Mekong Kippers

Vientiane was sleepy in the afternoon. Paul managed to get the bike cleaned. The build up and hardening and then setting hard of the crud on the bike worries him. He also needs to do a bit of basic maintenance on the bike but time and heat is against him. Vientiane was so sleepy on a Sunday afternoon that most of the car washers weren't interested - they were 'closed'; it was a Sunday afternoon. We just thought it was a funny way to spend your afternoon off, when you were closed, telling people that, well, you were closed. They just do things differently, we suppose.



On the way back from cleaning Paul met another couple of Harleys, local ones, who showed him their garage, or front room which had three other Harleys in it and four BMW's, and an older couple watching television...the security parentage.

Vientiane did come a bit more to life in the evening but it was still a bit of a disappointment. Rivers can make towns and cities, but this is a one sided River City as it is another country on the other side - and its a long way across.



It's incredibly green here and there is a big river just over there. There must be a lot of water. As the bike is often wet in the morning we have assumed that it always rains overnight as we have never been that wet when riding. Yes, it gets just about heavy enough to want to put your waterproofs on but you know how hot and sticky that will make you, so you don't bother and then it stops and you dry out. Except for the bottom of your jeans; so you tuck them into your boots and although Jeans In Boots might be a cardinal fashion sin, it saves on the washing.

 

It was the same when we left Vientiane. It had rained and it started spotting a bit but the clue was in the words Rain Forest and it rained for about an hour. We went 50/50 on the waterproofs on the basis that the jeans would take longer to dry out. Our jackets were very wet. And out T-shirts underneath too, but they were all dry before lunch.



The ride out of Vientiane was pretty boring. The roads, or road as there only seems to be the R13 in Laos, was very good with nothing to complain about. So apart from some houses on stilts, some rugged limestone scenery, the Mekong river, kippers, sausages being hung up to dry by the roadside, the water buffalos, the cows walking all over the road, ditto for the dogs, the brightly painted and often over-loaded tuk-tuks, the paddy fields, the roadside pineapple stalls, the roadside altars or Spirit Houses (they are not bird tables), the Buddhist temples with their red yellow and gold snakes or dragons and the squiggly writing on the signposts there was not much to see. Actually having said that, it sounds quite a lot! Paul and the bike can accept the boring kilometres, but there wasn't much for Francoise to snap at. She nodded off.



Well the Isle of Man has its Manx variety and Arbroath its Smokies; so why not Mekong kippers too? We didn't dare try them by the road, all those bones, and we haven't seen them in the restaurants we frequent.



And speaking of breakfast let's have some eggs too!



Lao cuisine hasn't really worked for us. Neither has the service in the restaurants. It is hot and sticky here and the first thing you want is a drink. It can take 20 minutes to come. And it would seem that unless it is a BeerLao, there is a 50% chance of them not having it. Then having taken your food order 30 minutes earlier, you are told they haven't got any of it. And ten minutes later they haven't got your replacement order either. So you get up and leave, having paid for the BeerLao and go somewhere else and its the same rigmarole there too. And this happens three nights running. You then start getting paranoid about it only happening to you because you are the infidel and the locals are getting served before you, except that some of those locals are clearly back packers. Ah well... Street food has the benefit of being instant, if not always piping hot or as cold as it should be. You point at it and it is given to you. The system works. So we ate some dangerous street sausages and dumplings before going to the restaurant on the third night when we found out after twenty minutes that they didn't have mudfish and the steamed carp,when it came, almost choked us with all those bones.

We changed our mind as to where we were stopping three times the next day as far as which town was concerned and it all worked out well with us getting almost halfway to the Cambodian border. Our hotel was a Communist era block down by the Mekong. You could tell it was Communist as it had the same traits as some soviet buildings: substantially varying stair risers. It also had an air-con unit that was dripping with condensation and spat mist on medium fan speed and what seemed to be little bits of ice on maximum. If only there was an Engineer in the house to sort it out...



It was Paul's birthday the following day and we were woken by very heavy rain indeed during the night. Then followed some very early bongs and boings from the monkery next door that prompted a chorus of barking from all the dogs in the district followed by more bongs and boings. Who was feeding who? And then the cockerels started. So it wasn't that difficult getting up that morning.

The day's ride was even wetter and more boring than the day before. 370km of it. Apparently back packers take an overnight sleeper bus from the Cambodian border to Vientiane, but we have the Harley. Though some buses do seem to have scooters on the roof.  However we cannot imagine us getting the Harley up there and anyway it is going very well at present.

 

We found ourselves a very nice boutique hotel and as we are a little ahead of schedule we stayed an extra day and visited the Vat Phu remains, a Lao Angkor Wat, note Wat and Vat, and just lounged around. We could probably have done it for another day too as we were very comfortable indeed. The hotel even reconciled us with some of the possibilities of Lao cuisine. Delicious food, impeccable service! But the road and the Cambodian border beckons...



To find the hotel we came 40km further than we originally intended which was the good news but on the wrong side of the Mekong, which is the quite not so good news. There are no bridges for the next 100km, so we will just catch the ferry we thought. Then we went to look at it. We would have loved to but we chickened out! Just getting to the pontoon was going to be very difficult. And then the timber pontoon itself and then the ramp... And then the ferries of which there were a choice of two types. The small ones which seemed to take a scooter and its rider and which you just hired and the man seemed to be assuring us that it could take three scooters. Quick maths, how does an overloaded two-up Electraglide compare with three scooters? We saw a family with four children but without associated metal ware sail away, but the margins seemed too fine for us even if we could get to the floating device. Ferry seemed a bit too strong a noun. There was a bigger type but they only sailed twice a day and only when they were full. But you could commandeer one, full or not, for $20 apparently if there was one there. But the problem of getting to it still remained. So it looks like the extra km to backtrack will be the call of the day! We don't even know how it would be on the other side - but we will still have a second think about it on the way out.



Goodbye to beautiful, laid-back Laos and onwards to Cambodia.

Paul & Francoise