Life Behind The Thunderdome: 02/23/13

Saturday, 23 February 2013

When the going gets tough.

What a week it's been!! Some crazy days on the bike, driving through fields, jungle, plantations, national parks, nothing-ness and small villages. It's been amazing and it's been hard. There's been some looooong downhills and some unpleasant steep uphills (i even had to get of the bike a few time and push).

1160 m high, no wonder my face is so red.

I know my shape is not the best, but damn, those thais sure spank that steepness sometimes, now i even have to change my break pads!
Well, enough wining, cause really, it's been totally worth the pain and sweat getting on top of those hills, enjoying the mountain views (to go downhill and then doing it all over again).

Yez, sorted once again; The veggies wagon has arrived!

The scenery has been priceless and we finally found some of that Thailand we both thought didn't exist anymore. It's such a different world out there among the small villages, far away from tourists, 7 elevens and tescos, makes you wish the whole country was still like that. How many times we didn't get invited for food, people brought us drinks or snacks, even though they don't have much to give. You wish you could give people something in return, but usually we don't carry much else than some veggies (witch looks like something you pull out of a Copenhagen dumpster on a hot July day), bananas and piss warm water -not exactly what you wanna offer people. Everyday we talk about what would be nice to bring down to people next time, but what do you bring from Denmark to such an exotic place that has everything? Rugbroed?? Maybe some Java Bov?? Yak!

Going downhill, weeeee!

And going uphill..hmm..

Well after a week in this amazing adventure, we're hooked on some more and are now planning where to go next. We have to make a visa run to Laos by the 6th of marts and after that, we'll probably stick around the north for a while, doing some more of those rural areas.
As for now, we're taking a few days of in a small town called Nam Pad, trying to recover from a minor shitting disease, before we head north to Na Noi and Nan, passing through a water reservoir (sirikit dam) and some more hills.

This is just one of the type of jugles we passed, fresh and green.

13/2/2013 Nong Khai to Chiang Khan

Hard to get out of bed after such a long rest!

Narrow and busy 211 highway out of Nong Khai

Tobacco drying along the road

The first part of the day started a bit boring, on a narrow highway with no shoulder and too many trucks, but that's what happens usually when getting out of a busy town. That changed fast, soon we where back on a nice quiet road, bit of hills, but nothing scary and by 60 km we sat down at our beloved bus stop, ready to cook lunch.
Half way through our bowls of noodles, a line of pickup trucks stuffed with pineapples, pulls over next to us and get in the yard behind the bus stop.
A couple of people came out right away and started making conversation in a mix of Thai and English which we replied the same way.

Stuffed! And happy!

They where very nice. We asked about their work, they asked about us and we gave them a demonstration on how our cooking stove works, one of the men was really amazed!
Shortly after they brought us water, ice and a tray with 2 sliced pineapples (which we fastly stuffed down the head hole), the chatting went on for a bit longer, then we all went for a nap.
When we were about to leave, they came out with a bag of four pineapples, then continued to work. That added a bit of weight to the convoy but we couldn't say no! Especially after getting just a pic out of the huge bag of tamarind they offered us before!

The pineapple ninjas squad

The experience really gave a good start to the ride,besides that, for the next while, the road got really narrow and quiet, this time riding close enough to the Mekong to get the feeling we where actually following it. The river got really wide and slow, letting weird rock-formations and big sandy islands emerge.The accommodations got amazing too the next couple of days, in towns of Sangkhom and Pakchom where the view got spectacular and we could have easily spent a whole day staring at the water running by; but we had in mind to take that day in the old city of Chiang khan and riding hard on a bumpy 211we got there before lunch.

Town wasn't what we expected, accommodation wasn't worth for what you got and the town was really run down by tourism. we biked around for a while hunting down a cheap room away from the expensive waterline or something that would make us change our mind about the place...
It fast came, Mr Prayap, a teacher who runs a home stay, saw us riding up and down the road a few times and decided to give us a shout and offered us one of the rooms in his house for a very fare price!
A home stay is kind of an experience you are in people's house and that create a very nice atmosphere. We had a kitchen to cook in and spent a nice evening, sitting down with a nice man, exchanging stories and drinking coffee.