RIDE DAY: Bang Vang Pang to Kiou Ka Cham

1/14/09

Day: 17.63km

Cume: 798.5km

Avg: 7.6 kph

Max: 36.5 kph

Time: 2h18m

Highs: I made it! Very kind guest house owner, met an angle completing a two year cycle tour from Turkey to SE Asia who gave me a great tip that made my day

Lows: Low grade fever, headache, 17km climb

The things you see climbing in the mountains of Laos: small bamboo villages with chickens, pigs, goats and cows running around on the road, adults and children collecting roadside grasses, rubbing them on the ground and then beating dust out of them (I found later, these are sold in bulk to Thailand to make brooms), jungle on hillsides, banana orchards, an ocassional roadside vender, an occassional new building with fancy pillars under construction, a more than ocassional small bamboo shack with satellite dish and the glow of TV inside the small woven door, power and phone lines and stacks of unbuilt cell towers! This would be the first of several days of seeing this. Apparently, the Lao PDR is ensuring cell coverage in this remote mountain area because it is a main artery from the political capital, Vientienne, to the tourism and cultural capital, Luang Probang.

I climbed pretty well, all things considered. I wasn't feeling entirely well (and I'm going to butt in and give a little advanced knowledge I received after gettting to Vang Vieng and speaking to a doctor...she said I was still dealing with the ear infection I picked up snorkeling in Thailand and my body was fighting the infection with fever, so please don't worry at this point:). I downed some IBU which made bearing the heat and the climb easier, but it was still a big climb and a lot of weight on the bike. All things considered, in hindsight, it wasn't that bad, but I think that not feeling at the top of my game made it feel a little long.

I made it to Kieu Ka Cham, though, and just in time to get some food. As I was eating, I ended up drawing the attention of a woman who was very interested in my rig. She was looking over my bike very carefully and pointed at my bike and pointed at me and then came over to talk. This woman turned out to be Bernadette Speet from Holland (http://www.escaper.info/) who was nearing the completion of a two year cycle tour from Turkey to SE Asia. I dicovered later that just about every cyclist I ran into after that point had met her at some place or another! So funny! She was very sweet and became my first angel for the day. She told me she had ridden this section of mountains before and seeing that it was late morning and that I wasn't feeling entirely well, I should just stay, yes STAY after only 17.63km, in Keiu Ka Cham. She said it was a tough section and needed a day to complete (and enjoy, I later found out). For some reason, I thought she was really sweet and I listened to her. Good thing, I slept just about the remainder of the day away after breakfast. I later found out from other cyclists that she's in the process of writing a cycling manual in Dutch for the route she took from Turkey through Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, TAjikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Mongolia, Laos and Cambodia. How about that? AND, she did it alone! Sadly, I didn't snap her picture! But, I'm tremendously thankful to her, because she ended up being right in more way than one.

So, I stayed and ended up being invited by my second angel for the day (the proprieter of my guest house who spoke good English and was very very kind!) to his ten year old's birthday party for cake and friend noodles. A giant group of children converged on the guest house around 8PM and the party commenced. They were pigging out on lovely cake from Vientienne, then on a huge pile of fried noodles and then the music came on and the whole troop of them danced in a line to dances made up and taught to them by the birthday girl. I was so tickled! If blogger would allow me to upload video, I'd post it here, but I've had some trouble. Perhaps I'll try YouTube and post it here later. So cute!