Let’s go cycling

A lovely market meal in Vientiane before we hit the road the next morning- lots of goodies, definitely aimed at the locals and a fabulous array of really fresh looking food to choose from!

Off we set in the morning- our 11th day on the road. I think this was easily my least favourite day of our trip so far. A nerve wracking exit from the city, along a busy and dusty highway which seemed to go on forever.

There are two highways north out of Vientiane. A major new fast highway has been built by the Chinese, not sure how well utilised it is as it’s also a toll road. No bikes allowed on that one and I wouldn’t have wanted to tackle it anyway…we took the old one! Seems quite a lot of others did too…plenty of traffic all the way to Phonhong.

Frankly, it was just too hot for me yesterday. Somewhere around 37 although my Garmin said 40… with a wet bulb of 31 and a feels like of 54!

So by the time we’d managed 50km I was a bit of a melted mess. Found some lunch and plenty of fluid to revive a bit before tackling the last 20.

Collapsed into a weird but nice and cool guesthouse for the night. Lots of rules… including strict instructions not to put up any nude pictures on the walls 😀

We decided to make todays ride a little shorter and prebooked our accommodation on the edge of a hydro reservoir. A perfect spot!

It was a much more undulating ride today, quite a bit of elevation ( almost made it feel like we were in Tassie except for the temps!) and it was another super hot one so we set our alarms for 5ish and were on the road at 6. Glad we did!

The breathtaking scenery made the ride all worthwhile today- what a huge contrast from the dusty highway of yesterday! Lush green mountains, gorgeous friendly kids and a “Sabbaidee!” at every corner. Laos certainly redeemed itself today 🙂

Tomorrow we have a short ride to Vang Vieng, which still doesn’t seem to have the best reputation but we’ll check it out anyhow!