Muang Mai, Laos -> Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam

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!)

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,

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.

Alice (with photos and input from F&J)

Muang Khua ->  Muang Mai

Distance cycled: 38.7 km
Ave: 12- 13.4 km/h
Max speed: 54.3 km/h
Elevation gained: 961m

Best of all, there were very few potholes, so we could get some speed on the descents.

Today was mostly riding through rural jungle. Children in the small villages we passed through were enthusiastic for hellos and high fives, but also quite shy.

And then the worst dinner before bed! (so much fish sauce, even F wouldn’t eat more than a few bites).

Then searching for massage… (F and I have been envious since we heard Jeannie’s report from Nong Khiaw!). We just kept walking out of town following very vague waved directions until we found it! An amazing lady who did three hour-long, back-to-back, full-body massages that have us feeling like new (and much taller!) people.

She cracked our feet, hands, shoulders, and backs. Did assisted range of motion while massaging. She had incredibly strong hands, but also used her knees, elbows, and full body weight to maximum advantage. A highlight was her full body weight via her knee to the soles of our feet.

Tomorrow, we should be crossing the border into Vietnam.

A (with edits and photos from F and J)

Nong Khiaw -> Muang Ngoy -> Muang Khua

We couldn’t have timed our diversion better. It absolutely dumped with rain the first afternoon/evening. I’d had ambitions of a sunset hike, which would’ve been deterred by half the precipitation.

There are many hikes here, but they are all steep af, and the volume of mud we saw on our fellow breakfasters encouraged us to linger on the balcony and delay adventuring into the afternoon.

Or as they say in limerick:
We hiked a steep hill slick with mud
And our shoes grew casements of crud
The view from the top
Was worth every drop
Even though on the way down we went thud

I again had some aspirations of getting up early for a sunrise hike, but between a persistent headache, and more rain, sleep seemed the wiser choice.

To travel up the Nam Ou, there are public boats, which run once a day up to various points below the dam, and then connect to a boat on the upstream side of the dam.

So when we discovered it was actually a couple of hours each way to walk to the nearby village, we scaled back our ambitions and explored the village at hand.

We had paid up front to our accommodation host and didn’t have tickets or any effective language communication with any of the boat operators, but they were each ready when we arrived and easily recognized us “three beautiful girls” (with bikes) as promised by our host.

Passing by many little clusters of homes enroute, we were reminded that this river is the road, and has been for eons. It is how goods are transported:

People making boats, mending boats, fishing with nets, doing laundry, and other everyday life tasks.

Jeannie’s strava reports we gained 2780m in elevation on the second day alone.

From a quick google, it looks like the dam was built in 2016. I wonder how much say local people had, and if/how people were compensated.

We were getting increasingly desperate until finding a little spot where we could get noodle soup. It came with mysterious pink meat in it. While we were eating (and batting away flies), a man at a nearby table chewed up food and spat it onto the floor for a kitten and chicks to fight over. Little did we know we were getting dinner and a show again!

Or as they say in limerick:
There once was a man in Muang Khua
Who, as a host, had a bit of a flaw,
He prechewed some ?meat
And spat it out by his feet
So his kitten had no need to gnaw.

Our other meals have been, by and large, quite tasty (Indian food, thai, congee, papaya salad, fresh fruit, pancake, mango smoothies, avocado smoothies, fried rice, lao pumpkin curry, chicken suzy, mango sticky rice, and lots and lots of lao noodle soup.)

Tomorrow, it’s back on the bikes.

Alice (with the usual input, edits, photos from F and J)

Nam Thouam ->  Nong Khiaw

Distance cycled: 44.0 km
Ave: 16.0 km/h
Max speed: 48.5 km/h
Elevation gained: 381 m

Last night we decided we’d change our route, and turned east where most trucking traffic goes west towards Muang Xai. It has been a good diversion so far (if we can’t find a man with a boat, we might sing a different tune in a couple days). But as a result, we had much nicer riding today! Fewer potholes, fewer trucks, less dust, more cool sections of jungle.

Alice (with corrections from F and J)

Bio Bamboo HueanPhae NamOu, across the river from Pak Chek -> Nam Thouam

Distance cycled: 54.6 km
Ave: 15 km/h
Max speed: 48.1 km/h
Elevation gained: 559m

Well, well. Not our most glamorous day.

Some upsides have been the many animals along the road (chickens, cats, dogs, cows, buffalo!), many people industriously busy to watch (repairing motorbikes, constructing buildings, tending fields, etc), friendly children (many just want to yell hello and hear a hello back – some bolder ones angle to be on the right side of the road for a high five as we ride by) and beautiful hills.

We’re the only guests here. There is a fair bit of dust. There is nowhere to hang clothes. The linens are stained.  The toilet is missing the cap for the back. The door for the bathroom is coated with roofing tin on the bottom half and grinds to a halt two inches before it can be closed, at which point it willfully swings open again. The sink drains directly onto your feet.

Alice (with the usual input from Flis, and proofreading by Jeannie)

Luang Prabang -> Bio Bamboo HueanPhae NamOu, across the river from Pak Chek

Distance cycled: 47.8 km
Ave: 16.8km/h
Max speed:  44.7 km/h
Elevation gained: 454m

The main road is paved, more or less, but dusty and with massive potholes, sometimes the full width of the road, and substantial enough that traffic sometimes moves slower than a bicycle.

I must have done a poor job tightening my right pedal during reassembly, as it came loose and a bunch of the threads got mutilated about 10 km into the ride.

The views of the mountains are both intimidating and enticing, but today we were mostly following the Mekong and then the Nam Ou River.

A group of young men (at least one of whom was operating the gas station) were hanging out all singing along to a guitar and what sounded like finger cymbals.

3. Saw a giant water serpent in the river
4. Decided not to swim again

Goodnight!

Alice (with the usual edits and photos from Flis and Jeannie)

Luang Prabang

First off, amazingly, I got my bank card back! I can still hardly believe that when I called the number on the ATM, I spoke to a real live human, and they retrieved my card and I just needed to pop by the local branch the next day with ID. Would that happen at home? Unlikely.

Currency here is the Lao kip, which is measured in thousands. $1 CAD =  ₭15,700, so I withdrew millions from the ATM and have a wallet stuffed with ₭100,000 ($6.5CAD) bills.

People here are friendly and helpful, and not at all pushy. Tourist infrastructure is plentiful. In Lao, ສະບາຍດີ (“Sabadi”) is hello. Traffic is courteous… as well as trucks, cars, vans, and rickshaws, there are people buzzing around on mopeds, motorcycles, bicycles, and scooters, often doubled up, sometimes side saddle, sometimes with babies, sometimes playing games on phones on the back seat, sometimes triple up, and hardly anyone (except us) wears a helmet.

The town here has no highrises, and is quiet despite the throngs of tourists (no booming bass or sirens).

You cover your shoulders and knees for modesty when you visit, and take off your shoes and hat when you enter the temple buildings themselves.

Favourite impressions:

Amongst our exploratory wandering and errands we visited Ock Pop Tok, a living craft center where we observed local craftspeople and learned about local textiles:

Sadly, we missed our chance to take any workshops as they were fully booked for the day.

Asian elephants are smaller and have smaller ears than African elephants, but a baby still weighs about 80kg, so they’re not exactly small. Elephants in Lao are struggling as a species; there are only 400 in the wild and another 400 in captivity, and for each 10 that die, only one is born. The two we spent time with were a 31-year-old and a 40-year-old who had been mistreated in logging and riding (tourist) industries, respectively.

Questions we explored with the tour guide included: do elephants experience menopause? Why don’t elephants like eggplants? What is the point of religion?

You’re supposed to carb load before a riding day, right? Probably carbs in the form of beer isn’t optimal, but we’ll find out how that goes tomorrow…

Alice (with photos, editing, and cheerleading from F & J)

Victoria -> Vancouver -> Bangkok -> Luang Prabang

Distance cycled:  5.49 km
Ave:  12.3 km/h
Max speed: 28.0 km/h

I don’t know if I’d recommend working right up until the day before flying out, but everything seemed to come together…

Our bikes fit in the boxes. We accidentally caught an earlier than reserved ferry. We had time to catch up with friends in Vancouver. Our bikes made it through the security and weight checks. We slept through a great portion of the 16h flight (my window seat buddy climbed over me to pee 4 times, apparently!)

Alice (with edits from Flis, proofing by Jeannie)

*PS. We’ve been denoting our initials on shared expenses to indicate who they apply to at a glance, which so far as mostly just been A and F. Or af. 😆

Tasmania -> Victoria (via Melbourne, Los Angeles, and Vancouver)

Jessi has been home for a few weeks, and we, too, were homebound.

At Launceston airport, we were again miraculously not charged anything for our luggage. We had called a few days ago and identified we’d be expected to pay $60 per bike up to 32kg, and then $100 for an additional checked bag. At the check-in counter, they made me remove 1.3kg from my bike box to get it down to 32kg, but they didn’t mention paying for any of it, so neither did we!

We found Melbourne (and Sydney, which Jessi flew through) much easier to navigate around than Brisbane (which involved a bus between international and domestic). And San Francisco was much better than Los Angeles (which has shitty wifi, and was annoying to navigate).

We hadn’t booked a flight from Vancouver to Victoria, thinking it would be cheaper and more reliable to take the bikes over on the ferry than risk two bike boxes both making it on a small plane. But no, due to wind warnings for Georgia Strait, the evening ferries were all cancelled.

We started our day in Launceston at 4am on Feb 24th, which, thanks to the time difference, became 38 hours long by the time we got home just before 11pm, still on Feb 24th! It was a loooong day.

So, some summary thoughts about our Tasmanian adventure:

Impressions of Tasmania from JTW:
My overall my impression of Tasmania was very positive, and it felt like a great place for a bike trip. People were very friendly and helpful, the land was beautiful and varied, there was so much free camping and the road quality was pretty good overall. I was struck how helpful people were!! You could call a bus company and speak to a real human who actually knew things and provided accurate information! And called you back when they said they would! It really made travelling pleasant and easy, even with last-minute plans. 

Given we were at a similiar latitude to Aotearoa, for some reason I was expecting a somewhat similar landscape but it many ways it was very different. The 3 Cape Track had some of the most stunning geology and land formations ever and once we made it to the coast, the beaches were plentiful, varied and lovely. 

I think one if my favourite things was all the very cool and different animals (see below). I think my favourite animals that we saw were the echidnas (and did you know they have a 4 headed penis??!). 

I am not sure if realistically I will make it back to Tasmania given there are so many new places to go and it was a bit of a journey to get there BUT if I do make it back, I would love to explore the Overland Track and sample of the many Tasmanian wines!

Summary thoughts from F:
Tasmania has been an easygoing place to cycletour. Good roads, lots of free-camping, friendly folks, pretty towns, and beautiful scenery. It’d be a great place to go for your first cycletour. The thing that most surprised me here was the quantity of roadkill, and the number of animals that I had never heard of that are totally commonplace. I’m pretty bummed about the whole appendix fiasco, but I must admit that if it was going to happen, it went as smoothly as it possibly could have. I’m VERY GRATEFUL that Alice was there to capably navigate me to medical attention and us through all the logistics that precipitated from me not being able to cycle for the last 10 days of our trip, and very grateful for her patience with me and her willingness to adapt to changing circumstances.

Summary impressions from Alice:
I know Flis could’ve sorted things out without me, but I sure am VERY GRATEFUL that my appendix didn’t get any ideas and burst as well! I think asking for and accepting help is harder than figuring out complicated logistics, so that was good to practice, I suppose.
Okay, yeah, the roadkill thing was rough. I thought I’d get used to it, but didn’t really. Maybe that’s something about cycling or hiking – you’re closer and more connected to the land: the weather, the animals, the smells, the track surface, the topography. But even with the car, the roadkill angst was still there (more from the concern about causing roadkill, which I never worried about on the bike!). It was ever present, but roadkill does not define this island. There is a LOT of beautiful coastline here, from beaches to sea cliffs. It seems that there is so much of it that none of it got jammed – even on the Freycinet, where we expected to see many other tourists, we found quiet spaces and lots of breathing room.
There is a bold, friendly vibe from folks here, which is pleasant, but I’ll admit I felt more “at home” in Aotearoa, where the vibe was less bold and more chill. Weirdly, even after 5 weeks, I sometimes still had trouble with the Aussie accent, which I don’t remember experiencing in NZ either.
(Ok, this is a lot of comparisons with NZ, partly because I was there for a similar length trip at this time last year, and partly there’s the same-but-different way of understanding a place between NZ and Aus just like between Canada and the US.)

Like NZ, there were a lot of unique animals here! I’d never seen kangaroos, let alone many of these others:
☆ wallabies (medium-sized hoppers)
☆ pademelons (smaller hoppers)
☆ pataroos (even smaller hoppers)
☆ bandicoots (large rodents, almost as big as the pataroos)

☆ rosellas (pair bonded green parrots)
☆ kukaburas (loud “bushman’s alarm clocks”)
☆ little penguins (noisy, pair bonded cuties)
☆ carrawongs (clever, zipper opening thieves)
☆ Australian magpies (dapper, noisy fliers)
☆ cape berren geese (big grazers)
☆ wedge tailed eagles (rare big soarers)
☆ sea eagles (pair bonded fish catchers)
☆ three species of cormorants (dapper dressed divers)
☆ albatross (wide winged soarers)
☆ kelp gulls (bossy scavengers)
☆ Tasmanian native hens (weka meets chicken)
☆ Masked lapwings (black hatted city park goers)
☆ black swans (dark, lake swimmers)
☆ And many other birds we didn’t get to know by name (still not sure what all those super loud obnoxious white parrot-size birds in fields and cities were!).

☆ possums (fuzzy tailed climbers)
☆ wombats (tough assed grazers)
☆ Tasmanian devils (super chompy marsupials)
☆ platypus (shy, nocturnal monotremes)
☆ echidna (spiny, waddly monotremes)

☆ two species of fur seals (who knew they could leap like dolphins?!)
☆ dolphins (bottlenosed, epic jumpers)
☆ seahorses (spiny, curly camouflagers)
☆ leafy sea dragons (colourful, hard, camouflagers)
☆ two species of handfish (tiny swimbladder-less bottom dwellers)

So, what was our favourite animal encounter?: jumping dolphins is really hard to beat… but also seeing the wedge tail eagles was pretty special because they’re so rare, and it was also awesome to see platypus and penguins in the wild, both as unexpected consequences of the appendix detour. But also, I could watch echidnas and wombats all day – they’re really cute!

What were the surprises?:
• None of the wildlife tried to get into our food
• Prices were pretty high
• Customer service was (with some notable exceptions) really good and often helpful beyond expectations – e.g. calling the bus company, we reached a real live competent and actively helpful human being!
• Appendicitis! Nobody expected that!

What were the worst bits?:
• Appendicitis, definitely.
• Being woken by unreasonable drain work at a premium Airbnb
• The smell of dead things

What were the highlights?:
• Novel wildlife!
• Great weather (no headwinds, only one day of on and off rain all trip!)
• Gorgeous coastline, lovely lakes, and excellent side trip hiking trails

Best camp?: Flis says Binny Lake, I say tie with Encampment Cove on Maria Island
Best Airbnb/hostel?: Launceston’s initial arrival Airbnb was the snazziest, but I think we appreciated the Queenstown cottage the most
Best beach?: disputed, too many good ones to pick!
Best views?: the blade on the 3 Capes Track, with the summit of Cradle Mountain as a rewarding second
Best meal?: Stillwater
Best camping meal?: SFG’s ling cod meunière with fresh veg and berries in Moulting Bay (Bringing the gourmet kitchen mess kit was a great choice for this trip!)
Best fish & chips?: tie between Cole’s Bay and the food truck at the Blowhole in Pirates Bay
Best ice cream?: so many good ones, no duds
Best wine experience?: F: “the one with the food plate… and they were solar powered and the person actually worked in the vineyard as well”

What was the longest day?: Feb 1 (F and I rode 112.2km to meet Jessi in Port Arthur)
Fastest day?: 21.7km/h (me gunning for my overnight hike on Jan 27) or 20.1km/h (getting out of Hobart on Feb 10)
Highest max speed?: 73.5km/h on Feb 11 when we felt slow… (Flis the downhill daredevil says this isn’t that impressive – she’s gone faster!)

Review of the gear?:
• The Alice Palace was overkill as it usually is.
• My puffy was also overkill (I only used mine once, but Flis used hers heaps).
• Bringing chairs for the first half was nice, but I sent mine home with Jessi, which I did not regret. Having a lighter kit is also nice, especially when you unexpectedly end up carrying two!
• And yet another purple mattress failed (my third warranty mattress from Sea to Summit will be mailed to my home, but being able to keep Jessi’s for the second half was a lucky and appreciated interim solution.)

We take our health and wealth so much for granted. It is such good fortune to be able to haul 100lbs of “unnecessities” up and over and down whatever lumps and bumps we like. If Flis can do 93km with a ruptured appendix, what can’t we do?? 😀

The End (of this trip at least),

Alice

Launceston

We picked up boxes from the friendly folks at Cycology (brilliant name for your bike shop!).

With the end of our trip looming gloomily over us, and feeling a bit peckish having not eaten much all day, we stopped at a grocery store on our way home and shared a lil 1L tub of ice cream for a snack.

We went on a last-minute hunt for compression socks for F, which was ultimately unsuccessful. F says she’s not going to get any bloody DVTs anyway.

Flis, as written from Alice’s perspective haha