The Bike Trek
Leaving Luang Prabang and crossing the Mekong again i was keen to show my old triathlon legs hadn’t deserted me, our skinny Laos guide wearing jeans and a t-shirt just stayed quiet as i powered past him on the first hill. He commented later that i was a big strong Aussie man, how right he was. The day was hot, very hot, i would guess 40 degrees. It looked cloudy but the shade wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The country side was stunning, classic farms and paddy fields, kids playing and farmers working, we were in heaven. Each time we passed a village the kids screamed “HELLO” in Loas language “Sambadee“. This was the Laos i had come to see.
For every up there is a down though, i’m talking about the hills. More importantly for every down there was another bloody up. The legs were hanging in and Hazuki was overheating. I was starting to feel it too while our skinny guide, Sack, just kept going and going and smiling and smiling..

At lunch we stopped at a beautiful farming village, population 400 (Bang Som). We ate the very best food, vegetable dishes, spring rolls and sticky rice, delicious.

We drank water, a lot of water as we were both now really feeling the heat, the legs were OK but the heat was just insane. After an hour long stop we pushed on. We lasted about 45mins and just had to stop, we had only traveled 30km but the heat stopped us in our tracks. Hazuki looked like she was going to faint, we got shelter in a local hut and drank a cold coke. Now i know why Coke is popular. That was it though for us, I couldn’t push her any more, Hazuki was too hot and to be honest i was happy to call it a day. Luckily the local bus at Sam Oh was coming through so we hitched a ride with the local kids who were heading to the boarding school for the week. The village had a Shaman, we considered visiting him for some divine intervention but he was busy in the fields.

All in all, it was fabulous, i feel like the real Laos came into us for the day and we got some exercise while we were at it. The lovely guide just smiled the whole way, he could of cycled for hours and hours i am sure. I have some great pictures too but i have to wait until i can use the other computer to upload them. I WAS VERY HAPPY THAT I ONLY HAD A 5D AND 50MM F1.4 ON MY BACK.

For all pictures visit my Picasa Album

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