With no sign of the rain abating we decided it was time to push on to Vientiane, no matter what. We get a few kilometers from town, bike stalls out, starts right back up and a few kilometers more stalls again. Time to find another mechanic…. We go into town and are basically turned away from several different shops because we don’t speak Loation. You’d think they’d be happy to take some money from us westerners as they always charge us a bit more than the locals, but not in Vang Vieng. I finally find a guy willing to check it out. Again with the full disassembly and four hours later no more stalling but now the bike has half the power. By this time it’s six o’clock and I decide to call it a day and bring it back in the morning. He spends 20 minutes tweaking a few things and gets just a bit more power and just sends me on my way. He of course spoke no English.
Taking a break from the rain.
A local riding with an umbrella
We decide it’s time to make the trip to Vientiane anyways, it’s the capital and a much larger town so I figure we’ll have better luck there. So we limp to Vientiane for four hours in the pouring rain. Thank God that portion of road isn’t as mountainous as the rest of the country or I’m not sure we’d have made it. We were literally doing 10km an hour up some of the hills, lol.
Eating some delicious western food!
So we finally make it to Vientiane and Victoria had previously found some people interested in the bike. One guy was particularly excited about it and he was there within the hour to look at it. We figure were going to have to discount the bike or just agree to get it fully fixed before we sell it. Luckily this guy knew more about motorbikes than us and was enthusiastic and honest. He declared that it was a minor issue and he should have no trouble getting it fixed cheaply. He then proceeded to pay us what we bought the bike for. He drove off delighted as he’d wanted a motorbike like this one for a while and we were delighted to sell the bike at no loss and within an hour of arriving 🙂 I then bought our tickets to fly into Siem Reap that night, it was cheaper to wait a day so we spent an extra night in Vientiane.
Night market
The new owner of our motorbike
For a capital of an Asian country it’s tiny, 200k vs 10+million for Hanoi and Bangkok. Despite there not being a whole lot to do or see it was a nice atmospheric town and there was good western and street food easily located. There was also a night market each night which was huge and frequented by locals and tourists alike. We also enjoyed the break after all the rain(we later found out the road between Luang Prabang and Vientiane was closed due to landslides caused by the nonstop rain.)
Next up Siem Reap and the amazing temples of angkor, one of the wonders of the world.
So the saying goes bad things come in three right? Well we had a couple… On the day we tried to leave Luang Prabang we had some motor bike issues. First thing that happened about 30 miles out was a flat tire. Well no big deal, we just passed a tire shop like 100 feet away. We pushed the bike there and had the inner tube replaced in ten minutes. Just a bump, well nail actually, in the road. It happens, no big deal, keep going! Five minutes later we’re cruising and then ::record screach:: the bike just stops. We walk the 300 lb bike up and down hills for a mile in a half until we find a mechanic. He completely dissassembes the bike and unclogs the gas line and all this stuff. After 3 hours of hanging out, watching chickens and huffing second hand smoke and gasoline we decided we were going to call it a day. Obvioulsy the gods didn’t want us to go to Vang Vieng today. We started back to Luang Prabang. On the way back, I’m not kidding you, I can’t make this up, we got another flat tire, in the EXACT same spot we got the first one. It was so coincidential that I couldn’t control my anger. I screamed “WTF!!!” As Tim pushed the bike to the SAME shop where we had the tire replaced before, I paced up and down the street looking for nails or other “evidence” of materials. After the inner tube was replaced, again, I said “Thank you! Now that you have enough of our money please stop throwing nails in the road so we can get the hell out of here tomorrow!”
Mechanic working on the bike.
So that is three bad things right? Well I think the flat tires counted as one because the next day we had a motorbike accident. Half way to Vang Vieng, we were making a turn at about 30 mph and some how ended up eating pavement. Luckily neither of us sustained serious injury, but I can now say I know why knee pads were invented. My right knee ended up taking most of the hit. For Tim, it was his left hip and feet. Luckily I was wearing shoes, whereas “sandals man” wasn’t. Lying on the hot concrete with the sun in my eyes and the pain in my knee all I could think about was how I hope I didn’t break something. I was scared to move. Thats when two vans came around the corner. I don’t know if my grandma was watching over us or what but two angels approached us. She opened up a medical kit, showed me a bottle of something, probably an anestetic, I can’t read Laotian. I wimpered “Are you sure?” and she replied, “Yes, I’m a nurse.” I let her go to work on me. She cleaned all our wounds and bandaged them. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have sustained no serious injury and two nurses (angels) appeared out of no where to help us. I don’t know their names but I will never, ever forget them. I know I would of done the same thing. Maybe it was a good deed coming back to me for all the awesome nursing I’ve done.
Knee injury, not the Plague
Tim’s hip injury
MMMmmm comfort food. Laotian noodle soup.
Even though we were hurting, we got back on the motorbike and continued the ride. We passed by one of the most beautful mountain ranges I’ve ever seen. The landscape was green and beauftil as it had been but the mountains in the background were jagged and sinster looking. Like Mordor from the Lord of the Rings. As we got closer to Vang Vieng we saw clouds coming in right above us. They encompassed the mountains around us like a macrophage. It was so bizarre since we weren’t at high elevation (only 800 feet).
One of the most beautiful mountain ranges I’ve ever seen.
Cloud coming in.
We hobbled into the Malany Villa hotel (120,000 kip/night or $15) when we got to Vang Vieng, ususally we look around but after today, no. Thank goodness the room was on the first floor. For the entire time we were in Vang Vieng, it rained. So even if we hadn’t been whiplashed and road rashed we couldn’t have done anything anyhow. We spend most of our time in the room, eating take out. It was a little dispressing so for entertainment purpose we decided to hit up some of the happy bars! Obviously we would never partake in the happy items, but they were there! You can choose from all kind of stuff, including but not limited to: marijuana, magic mushrooms, opium, and laughing gas. The laughing gas was very popular with the young ones. They kept buying and huffing away. We watched, laughed, we were basically happy as the bar intended one way or another.
Getting some street food, Pad Thai
Laughing gas
Apparently it used to be pretty open to do stuff like that here, kind of like Woodstock. Po-lice look da other way. Then after a few travelers killed themselves by being too messed up and drowning in the river, the government had to tighten up. Now they have under cover police and they look for people to shake down. Some bars are pretty open and some aren’t. I think it depends on who pays the police and who doesn’t.
Vang Vieng looks like a an old western town. All it needs are some horses and a few wooden swing doors It’s kinda dirty and grungy, but in a good way. One of the fun things to do around here is to go tubing down the Nam Song River. With all the rain the river was too flooded and the current was pretty fast. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to submerge our flesh wounds in the river water or be in a situation that required strenght (like swimming aganist the current) so we passed.
Hobblin’ down the street
Vang Vieng
Sooo I guess eventually good luck runs out and bad things happen. It’s ok, we are ok, we will be OK as long as we have our health and can continue on this amazing vacation.
Asian breakfast of champions, rice soup with egg, fried shallots, minced pork and green onions. MUAH!
