In the Realm of the Mekong River - CSE2502
Motorcycles lined up, informative welcome briefing and a nice, relaxed dinner with delicious Thaifood...Everybody ready for take off tomorrow!
Let's ride to Laos! Beautiful weather and we start our tour. Firstly a stretch on the highway, then we take off to rural area, plantations, rice fields and some villages we pass on the way to the mighty Mekong. A quick lunch, then we start the border process. Everything very smooth due to all the upfront preparations our local team did. Great job! Now we are on the last kilometers into Vientiane and to our nice boutique hotel right in the center. And a welcome beer to Laos is presented...okay we take it! :-)
Now our adventure in Laos starts! Out of Vientiane some traffic, first pothole-gravel sections, then we take off to the country side, still some monster trucks - where they are going? - but then all of the sudden no traffic anymore when we arrive at the small ferry crossing the Nam Ngum River. On the other side more gravel, hardpac stretches and in one of the villages we have a break at a small store, making local people happy and ourselves as well:-) A nice windy road towards the 370 square km reservoir before we take some other gravel roads towards the 13 going North. Huihui, gravel parts, potholes and always 100% concentration. And the landscape changes, the mountains getting steeper as we are getting closer to Vang Vieng. And our resort at the Nam Song just wow. Brave riders, well done!! And what a pleasant evening, our dinner at the Nam Song, and Peter having his 10th tour with us, congratulations!!
All painted! :-) what a day! 235km, but on what roads! We started at 8 in the morning and arrived at 5pm in our nice hotel in Luang Prabang. I would say, planning well done. And the riders? Superb! Really challenging roads, potholes many, gravel, mud, stones, and monstertrucks which also just want to find their way thru this mess. Villages in the mountains, children waving at us, chicken and other poultry, dogs, one snake and after every curve a surprise and when you thought, haa now it's getting easier, you get a new package:-) What a group, well done! The restday tomorrow is well earned:-)
Our restday we spend in Luang Prabang, UNESCO world heritage and former capital of Lan Xang, the kingdom of million elephants. Sleeping in, giving alms to the marching monks in the early morning, morning and nightmarket, the former Royal Palace, the many beautiful temples here and/ or on top of Phu Si...many things to do and gaining strength again for another exciting ride tomorrow!
What a relaxed riding day! Nice scenery, good roads (we are in Laos:-), villages, kids waving at us, and our huts directly at the Nam Ou, surrounded by karst mountains, supersteep. Pat, Steve, Salome and Jens were in for a couple of km more to see the small bombshell museum...yes, the secret war happend here. Heike and Thomas hiked up the viewpoint, thankyou for the pics! Now it is getting fresh, single digit Celsius temperature tonite. So beautiful here...
A relaxed start in the morning from our beautiful resort at the Nam Ou and excitingly fresh. Extra layer welcome today! And the roads today amazingly good and twisty and some monstertrucks but with our safe riders here no problem. A nice coffeestop, then we circumnavigate Oudomxay and take off into the outback to our stunning resort at the Nam Kort in a national park. What a beautiful jewel! Thomas, Heike, Salome and Jens are in for a hike and we take a vehicle into the forest, hike over 12 suspension bridges to our waterfall, a nice experience! Peter and Greg doing their own hike, our other group members enjoying the resort facilities. Laos at it's best!
In the morning cold and foggy, everybody happy to get a hot coffee at breakfast. We start on this backcountry road and see the locals getting to their farmland, the waterbuffalos staring at us, so cute. And then we are on again, huihuihui nice pothole roads, but at least here they are trying to fill those up with earth. Bigger road constructions ongoing, by next year maybe a perfect road. But for us it is perfect now, concentration level high we tackle it,and once you are in it is so much fun. We arrive at our next beautiful resort and have a cold beer. Thank you all!
Another foggy morning but we can see the sun blinking through the midst. Another 45km to the border and Jens wanted to stop somewhere where we can spend some Lao Kip, in order to give some presents to the locals...a beautiful experience and as a reward happy kids faces. The border crossing very smooth and all of a sudden we are in super Thai roads again! Also fun to just ride, but attention you still have to pay, we are still in Asia. Welcome to Thailand!
Another fresh morning in paradise! We toast our bread on a charcoal grill and off we ride on unbelievable curvy&twisty roads mountains up and down, down and up. Today is a 240 km roller-coaster in motorcycle paradise before we reach the former kingdom city Nan. Well done team!!!
Today a short restday round on the motorcycle or just relaxing and some sightseeing. The beautiful weather is with us. Wat Phumin, Golden Temple, the White Temple, the Striding Buddha...just nice!
A long day today, 320 km on Thai roads. Beautiful and the tarmac is great, the first 100 in one shot to the Paknai fisher village where we take a metal barge crossing the Sirikit reservoir. A nice lunch in Nampad, then we take the nice and twisty 1339 into the Phu Soi Dao National Parc. The last stretch close to the Lao border again on sweepers towards Dan Sai and to our cute resort..and they welcome us with some beers only. Impossible, and they get more for our great crew! :-))) Another great day in motorcycle heaven!
A relatively relaxed riding day. Firstly sweepers back to the Lao border, then twisty along the Nam Hueang until we arrive at the Mekong again. Exactly here they recently built a skywalk overlooking the merging rivers - a fun experience! A couple of km more and we arrive in Chiang Khan...some yiyag with the hotel - we are still in Asia:-) - and we land in a resort at the Mekong, later taking TukTuks into "town", walking street and later having some beers with the crew in a bar. Another beautiful day!
All up early for our last riding day on our Adventure Tour here...and all eager to ride:-) What a crew, I love you! We ride on backcountry roads through rural area, plantations, farmlands, some sweepers, villages...always something to see and never boring. At the Ubol Ratana reservoir we have a good lunchstop right at the lake and after we follow the shoreline towards Khon Kaen. Our farwell dinner at the lake, nice setting, nice talks, joking&laughing as usual on this tour...our great group! Hope to see you soon again somewhere on this beautiful earth! It was a pleasure riding with you on this Mekong Adventure Tour! My best wishes to all of you! Holger