mystic
Registered user
First time in SE Asia … and just got back from a two-month biking trip in northern Thailand and Laos. I see Robbo recently posted a report of his trip in Cambodia with Globalenduro … we also rode the same bikes … two rented Honda XR 250 Bajas.
The Thailand leg was done pretty well all on paved roads with a German friend of mine now living in Udon Thani, close to the border with Laos … up to the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet at the Mekong river… the Laos trip was a quite different story … Juergen had his Thai wife, Phaeng, on the back for this one. What a woman! … don’t know too many who would endure crazy tracks, roads and river crossings and still come up smiling at the end of every day! As a Thai speaker she was able to understand quite a lot of the Lao language, which turned out to be an absolute godsend.
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A little bit of background … Laos (The Lao People's Democratic Republic) is the only land-locked country of SE Asia. A quarter of a million square kilometres but with just 6 million people. Along with China, North Korea, and Cuba its one of the remaining nominally Communist states left ... it's also one of the world's poorest nations, heavily dependant upon foreign aid. We’d pass numerous villages flying the red and white Hammer & Sickle alongside their own national flag … and trucks carrying boyish serious looking young soldiers. Thanks to Phaeng's language skills we discovered that Laos has a novel form of military conscription … apparently all are required to register for service once they reach 18. Names are put into some form of military lottery ... if you’re unlucky enough to have your name selected … a red card … you're in for a full 5 years ... a black card … you breathe a sigh of relief and get on with your life again!<o></o>
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All of the country people we met were unfailingly friendly and welcoming … with just one very notable exception! … more about that later! As subsistence farmers most have a bloody hard life of grinding toil just to put food in their mouths ... way way poorer than the average Thai across the border.<o></o>
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Having parted with our US$’s for visas we crossed the Mekong over the Friendship Bridge to pick up our rented Honda Baja bikes in Vientiane, the capital. We’d no firm route … but ended up taking a roughly clockwise loop with a few side trips … up as far as 70K south of the border with China … and as far east as the Vietnamese border at Pahang in the north east. What was a real surprise was the state of the country’s roads … some indicated on our maps as being ‘major’ roads were no more than stony dirt tracks. I ‘d reckon no more than 30% of the country’s roads are presently paved. A very ambitious road-building programme is in progress … financed by the South East Asia Development Bank, the UN and the EU … and we were to see plenty of this with all the inevitable detours and holdups.<o></o>
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+1 with Robbo … the women are crackers … and ice-cold BeerLao … isn’t bad either! <o></o>
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Some photos ….<o></o>
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The Thailand leg was done pretty well all on paved roads with a German friend of mine now living in Udon Thani, close to the border with Laos … up to the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet at the Mekong river… the Laos trip was a quite different story … Juergen had his Thai wife, Phaeng, on the back for this one. What a woman! … don’t know too many who would endure crazy tracks, roads and river crossings and still come up smiling at the end of every day! As a Thai speaker she was able to understand quite a lot of the Lao language, which turned out to be an absolute godsend.
<o
></o> <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o></o>A little bit of background … Laos (The Lao People's Democratic Republic) is the only land-locked country of SE Asia. A quarter of a million square kilometres but with just 6 million people. Along with China, North Korea, and Cuba its one of the remaining nominally Communist states left ... it's also one of the world's poorest nations, heavily dependant upon foreign aid. We’d pass numerous villages flying the red and white Hammer & Sickle alongside their own national flag … and trucks carrying boyish serious looking young soldiers. Thanks to Phaeng's language skills we discovered that Laos has a novel form of military conscription … apparently all are required to register for service once they reach 18. Names are put into some form of military lottery ... if you’re unlucky enough to have your name selected … a red card … you're in for a full 5 years ... a black card … you breathe a sigh of relief and get on with your life again!<o
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></o>All of the country people we met were unfailingly friendly and welcoming … with just one very notable exception! … more about that later! As subsistence farmers most have a bloody hard life of grinding toil just to put food in their mouths ... way way poorer than the average Thai across the border.<o
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></o>Having parted with our US$’s for visas we crossed the Mekong over the Friendship Bridge to pick up our rented Honda Baja bikes in Vientiane, the capital. We’d no firm route … but ended up taking a roughly clockwise loop with a few side trips … up as far as 70K south of the border with China … and as far east as the Vietnamese border at Pahang in the north east. What was a real surprise was the state of the country’s roads … some indicated on our maps as being ‘major’ roads were no more than stony dirt tracks. I ‘d reckon no more than 30% of the country’s roads are presently paved. A very ambitious road-building programme is in progress … financed by the South East Asia Development Bank, the UN and the EU … and we were to see plenty of this with all the inevitable detours and holdups.<o
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></o>+1 with Robbo … the women are crackers … and ice-cold BeerLao … isn’t bad either! <o
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></o>Some photos ….<o
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