After tubing, we were ready to get away from the drinking atmosphere of Vang Vieng, but our motorcycle lessons were an hour north in a small village and there isn’t another city where English would help us for at least three hours. Vang Vieng is surrounded by mountains, so we figured we could find some natural entertainment.
I Can See My Hostel From Here
When I left, I joked with Jeff that it was to be free from all the Spartain training/races so I could finally get fat. It seems that that won’t be happening any time soon. We did some research on trails in the mountains surroundiing the town and rented some bicycles. Laos is interesting in contrast to Thailand in that it is full of tourists, but as far as we have seen haggling is immediately turned down. Thai prices are usually set with the expectation that you will haggle a little bit. Any attempts we have made to haggle have been met with an immediate no and the person going back to their business. Everything in the city seems to follow the same price scheme, which happens to be higher than the Thai equivalent, even though everything seems to be of equal availability and lower quality. One point for Communism, I guess. We rented bicycles for almost the same price we had been renting scooters for in Thailand, but the ride was less than five kilometers, so no big deal. We made the five kilometer ride and paid the entrance fee to the trails.
The signs indicated that the first viewpoint was about forty minutes from the start and the second viewpoint was about an hour and a half. Insert snarky comment about me being a Spartan here. We begin the ascent and the trails were pretty steep. Someone had added some helpful brick steps to certain parts of the trail and bamboo railings to some of the more dangerous spots. They really earned that dollar entrance fee. I can’t imagine carrying those supplies up was any fun. Our friend we met tubing had joined us and didn’t seem quite prepared for the speed I was trying to go, so Ryan and her hiked at a regular speed while I shot up the mountain. Some advice about not doing dangerous, new trails alone briefly crossed my mind, but I had done enough training to dull those worries. About twenty five minutes later and I hit the rock with spray painted arrows indicated that left for fifty meters was viewpoint one and right for forty minutes was viewpoint two. Left we go. Except this was no longer a trail, this was all jagged rocks steeply ascending with ropes hanging to either side. I have yet to see any Laos or Thai natives that are my size, so I never dared to put my full weight on any of their safety measures. Another few minutes of scrambling and I reach a small mountaintop shop and a small path to a little roofed hut looking out over the countryside and onto the town of Vang Vieng. Like someone had a made a miniature version of Vang Vieng for us to view. I buy a tea with the added “I carried all of this stuff up a mountain for you spoiled tourists” fee and wait for Ryan.
Ryan and friend arrive five or ten minutes later and check out the view. I ask if they are ready and they inform me that they don’t think we will be able to reach the top viewpoint before sunset in a little over an hour. Not with that attitude. The mountain is mostly tree covered and the trail is on the eastern side of the mountain, so darkness would be coming rapidly. We make a plan to meet up at the bottom, I take Ryan’s headlamp and start the second half of the trek alone.
The second half of the trail is steeper and letting my muscles cool down at viewpoint one did not do me any favors. As I go up, listening to the soundtrack for the new Spiderman movie and wishing I had worn runners instead of my Tevas, I notice this trail is much less settled the first half. Rocks are less worn down, so any places to grab are sharp. Seemingly stable rocks tend to slip or snap. I could hear my mom yelling about how dumb dying on a mountain just because I wanted to get to the top would be, but my legs were already burning so no turning back. As I reached the first hut at the viewpoint two, I could see everything I had seen at viewpoint one, but everything now looked like miniature versions of the already shrunken town. No shop up here, fair enough. I stand on a rock and squint to see the hut I had left Ryan in. It’s amazing how quickly things shrink in view as you go up and away. A quick text to see if Ryan can see me way up here, no dice on his service. The sun is setting on the other side of the mountain and I can’t see it. Did I hike all of this way and there’s no view of the sunset?
I make my way back down a bit and see a small path off to the side. Crushed rock created a path with no footing on either side. A spray paint arrow points me to the left, but to the right is more crushed rock heading to the northern side of the mountain, a view I had not seen yet. I take a few steps and see the least supportive makeshift bridge I have ever seen in my life leading to what looks like a straight drop. I didn’t come this far to not at least look. I step onto the bridge with one hand on the rocks to one side, which at this point are likely untouched by anyone, so moreso resemble kitchen knives than hand holds. Just as I thought, a bridge to a straight drop, but a cool view to the side, just past a few rocks. A quick dynamic move off the bridge and I get a cool, if not terrifying, view. Back to the trail, a quick run finds another small hut looking over the western side of the mountain onto the sunset. I grab a few pictures of the sun going to rest in the mountains and weigh the pros and cons of sitting here until the actual sun sets but decided to have some light for at least the first part of the hike down.
I have always hated going downhill on trails. I’m too heavy, it ruins my knees. Not to mention I just spent over any hour overutilizing all the muscles that take you up and now those muscles are responsible for antagonizing the muscles that help me safely go down. All of the parts that requires borderline climbing to go up, now require awkward drops to go down. As I hit the halfway point, the trail starts to get a little more manageable. The sun is setting and the trees are amplifying the darkness. I pick up some speed and shoot past some people carefully taking each step. Again, I have regrets about having sandals on. As I reach the bottom, the sun is completely gone. Ryan and friend are waiting. My legs need a break. The bikes have to be back in twenty five minutes. We shoot down the now black roads. As we race down with no lights, I remember how many potholes we had seen in all of the roads since entering the area. How much attention are the aggressive local drivers really paying to if a tourist is being launched over their handlebars by a pothole? Doesn’t matter, somehow missed them all. We make it back with a few minutes to spare. Grab a shower and Laos’ bastardized version of Mexican food and call it a day.
It Feels Like a Weekend On a Tuesday
Not to toot my own horn, but I am a solid planner. When it comes to travel, that goes double. The point of this trip was to be a little more spontaneous, so I have been doing my best to have a vague plan and go with the flow. A side effect of this is that I have no idea what day it is. My watch tells me the weekday and date, but it is never internalized. We have been set to chill in this town until Saturday, the twenty seventh. So we took a day off to roam around and swim in the river. Finally head to the post office to ship back some extra stuff we have been carrying around. Forty American dollars to ship back a six pound box and it will be there in two to three months. Looks like everyone is getting postcards if they want anything. The twenty seventh turns out to be a Sunday. An extra day in a city we were done with immediately. We find some swimming holes outside of town and make that the plan. Ryan wakes up with food poisoning from the one nice restaurant we have been to in weeks and I venture to find small trinkets to send home. Trip in the morning, I haggle with some guides to find us the cheapest ride to a small town for our motorcycle lessons. They don’t speak English, I don’t speak Laos, so it’s mainly finding a ride at the time I want for a price that I can stomach. Done. I search for the third time this week for a book store/exchange that has a decent book in a language I can read, no luck. Looks like Bukowski is with me for a few more days.
It’s Like Riding A Bike For Adults
The next morning, we get up for our 7am bus trip. I paid extra to go at seven instead of nine because we wanted to get there early and nothing in Laos is on time. I figured maybe since we paid extra, it might just be us and we might be on time. It is almost 8am before our already packed minivan arrives. The usual Laos saying is “Please Don’t Rush”, so it is to be expected. Ryan and I get the back seat as some Chinese tourists cover the further up open seats with their bags. Oh well, we watch the Fyre Netflix documentary until the bus stops. The door opens, I fumbled to check my phone to see if we are where we should be. The driver waves me out. Phone still not loading. I ask if this is Kasi. He says yes and points me at a guest house. Nope, I need the Kasi bus station. He points me at the bus station and says “Kasi Bus Station”. I contact the owner of our motorcycle lessons and tell him we are at the bus station. He informs me that he is at the bus station and we are not. Phone loads, seven miles away. He gets a car and comes to get us. He informs us that white people don’t tend to come to Kasi, so the drivers all assume we are going to organic guest houses and take us there instead of where we are saying.
We organized these motorcycle lessons with Uncle Tom’s Trails via some recommendations from Reddit and a blog post. The trip advisor rating was good as well. Tom picks us up in a truck and informs us that it is rare he drives with four wheels. He is a Welsh man in his fifties, who looks a bit like my uncle, Denny. He opens with some snarky comments and I immediately feel at home. It’s nice to be doing something with native English speaker for a change. We arrive at his home and drop our bags, he takes us to the garage where there are about ten bikes. He pulls out the smallest of the lot and has us run him through what we know about the bike. Our two wheel experience as of now is only our beloved scooties, so we get about half of the answers. He runs us through a clutch and how starting works and gets us rolling around his yard in first gear. Then he teaches us how to switch between first and second and pulls out a second bike so we can both practice at once. He informs us that with the bus mishap our plans of an immediate road trip are a bit shot but it just gives us more time to practice and do harder stuff the next two days.
Tom gives us two helmets, one containing an intercom linked to his helmet. Ryan takes it for our training session. I have a bit of trouble with the initial starting, but Ryan has plenty of manual driving experience so takes to it. We drive through the roads to somewhat of an obstacle course. As a frame of reference, Kasi provice roads are either paved with gigantic chunks missing all over the place or dirt with huge divots and areas missing, so a bit daunting for a beginner. Tom has us follow him around the area, throwing hand signals for what gears we should be in. He then runs us through some trials type obstacles, straight down a slope, sharp turn, back up an angled slope, etc. We get a good feel for following lines, as it will be necessary when there is only the width of a motorcycle tire that isn’t a straight drop. Off in the distance, Tom points to a mountain (the area is filled with them) and informs us that we will be going up there next to test our skills.
We take a somewhat relaxing ride to the area where he informs us that it immediately becomes challenging. We both grab buffs to cover our faces as the air is constantly filled with dusts from the dirt roads being so dry. At this point, I have the intercom helmet on and am learning some interesting stuff. Getting the rundown of all the different things we are passing and some cool tidbits about Tom’s past. We start up the trails and things go smoothly despite being a bit anxiety inducing. We get to the top and grab some cool pictures. There’s a steep downhill that leads into a single line that does not lead into a ditch and then a steep uphill. Here’s that problem with starting, I’m releasing the clutch too soon. I pop down the hill, get control just in time to dodge the ditch and head up the hill. It’s mostly softer dirt here and I hit an eroded part, bike slips out from under me and falls on it’s side. No big deal, it’s just dirt, but now I get to test my already poor starting skills up a hill. A few tries and we get there. We ride back and Tom informs us we are doing an overnight road trip the following day and he feels confident taking us on the harder path. Yikes, what have we done.
Earlier, I asked how much Lao Tom spoke. He had lived there for over seven years and was in a city that didn’t have much English, if any. He told me he spoke enough to get by, that’s my line. We meet up with him for dinner and he is in constant talk with everyone there. He seems to know everyone we encounter in every city we are in. We hop in a sidecar and go to a little market for some food. We haven’t eaten in about eight hours at this point. Sour bamboo, noodles with pork, eggs in caramel sauce and sticky rice. Not our usual meal, but we both eat some. Tom informs us his friends have invited us over. We’re both exhausted but we can sleep when we’re done. He tells us where to head and we meet him there. A local dog escorts us down the street and we marvel at the lack of light pollution and chat about the stars. We arrive at Tom’s friends’ home, a table covered in beer and food surrounded by smiling faces. The Laos way to drink beer is to get a big bottle and glasses, everyone shares the bottle and just fills their glass. Food seems to function the same way for the most part. We learn some Lao and try some homemade sticky rice coconut snacks before saying goodnight. Tom has gotten us both private rooms with full sized beds, our first of the trip. Being fully alone is a luxury that is easy to take for granted.
Day two, we start by riding some roads up a mountain, learning to pick our lines at higher speeds. The area is filled with beautiful mountain views and little villages. We stop at a mountainside temple and take a break. We head up to a higher view and chat about our road trip. Seventy kilometers of rocky roads to test our new skills. Telling your brain to shift gears isn’t too bad once you get a feel for it, but telling your brain to shift gears when you’re trying to keep out of a ditch going straight up a hill and avoid an oncoming bike is a different story. This scenario led to a couple stalls, but nothing more for either of us. Cows, goats, chickens and children walk in the street making every kilometer an obstacle course. The amount of times I yelled “I don’t want to kill you, chicken” as a chicken barely ran past my front tire is not an amount I would care to count. About forty minutes from our destination, we get to a river crossing. Tom rides down the side of a steep slope and across a rickety bridge and instructs us on how to get across the river. Ryan goes first, doesn’t get enough speed and cranks it at the end to keep from stalling. His shoes are a little wet but not bad for knee deep water. I get a little more speed to compensate but as I feel the bike slow from the water, I remember Ryan almost stalling and crank the throttle as well. I feel water hit my chest and face and the bike rolls up the hill. As we head up the opposite side, the turn exposes a sign “Road Closed”. We have to go back across. No big deal. Back through the water and around the other side. We arrive in our new village.
At this point, I am entirely covered in dust. My white patterned buff is a distinct brown now. A much needed shower and we head to dinner. Spicy vegetable fried rice and beer, just what we needed. A local comes and chats with us and demands we try a local dish. Tom informs him we probably don’t want any but he persists. Tom asks what it is in Lao, and then informs us that it is bile soup. Part of me wants to try it but the idea of being sick on a seventy kilometer motorcycle ride in the hot sun doesn’t tickle my fancy, pass. The local does his best to convince Ryan that bile is vegetarian, but to no avail. We head to our rooms. Round two of private rooms with big beds.
A constant theme of our trip has been everyone walking/driving through places just fine and then me getting cut off or harassed. I’m a big boy, no big deal. On our scootie rides, same thing. On the road trip, same thing. On day three of the trip, Ryan and Tom went through a group of chickens and I followed their line as usual. One chicken decided to try to cross in front of my tire and now I am confronted with the trolley problem. Turn away from the rogue chicken and potentially hit the rest of the group or continue forward and hope the chicken recognizes its error and turns back around. I continue forward, the chicken turns, I feel hope. The chicken turns ninety degrees instead of one eighty. It is now running in line with my front tire. A bump and I inform Tom that I have made his bike a murder weapon. He informs me that it isn’t an uncommon occurrence and it’s still food to the locals. I’m not a huge fan of the incident but we carry on. After an otherwise uneventful rest of the trip, we shower and pack. Tom runs us through what to check when buying a bike and takes us to the bus station. We grab three bags of delicious bakery for less than two dollars and hop on a bus. The open air of the bus is refreshing until we remember the dust. Six hours later, we arrive in Vientiane coated in dust.
Our First Real City in Laos
Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng are purely tourist cities. Kasi was a great town. Vientiane is Laos’s center of commerce, so has a real city feel. We arrived late, showered and headed to a rooftop bar. Near the rooftop bar was a night market. We’ve been to plenty of night markets, but this one was filled with locals. We walked through and saw plenty of knockoff Nike, Adidas, Supreme, Asics, you name it. We had some good laughs at the misspellings and odd butcherings of slogans. We both scratched up our glasses riding, swo we picked up a cheap deal on two pairs of knockoff RayBans. Back to the hostel for much needed sleep.
The next day, we rented scooters and head to Buddha Park, a large tourist attraction filled with statues of all the different buddhist mythology. Over an hour of trafficked roads each way, we put our new driving agility to work and drove around like locals. Besides some serious sunburn, successful job. We grab some ice cream and hire a tuk tuk to take us to the airport, we’ve had enough of buses. We arrive at the airport too early, I find a bookstore to get a new one and we wait. Our one hour flight takes off almost forty minutes late and we arrive at our hostel around midnight. A quick shower and we go to check out Bangkok’s famous Khao San road. This is the real sin city. Bar after bar filled with cheap buckets of alcohol, laughing gas and girls for hire. We people watch and walk the street, grab some food and off to sleep.
We will spend another day in Bangkok to do some tourist stuff and then head down to the islands to finally play some volleyball. About two weeks before our tournaments at this point so we could use the practice.
