Laos was to be our first "proudly communist" country for a while, and after our previous experience with other communist regimes we were slightly worried about what we'd find. But many fellow travelers told us that we'd "love Laos, especially riding round it on a motorbike". Sounded good! The plan was to enter in the south, do some jungles and then head north to the capital, then further north to the highlands. On the way we'd take in more temples and war sites.Our first port of call was Pakse - "but where are all the people?" - the place was almost deserted. A quick check in the guidebook revealed that the country is about the size of England and Wales but only has about 5 million people - this part of the trip would be a bit quieter than Thailand!!

Second shock was to find out that the locals consider thin noodle soup to be a nourishing meal - and 50% of the time they use instant noodles. It looked like my waistline would narrow again, until we discovered that the French colonists had taught the Laos how to bake baguettes (slightly heavy), how to fry eggs and cook chips. Might we have arrived in Simon-Heaven?

Once settled in we decided to investigate the "Land of a Million Elephants" from the back of an elephant. We found an elephant to ride (at a now defunct elephant training school) and we were thrilled when the mahout decided that we should take the driving seat - sitting on the beast's bare head. It took us about 2 minutes into the ride when we realised that the cunning old bloke had given us the bumpy, sweaty, dirty end of the beast, whilst he enjoyed a joy-ride at the back. We cruised through fields and found 2 other elephants and that was the end of elephant spotting in Laos. We were later told that many of the elephants had died in the war, but we suspected that in a country so poor, the sight of 1 tonne of elephant steaks on-the-bone might have figured large in the demise of the poor animals.

At this point I should inject a little historical perspective, as I'll be constantly referring to "the war". Laos (like Cambodia) was unfortunate enough to be too close for comfort when the USA was fighting communism in Vietnam. The communist Vietnamese used part of Laos as a supply line from North to South - the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail - so the Americans bombed the hell out of that part of Laos. The effect of the bombing was to encourage the Laos Communist Party to try to overthrow the Royalist Government. So the US CIA arranged a "Secret War" against the Laos Communists that resulted in loads more bombs in other areas. From 1964 to 1973 Laos became the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare - amazing what the CIA can do in secret!! We were later to discover that some areas are still full of bomb-craters and blown bridges. And as a footnote, the Communists did depose the King of Laos; the "official history" records how he "graciously left his palaces to the people, and went to live in a cave, where he died of neglect, poor food and damp-related illnesses".

Next stop would be Salavan, a market town on the edge of the jungle, before a day trip up the jungle on the optimistically names Route 23. Route 23 turned out to be a boneshakingly rocky road that resembled the bed of a railway track. But a bit of dirt riding has never put us off, especially as the local bikers had picked out a track through the worst parts. 8kms into the ride the track plunged down to a river, and from its banks we could see why - the 2 span bridge had been blown apart. The damage looked fresh, but the bridge had obviously been like that for at least 30 years. A quick scout of the river showed that any route across would take us through water at least a metre deep - bearing in mind our engine drowning episode in Kyrgyzstan, we looked at each other and decided "well that was a short day-out".

But what's happening over there? A local guy on a Kawasaki 100 had turned up just behind us and had headed over to a bloke with a canoe - up a little ramp and a bit of pushing - he was at the front of the canoe and beckoning us to join him. Not thinking the prospect through we said, "OK - why not?" Suddenly we were trying to load 200+ kilos of BMW onto a canoe that's no wider than the handlebars! And what was worse the only way to support the bikes was for us riders to sit on the bikes, and brace our feet on the boats gunwales. AND EVEN WORSE, we hadn't had time or wit to pack away our 4 cameras or the Palm Pilot. If the boat overturned, we would be able to recover, dry out and restart the bike, but a couple of grand's worth of gear would be trashed. It's a long time since I had such a bad cold sweat as the ferryman paddled us across. The boat was actually amazingly strong and stable (for a craft made from old floorboards). But I was amazingly wobbly - attempting to counteract any wobble to the right with one to the left, I'd inadvertently start the whole craft wobbling violently. What I didn't know (because I wasn't looking back) was that Georgie had hold of the back of the bike and was trying to brace it too. Obviously I was feeling the forces she was exerting and the result were the horrid wobbles. 5 minutes of terror finally ended with a 40-cent payment and a horrible realisation that the only way back to the "home bank" was on the same dodgy craft.

Up the creek without a paddle

Thankfully that turned out to be the major obstacle of the day. We rode through stilted villages full of kids waving and shouting "sabadee" (hello), and across dozens of planked bridges until we obviously came to "the point the money ran out" whereupon the every blown bridge had to be passed by riding down through the flood channels - the ride was OK in the dry season, but would have been impassable in the wet.

After 50kms we reached our destination, where we should have found a 100m long communal building, but it had recently been dismantled and the materials used to make smaller private huts! All the way along the trail we had been following a newly installed set of power lines. Amazingly, at the village the lines terminated exactly at the point that a local was using a power-plane to shave down another piece of the missing 100m house. That was the only apparent outlet for the power line - it looked like they'd just run a 50km extension cable for one guy.

Lunch on the village green introduced us to another staple - sticky rice (served in a special bamboo pot) and omelette - an antidote to noodle soup.

The journey back was less traumatic as we had the ferry all to ourselves, Georgie didn't touch the bike and she managed to get photos to prove our stupidity (photographic evidence is always an important factor in a successful disaster!).

Over dinner that night we chatted to a Canadian biker (Blair) who warned us that our next day's ride (up to the Ho Chi Minh trail at Sepone, via a jungle road) was not possible, as the road marked on our 2 maps doesn't exist. We gave his warning some credence as he had ridden the area for about 10 years, but we're never easily deterred but such neigh-saying. A little more worrying was the guidebook's description of the area being populated by "foreboding tribes with animistic and shamanistic rituals" and "villages guarded by totem poles" - heart of darkness stuff.

After crossing that bloody river again at another bombed out bridge, this time using planks that the locals had put across the deepest parts of the river, we did plunge into deeper, darker jungle. And the tribesmen were scarier. Gone were the happy smiling kids, and instead people frowned and occasionally threw stones. We saw young girls smoking opium using water filled bamboo pipes - the only word that has crossed from Lao into western usage is "bong" - the Lao word for "bamboo" and a term used by druggies in the west for the water filled pipes used for opium and hashish. Inbreeding in the area was also more obvious, with several mongoloid kids wandering the roads. All this just a few kilometers from the previous day’s happy jaunt! The main difference seemed to be that the previous day’s trip had been through flat, dry and accessible countryside, whereas this "heart of darkness" run was up into hilly jungles - far less accessible.

We met a few other vehicles and asked them about the road that we planned to take. A local driver for some medical agency said that no such road existed, and a Vietnamese truck driver confirmed this. Hmm - perhaps the road we had seen on the map was actually part of the Ho Chi Minh trail, and it had been bombed off the map? Or maybe some mapmaker had confused a river for a road. Whatever, we pressed on to the town that was supposed to be at the junction of the road and promised to serve up more rice and omelette. Suddenly the mood of the locals lightened up and we rode into the thriving but remote little outpost of Tahoy. Again our plan to ride to Sepone was laughed at, the locals just pointed back the way we had come from and said something to the effect of "first go to Pakse, then along the big highway and turn right to Sepone - it will take you 2 days....". Bugger No.2 - we'd done another day's ride with no result apart from more fully loaded dirt riding experience and knowledge to "not trust maps of Laos".

By this time we were rapidly running out of patience with Laos - where was the wonderful place that everybody raved about, and where were the superb roads that we were supposed to enjoy so much on a bike? We decided to make a break for the north and if that proved to be just as bad, we'd hop back over into Northern Thailand that we'd been told was dead good.

The run up to Vientiane would took us 3 days at about 200kms per day on a dead straight, well-metalled road. "Why so slow?" I here you ask. Well I haven't told you about a major mechanical fault the bike developed - I'll explain the details in a separate mail (so as not to bore you all even more) but basically one of the bolts that attaches the right hand cylinder and valve gear had torn out, and so the cylinder and one set of rocker gear threatened to pop off and shoot into the bushes if we went too fast. So about 70kph had been our top speed for the past 3 weeks and would be our limit for the next 3 weeks too - painful!!

The run wasn't without highs and lows. Savanaket was a buzzing little town, full of Thai-style lady-boys and people traveling through to Vietnam. Further north we looked forward to a relaxing day at the Nature reserve at Nam Kading, where the Lonely Planet points out that the river has launching places for canoes. Excellent, a day's boating to be had - well not really as nobody hires canoes, although the locals all go about their business in canoes! Usually the LP is full of useful information, but other times it fills the pages with red herrings. If a part of the country is dull or too remote to visit, why not say so? Well here goes - in the dry season, southern Laos is dry, dusty and not that interesting!!

The capital, Vientiane, was better. Proper restaurants with western food provided an antidote to noodle soup. Vientiane could have been our last experience of Laos, as there had been significant terrorist activity to the north. The local news media had been full of conflicting and patchy information about an incident a two weeks ago when a bus and several other vehicles had been shot up, a dozen locals had been killed and a Swiss couple on bicycles had been caught up and killed too. We (along with most of our fellow travelers) were in two minds whether to go north, or scoot off to Thailand, just across the Mekong.

We settled into the tourist scene for a weekend whilst waiting for the embassies to open. Unfortunately the UK does not maintain an embassy in Laos, and the UK government (FCO) web-site gives pretty useless advice about "take extra security precautions". So being good European citizens we went to visit the German embassy. All very pleasant, but the local guy who talked to us at the German embassy could only tell us that "something happened north of Vang Vieng, we are not sure what, or how many were killed, or what has been done about security. We cannot recommend that you visit the area". Well that sounded all very mysterious and worrying, apparently the communist government really does have a restrictive grip on information and our trip up north seemed doomed. Then we got a break when he mentioned "the Australian embassy usually deals with matters for Commonwealth citizens". There were we thinking we were part of Europe and actually we were still part of the British Empire - hurrah!!

The Aussie Embassy could not have been more of a contrast. They gave us chapter and verse about what had happened, the time of day, the casualties, subsequent security improvements and another attack that had happened. They told us that one of their contacts up north had traveled the road the previous day, traffic was moving as normal and tourists were still up there doing ok. So our trip was back on! But not before a couple more days of pizzas and touristing.

A visit to a park full of concrete images of Buddha (and other religious and mythical types) made me reflect a bit more on the Buddhists we'd met. All of the Buddhist imagery we'd seen depicted poses of serene contemplation, peace and meditation. But none of the thousands of Buddhist monks we'd seen had been engaged in any such activities. We'd seen loads receiving alms, riding around in all manner of vehicles, sitting around, chatting, bumming money off tourists (one asked me for money for "Bible Study"!) and some even using mobile phones. But we have yet to see any evidence of meditation, chanting or seeking serenity. We did see some monks chanting scriptures in Mongolia, but since then nothing. The only people who we've seen meditating were Italian tourists. I still can't get a handle on this Buddhism - it just doesn't seem devout enough – maybe not enough rules for the European mind. Maybe when we get to Nepal or Northern India we'll be enlightened.

While I was still in a feisty mood I had the chance to get a little payback from a local guy. One of the "double-edged swords" that comes with touring far-flung places on a bike is the attention you get wherever you stop. Wherever you turn up, you're an instant celebrity - people either just staring in awe, or plucking up courage to talk to you. Not bad most of the time. But the downside comes when you have to fix the bike. Massive crowds sometimes gather, and uncannily people appear from nowhere just at the moment when things aren't going well and you have to concentrate hard and swear a bit. Then they start asking dumb questions, leaning over the bike, squeezing the tyres, and playing with the twist-grip. Anyone who knows me would be amazed at how I avoid telling them to "****-off and leave me to do this in peace" - ambassador for your country and all that. So usually I ignore them, or sometimes I go over to them and stare into their eyes from about 6 inches away and in my most sinister voice I say "bye-bye" - works every time. So, in Vientiane I spotted a lone tuk-tuk driver by the side of a road. He had the whole of his rear axle apart as he replaced a broken differential. So.... I wandered over, inspected the vehicle and then squatted close to him and watched as he worked. It took about 90 seconds before he got really agitated, which neatly coincided with the time it took Georgie to come back and retrieve her "naughty boy".

The victim and his wheels

Time to bite the bullet (!) and move north into rebel territory. We were both incredibly nervous; the first time a trip had worried us for ages. Should we go fast so as to pass trouble as quickly as possible, or ride slowly so that we could U-turn at the first sign of trouble? Luckily the road did the thinking for us as suddenly we were onto tight, twisty, hilly roads. We had discovered the great roads and scenery that everyone had told us about. We still got cold sweats every time we saw a bus stopped, but we made it safely to Vang Vieng. VV seemed amazingly developed for a small town in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there were some pretty cliffs and caves to see, but why were all these hipsters here?

A couple of days chilling were in order so we considered kayaking the valley's pretty little river, but the water level was a bit low, so we decided to do another popular local treat, "tubing" – floating down the river on an inflated truck inner tube. Seemed like a harmless way to top-up the suntan. $1 paid for tube hire and a tuk-tuk ride up the river. There we chatted to another couple who asked "have you done this before?" "No? Well it takes about 3 hours to float back to town, and there are locals all the way down the river who will sell you a big bottle of Beer Lao for 80 cents or a spliff for 50 cents - see you on the river". And that is how were discovered the reason for all the tourists. Vang Vieng turns out to have opium dens and a reputation for really powerful marijuana. The local authorities turn a blind eye to the drugs, and the local economy benefits from all the tourists. And amazingly going on in a Communist country!!

Tuber - noun, potato family, little intelligence

As it turned out the trip down the river is surreal enough without drugs. The local stalls are located on the banks and on bamboo platforms built on rocks in the river. The tourists float down and get stoned as they go. Luckily the river flows very gently, especially as an inner tube is almost unsteerable, even when you’re not out-of-it. The locals all hawk the beer, and the haunting call of “Beer Laoo, Beer Laoooo” still echoes in my head. Other locals all try to get on with their daily lives as the tubers float past. One group of fishermen wore diving masks, and shouted and beat the water as they tried to drive fish into a drift net. Young lads fished using home-made spear-guns, again wearing dive-masks – there are few things so scary as seeing a kid diving with a spear gun right next to you when you’re floating down a river on an inner tube, with your fat arse dangling in the water in the middle of it – what a prime target for any mischievous kid?

In one section we headed down a small side channel which a couple of water buffalo occupied. I noted that the channel seemed to be pretty deep as only the top 50cms of the beasts was visible – whereupon they stood up and loomed over us. Luckily they seemed used to dumb tourists floating by so we didn’t get trampled.

Gradually the river swept us past overhanging trees and towering limestone cliffs. A group of stoned Scandinavian kids wafted in at one point – the sound of “the Swedish Chef explaining how to use flip-flops as paddles” is one of the funniest things I’ve heard for years.

All together the experience was about as obscenely colonial as I have ever been – being ridiculously hedonistic and out-of-touch with the local culture as could be imagined. I felt like a Victorian riding round India in a white suit, on top of an elephant. But being less poe-faced, it might have been a great uniting experience – the locals do go tubing themselves (for pleasure and for fishing) and it is hard to work out who was more stupid – us for doing the tubing or the locals for sitting round all day waiting to sell to us. No, come to think of it, WE were the more stupid!! And to prove that the local authorities were keen to make the most of the river-ride, the next day they started to impose a $1 tax on each tuber going down the river.

Next we were off for a bit more culture, up to the Plain of Jars near Phonsavan, up past where the bus and cyclists had been shot-up and through an area where Hmong tribesmen were (occasionally) struggling for an autonomous homeland. We slowly rattled up to the Lao highlands, past disorganised groups of army conscripts supposedly keeping the road secure. In reality they were just a few kids sitting by the side of the road under make-shift shelters, with an AK47 or two around somewhere. Often they’d try to flag us down to bum cigarettes from us, but we didn’t fancy stopping. We came to one checkpoint halfway up a hill, where a group had stopped a bus – one soldier was armed with a RPG launcher.

We reached the turning for Phonsavan and headed along a ridge topped by villages full of happy hill-tribesmen. Hunters with long-barreled muskets replaced the soldiers with Kalashnikovs. And down onto the Plain, past vast scrap-yards full of war debris and farmers furnished with used casings from cluster bombs as gateposts, building stilts and animal troughs. Phonsavan turned out to be a dry, dusty market town in a very “wild-west” style; but this seemed to be the wild-east as the road were full of Russian-built Volga cars and Vietnamese Minsk bikes.

Piglets in wicker wrappers in Phonsavan Market

The Plain of Jars, as you would guess, has several prehistoric sites with enigmatic collections of large stone jars. The best guess is that the jars were used for storing rice, or more likely for brewing and storing rice wine. The jars are quite interesting and the sites have good views but, like Stone Henge, once you’re there you think, “well we came a bloody long way to see a few stone jars”. Being situated on prominent hills, large bomb craters from the secret war also pockmark the jar sites, and the area is littered with Unexploded Ordnance that is gradually being found and destroyed. We later found out that large bombs are detonated by a device that melts its way into the bomb casing and sets of a (relatively safe) low-order explosion, rather than a dangerous high-order one. The inventor was a British bomb-disposal man who named the device “a Baldrick”, as it is “a cunning way to make bombs safe”.

Ooh Mum, not badger for dinner again!!?

Before we left I thought I’d do a little souvenir pilfering. The hotel we were staying in had a tatty display of war debris – all supposedly safe and available for Joe Public to pick up and play with. There were cluster-bomblets, mortar shells, a heavy machine-gun….. So I thought I’d just pilfer a hand grenade a little memento – huh huh. Just before packing it in my left hand pannier (the one that is over the exhaust and gets hot – see where I’m going with this?) I thought I’d check out the inside of the said “safe” grenade. Obviously there was no detonator, but the inside seemed to be filled with some brown, waxy substance. So I put the thing back on the display!

A long and twisty ride took us to Luang Prabang, the place with the Kings' old Palace and more temples than you can shake a stick at. 270kms of twisty roads through hill villages full of chickens, piglets and playing kids is a long way. But LP was a chilled place with an excellent night market. It marked the start of our exit from Laos. Another 3 days of riding took us up to Chinese border again (it had haunted us for the past 8 months and would continue to do so for the next 4) and through thick jungle. One spectacular day we managed to break the exhaust rocker shaft (more in that techie mail), arrange a fix and then spend a night in a jungle brothel.

Eventually we reached the Mekong again – this time the border with Thailand. We lunched with an interesting couple from the UK. He was working on agricultural development and told us of the abortive attempt to introduce potatoes to Laos. The spuds had grown really well in the country’s ideal conditions, but the locals didn’t have a clue what to do with them (nobody thought to teach them any recipes), so they fed the potatoes to their pigs. She was working on drugs projects and told us that the biggest problem in Laos is speed (amphetamines) which are sold as “the way to get rich and happy” – apparently the rumour in Laos is that 20% of Thais take speed, which is why they are able to work so hard, earn so much and lead the region.

To the ferry and we turned down the offer of a long-tailed boatman – across a puddle on a canoe is one thing, across the Mekong is quite another – and took a proper ferry which we shared with an ice-cream refrigerator. Thence to Chiang Rai, but too fast for the poor engine – all of a sudden there was a loss of power and I looked down to see that the rocker gear had punched a hole in the rocker case – oil everywhere and one defunct engine. Luckily I managed another bodge that got us to Chiang Rai, where we hired a couple of Honda 100 mopeds for a day's ride out to the Burmese border. What a hoot – I have never wheelied so much in my life!!

Now that's how to overland!

We had a difficult decision to make, we had to get back to Bangkok where we could buy the parts to fix the engine, but it would take us about 5 days to limp there from Chiang Rai. So we decided to ride to Chang Mai and put the bike on a train from there (we’re not proud). Then our luck changed – in Chang Mai we met a nice German mechanic who pointed me at a tool shop, where I managed to buy some helicoils to fix the bike. Excellent – so to celebrate we hired Georgie a 250 dirt bike and took both bikes out for 4 day jaunt round the northern Thai twisty hill roads. Any bikers who come to Thailand should ride this area – it is one of the best I’ve done in 23 years of biking.

Georgie gets a taste of freedom

And finally back to Bangkok to put the bike into a packing crate for a flight to Kathmandu, Nepal. This is an expensive ($700) thing to do, but it’s not possible to ride through Myanmar (Burma) and shipping to India mans you lose the bike to the high seas for several weeks and more importantly you have to fight your way through several days and $100’s of dollars of infamous Indian customs bureaucracy at the port.

Another day another crate

Goodbye to Southeast Asia and hello to the Indian Sub-Continent – from ridiculously hot curries to sublime ones……

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Number of weeks =4/2
Miles in country= 1,810/1,120
Kilometres in country = 2,900/1,790
Total miles so far = 23,160
Total kilometres so far = 37,060