The Border Crossing – Tay Trang (Vietnam) to Tai Xang (Laos)
We set off to the border bright and early at 5.30am from the bus station, however due to the bus stopping an inordinate amount of times on the way we didn’t actually reach the border (35km away) until about 9am!! We had done a lot of research into this border crossing as it has only relatively recently opened up to foreigners but from what we’d read we were happy enough with the situation and had been assured that we could get our visa at the border – we checked out of Vietnam and set off to the Laos Immigration… All was going well, we’d handed our passports over and filled in the relevant forms but then the official came back over and said that the guy who issues foreign visas was not there and that he wouldn’t be able to get there until maybe 3 or 4pm!! Unsurprisingly our bus left us waiting at the border and there was no chance of any kind of refund, we were now faced with the prospect of waiting a further 6 or 7 hours before getting our visa with only half a bottle of coke, half a tube of Pringles and a couple of choco-pie’s as our only food and drink – worse than that it was looking more and more likely that we’d have to spend the night sat outside the remote border as practically nothing was passing through the border apart from fully loaded up motorbikes – we were not best impressed!

After a couple of hours the visa guy actually turned up – his excuse for not being there was that he’d had a motorbike accident the day before – although he looked perfectly fine to both of us. He was very apologetic although he couldn’t offer us any other way of travelling to the nearest town (55-60km), this still meant that we were stuck waiting for a way out of the completely deserted border and we’d both decided that there was absolutely no way we were going to try and walk. Just after receiving our visas two motorbikes roll up and two Scottish guys – Iain and Calum -  walk over to the visa window and luckily for us they agreed to give us a lift to the nearest civilised town/village so we were finally on our way out of the border!

Shortly after we set off my right flip-flop decided it was a good time to break which didn’t seem too big a deal as we were on motorbikes, however after another 20 minutes down a pretty bumpy dirt track my foot was becoming really sore from the constant vibrations and jolts off the foot rest so I decided to try and stick it back onto my foot using a bobble and a healthy supply of brown parcel tape!! The next hour seemed to go very smoothly and we finally made it to a small village and sat down to have a cup of coffee (and a beer to try and take the pain away from my sore foot!), we had a short discussion on whether or not we should stay in the village and try and make our own way to the town of Muang Khua (the first real town that you can reach) – Iain and Calum both said that we may as well carry on with them; poor guys, this was when we all still thought the town was only a couple of hours away, if only we could have glimpsed what was in store for us all in the not too distant future I’m sure they would have sped off and left us in that village and we wouldn’t have blamed them!!!

As soon as we stepped foot out of the coffee shop it decided to start raining – never a good thing on a motorbike and even worse when all your roads were dirt tracks – soon to become mud tracks! After donning our waterproofs we set off and were doing pretty well until Iain’s bike started to make funny clunking noises, not a big deal he told me – it was just his chain loosening, so we made a short stop to attempt to tighten it back and after a bit of tinkering it was as it should be.

After another couple of hours we thought we must be getting closer to our destination and things were going pretty well considering the state of the weather and the muddy dirt tracks, and then out of the corner of my eye I spotted a couple of broken beer bottles in the middle of the road, we missed the first one but went straight over the second one and then there was a loud gushing sound as all the air out of the rear tyre blew out! So there we all were, one bike out of action, in the middle of nowhere, with no idea how far away we might be… Still, we all managed to have a good laugh about it! This had officially turned into an adventure, not THE adventure yet but it soon would!!!

We decided it was best for me and Kim to leave Iain and Calum to fix the tyre and go off on foot to try and get some help, so off we marched! It really was turning into one of those days, especially when Kim’s left flip-flop decided to break after we’d been walking for 5 minutes – now we both only had one working flip-flop and were walking off into the middle of nowhere leaving behind two motorbikes, one of which now had a completely flat tyre! What a sight we must have been, totally drenched, muddy, one shoe each and Kim had helmet hair going on – needless to say we weren’t looking at our finest!

We must have walked (or hobbled in Kim’s’ case) for about 45 minutes before we came across a small village after trawling through some ridiculously muddy sections of road. Now came the fun part of trying to explain our situation so out came our guidebook and we tried desperately to explain that our two friends were a couple of kilometres down the road with a flat tyre and was it possible for the guy we were talking with to take me out on his motorbike to try and help them. After 15 minutes we finally managed to get the message across after a lot of laughing and smiling (and also a very nice guy gave Kim a new left flip-flop), so me and one of the local guys set off on his bike with a pump ready in the basket. When I arrived back to Iain and Calum they had managed to get a new inner tube in the tyre but had been trying without joy to inflate it for the past 30 minutes with some help from another couple of local guys – luckily for us the pump that my guy had brought with him managed to pump up the tyre within a couple of minutes – much to the relief of everyone! Kim had a great time chatting with the villagers while I was away and managed to find out a remarkable amount of information about their lives thanks to lots of improvisation and the odd sentence stringed together from the guidebook!

When we arrived back at the village I managed to ask the guy who had helped us whether he could give one of us a ride to Muang Khua as it wasn’t the best idea for me to get back on Iain’s bike just in case the tyre wouldn’t survive with my added weight on the bike. Luckily for us he agreed, and Calum agreed to carry on with Kim on the back of his bike and we all set off down some of the muddiest roads we have ever seen in our lives! There is no way of describing these roads so you get the exact picture of what they were like, there were a couple of scary moments where me and my driver almost went over and also a few even scarier moments where we were balancing along the drier edge of the road right next to a massive drop down the mountain! As I was on the bike with the local guy we always seemed to be ahead of the other bikes as he was used to the horrendous terrain, so I was a little worried that one or both of them may have fallen along some of the muddier stretches, luckily we had to stop to cross a river on a little wooden bridge so could wait for the others to turn up. After about 5 minutes both bikes turned up and everyone looked like they were fine, that was until Kim and Calum crossed over the bridge covered in mud – it was apparently one of the slowest falls in the history of all motorbike falls and from their descriptions they both seemed quite amused by the whole thing, they went down laughing!!! Impressively they both managed to avoid the burning hot exhaust, although Kim had to hurl herself onto poor Calum in order to achieve this! They were coated in mud which the river kindly removed and after a quick check the only damage noticeable was a couple of bruises and scrapes, although Kim had decided during one of her walks through the nastier patches of slippery mud that flip-flops were not conducive to the terrain so now had no shoes at all!

The rest of the journey went without a hitch and we finally managed to get some better road surfaces towards the end as we approached the river crossing to Muang Khua which gave everyone a deserved boost. After many thanks and saying good bye to my motorbike guy we got onto the little wooden boat and crossed over the river to Muang Khua, arriving at about 6.30pm – 13 hours after setting off earlier that morning!!

That day was one of our favourite days out of the travelling so far, don’t get us wrong it was totally exhausting and we got a bit battered, but it was an adventure!! Without Calum and Iain, who knows what we would have done so we are forever grateful, having us on the back only made the journey that much more difficult for them but they didn’t complain once, true gentlemen! Kim really took to bikes after that and still wants a Minsk of her own – and I’m sure she’ll get one someday!!

Muang Khua
The first thing we did in Muang Khua was get a room and then take a well-needed shower, this was then closely followed by having some food and some well deserved beers with Iain and Calum. The next day was spent resting our aching muscles and joints and also purchasing a new pair of flip-flops for the both of us!

The following day we said goodbye to Iain and Calum and got on a bus to Udomxai on our way to Luang Prabang, it didn’t take long before we started to miss the freedom you have on a motorbike as the bus became more and more crammed full of people! After 3 or 4 hours we finally arrived in Udomxai and bought our ticket to Luang Prabang, we were told that the next bus should be leaving at 1pm, however this then turned into 2pm and then finally 3pm. However, we never actually left until 3.45pm! After one of the most cramped and bumpy rides of our lives (the minibus had absolutely no suspension left due to the massively pot-holed roads!) we finally arrived in Luang Prabang – this just solidified the advantages of travelling on a motorbike, it may be hard at times but you only ever have to wait for yourself!

Luang Prabang
After our last trip to Laos we had fond memories of Luang Prabang and especially the guesthouse where we stayed, luckily we found it again and were shown to exactly the same room which has one of the most comfortable beds we’ve ever slept in! This probably explains why we spent most of our time relaxing, working and generally just wandering around the town. It was really, really hot for most of the time – probably in the 40’s as the thermometer on our clock got as high as 39 degrees in our room!! Despite the heat and our ridiculously comfortable bed we did manage to visit the majority of the temples and went back to Kuang Si waterfalls for a very refreshing (by refreshing I actually mean ice cold!) dip.

After just over a week we were on one our random wanders around the streets and happened to bump into Iain and Calum which was a nice suprise, they had only just arrived so we went for a few beers and caught up on what they’d been up to. On our way to the Indian restaurant we saw that the Euro 2008 final was being played later that night, well actually it was 1.45am for us, but we decided to stay up and watch it anyway. About 8 beers later and after watching Spain beat Germany we said goodnight and got back to the room and got some much needed sleep!!

On our final day in Luang Prabang we decided to treat ourselves to a massage as we didn’t really have anything else to do – quite a bargain they were too, only $5 for an hour – although Kim seemed to come out of it worse than she went in! It was now time to say goodbye to endless days of doing nothing, our $1 chicken baguettes and coffee shakes and head up North!

Luang Nam Tha
This was only ever meant to be our access point to the North of Laos, from what we’d read there wasn’t anything of particular interest here and upon arriving this was quite apparent! The only thing worth mentioning was some weird guy managing to unlock the door to our room as we were in various states of nakedness – we were not amused!!!

Muang Sing
We arrived here expecting a colourful, cultural town full of ethnic minorities, however what we got was a very dull ghost town with absolutely nothing of particular interest. We then went the tour agency to see how much it would cost to go on a trek or a tour to see something a little more interesting and were completely shocked by the prices – it would have been fine if there were 8 of us as the price was relatively reasonable but for just 2 people it was pretty ridiculous! We got the bus back to Luang Nam Tha the next day!!!

Luang Nam Tha
The second time around this place wasn’t too bad, we found a really nice room and decided to stay an extra couple of nights. Given that we hadn’t done much for a while, we decided to hire mountain bikes and have a ride out to some villages and a waterfall.  Luckily for us the weather was great, a beautiful clear day with no rain clouds in sight – which made a nice change! Unfortunately the villages that we visited along the way were not quite what we were expecting as they were pretty much deserted, but we carried on in the vain hope that we’d see some people in traditional dress. By the time we’d made it to Nam Dee waterfall we’d passed about 4 villages and the only people we’d seen were little kids and a few elderly people sat in front of their houses so we decided to forget about taking photographs and just enjoy the countryside! We had to head back to our guesthouse shortly afterwards to get out of the baking hot sun and avoid getting too sunburnt!

Vientiane
Our next stop was Vientiane, the capital of Laos – unfortunately we had to get a bus to Udomxai first (4 hours) and then a night bus to Vientiane (14 hours) – as you can imagine we were pretty tired when we arrived so just crashed out for most of the first day!  We managed to get ourselves back out in the afternoon and had a nice relaxing couple of drinks in one of the shacks by the side of the Mekong and then went for some dinner. On the way back to our hotel a couple of guys ran over the road and grabbed us – luckily before violence ensued we realised that it was Calum and Iain, the buggers scared us to death!!! We hadn’t expected to see each other again and who knows what the odds are of meeting randomly in two of the biggest cities in Laos! We went for a few drinks by the river, caught up on each other’s news and had a great night before saying our goodbyes as they were leaving the following day.

The next day we visited a couple of the bigger temples in Vientiane, Haw Phra Keow and Wat Sisaket – we spent most of our time at Wat Sisaket as they had over 10,000 buddha figures and we also managed to see a western guy become initiated as a monk. After we were done in the wat we walked up the road to Patuxai which is pretty similar to the Arc De Triomphe in Paris, until you get closer to it and realise that they never really finished it off and it just looks like a concrete monstrosity! We got a tuk-tuk back to the riverfront and as we were a little hungry decided to have a little snack before our evening meal – the barbecued chicken was pretty special so we decided that we’d go back the following day and try out the barbecued fish as well!

Before Calum and Iain left they told us about a restaurant they’d been to which served pretty amazing steaks – something that we had both been missing since we left England. We turned up and ordered our steaks, Chateaux Briand for myself and a fillet with blue cheese sauce for Kim – both of which cost less than £3 each! The food arrived and it was pretty amazing, especially considering that the whole meal cost us less than £8! Needless to say that we went back the following evening for our final meal and this time treated ourselves to chocolate soufflé which could have probably fed at least 4 people! The following day we had booked onto an overnight bus to take us over the border to Bangkok, luckily for us we managed to get the best two seats on the whole bus and had a very comfortable trip, not at all like the border crossing into Laos!