Distance cycled: 64.2 km Ave: 14.4 km/h Max speed: 63.7 km/h Elevation gained: 1135m
(Title – lyric from Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, which, as you can see from that average, we are not!)
It’s was a climbing day.We spent so much sweaty time in granny gear.Super appreciated the winding road with shade and hardly any traffic heading up to the Lao border.Increasingly, we’ve been seeing giant loads on motorbikes (right) that make my ikea overload in 2023 (left) look like child’s play.Are you really really sure you want to leave Laos?At one of our pauses to rest, we ate onion ring chips like adults.Four little kids shyly dashed over and gave us mystery fruit. They had a tart flavour, with the mouth feel of sleeping with your mouth open in a desert.It’s not easy terrain to make roads through. There were a lot of “intestine roads” as Flis likes to call them.The border crossing was uncomplicated.We picked up sim cards and headed downhill. The road was initially great, then rough……then adequate.But the views were more than adequate!There were many lush rice patties coming down from the pass.
Rolling into Dien Bien Phu was like coming into another world. It was loud, with honking everywhere (honking in Vietnam is like each person saying “here I am, don’t tread on me!”). People on two wheelers were almost all wearing helmets. There were strong smells of burning garbage, people were hawking goods at the side of the road,
… and rice patties extended right into urban areas.We’re not sure if this is Laos vs Vietnam or urban vs rural, but it appears there is more wealth here. Our guesthouse lobby doubles as garage, apparently!
A hot shower with great water pressure has never felt so good. I know I’ve said it before, but I was feeling lousy and the water was actually hot this time instead of barely hot, and the water pressure was enough to power wash my hair to my heart’s content.
BC by Cycle 
I loved the giant load, onion ring chips, and mystery fruit collages!!!
Hooray for hot pressured showers!!
LikeLike