conversation with me(in Loas, which I can’t say more than 10 words in) as they watched Pirates of the Caribbean with a Laos voice-over. They were very interested in what the hell I was doing here. I can’t stress enough how few foreigners these people see come through here. Especially some random white dude on a motorbike.

I started the day just west of Phin, drove on the 9E which was surprisingly an amazingly clear road. No bumps, potholes, or anything. I was able to keep a strong 85 km/hr blowing a cloud of black smoke behind me crossing the width of Laos in a matter of 2 hours. Going north on the 13 though the road turned to absolute shit with enormous Chinese trucks spewing hot red dust that caked against my sweaty skin. Through muddy tears pouring from my eyes I saw gorgeous mountains peaking at me on the horizon from the Northeast.

I decided to take an enormous detour to go through the mountains instead of the shit road. What a great decision! The mountains looked a lot like the mountains in Northern Vietnam. Round humps that protrude vertically straight out of the earth.

Once I reached the mountains the flat brown savanna ended and I was brought back into a wonderful world of rivers and humid greenery.

The people in Laos are much different than the people of Vietnam. They are much more distant here and it’s very rare to see a smile. It makes the trip feel lonely at the moment. I feel a bit intrusive just being here, as if I’m not supposed to be here. Even the kids look unhappy here, they don’t run around and play like in Vietnam.

All of the homestays/guest houses are pretty basic. They cost about $4 – $8 each, are very clean, but have ancient TVs and weak water. The motorbike has been an absolute champion so far, but had a bit of a hiccup driving up a big hill earlier. It just absolutely lost power for a bit, but I don’t know if maybe it was because the hill was much steeper than I realized.  I’m now at a guesthouse called Phosy Thaland and it’s pretty nice. It’s right in the middle of a network of rivers and lakes. I’m hoping to get to Luang Prabang in the next 2 days. That will be 2 hard days of driving. Maybe I will rest there for 2 days and then on the road again! I’m eating on a bridge right now and the view over the water is amazing.