At the border with Laos

After a few days of postponing, that turned into a whole week, we finally got our stuff together and started cycling.
It was hard to leave our new home and friends and especially the climbing routine, it needed to be done after all, we are here to ride! We spent our last days at Jao's and family hanging out with Miquel, Iris and Aifei, what a laugh! Just when we thought it wasn't gonna be the same anymore after Enio's and Ben's departure...
Right away everything worked as planned, mountains, through the districts of Chiang Mai, into Chiang Rai and Lampang to Phayao and now Nan, following a beautiful road i was familiar with and riding again on the amazing roads 1148 and 1097 through misty villages and hills. I mostly done this route last year but the opposite direction and i must say i found it much easier this time considering we are only cycling since 4 days and leaving early is not our speciality...
 

As usual the first hills of Chiang Mai felt the hardest but i know they where not, after we got the Chance to spend a day in the city of Phayao, small and nice with a long walk along the big lake where Thai tourists like to take pictures and sit by, eating their dinner and looking at the sunset.
The day after we started going up the mountains, a whole day up and down, mostly up really. The villages got smaller and the sun was going down and we where running out of options...so we pulled our favourite card, camping at the police station!

Phayao beautiful lake.

What a name for a bar...

Our first horror hotel!!!!
Hanging in the lobby drinking our nasty instant coffee.

At the small village of Ban Hae, Mr. Suthash, welcomed us and sorted us out by letting us pitching our tent next to the police box,just by the road, showed us a restaurant where to eat and sat down with his friends eating salty fish and drinking whisky.Through the whole evening he was coming by the camp checking on us, exchanging some world making less and less sense the more whisky he had, by the time i was going to bed he could only smile and say "Ok!, Ok!"
I though the cars might give us trouble sleeping, but not, no cars on that road, instead at an outrageous hour in the morning, something like 4 A.M. we could hear the whole town just outside our plastic walls laughing and talking about this two crazy Farangs.
It was a very nice feeling to ride on a road i already knew, it didn't matter how hard we had to push or where we had to camp we knew that sooner or later something good will appear.
Our destination now is the border with Laos in the north of the region of Nan. Continuing cycling on the memory trail we stopped once again in the amazing guest house of Thung Chang, visiting Marco and Dao (the owners) and staying up late hanging out drinking beers, even eat home baked focaccia bread!
It was worth it but not exactly a good idea because the day after we had some more mountains to face to the border. I remember it to be hard, from last year, when me and Stine did it return in a day with no load, but me and Serjio did pretty good too, left at 9 right when the sun starts to be hot, once again great planning, on the other and nothing is worth giving up your morning coffee!!! Got at the border at 2, smashed, and had lunch and a nap before facing customs.
Around 4 o'clock we where in Laos.

Got to Ban Hae.

On the right the small police box where Mr. Suthash let us camp.

Mountains, great views but what a killer!!

Nasty roads on the way to Laos.

Thailand - Laos border.