Let’s go cycling

Day 22…114 km…See ya Laos and into Thailand

Set off earlyish to cross the border into Thailand- about a 12km ride to get to Laos immigration. Simple process at the Laos end but this time they wouldn’t let us ride our bikes through on the Friendship bridge. 25 baht each for us and 100 baht each for the bikes to be transported over by bus.

We waited a while, checked out the hold compartments on the bus and couldn’t work out how on earth they were going to fit the bikes in there.

They didn’t…we had to take them ON the bus. Would have been much simpler to ride over the bridge but there you go!

Other than that, an easy transition through and off we rode. A bit of an epic day as we wanted to make it to Chiang Rai. A brisk headwind ( although I avoided much of it by tucking in behind Neil), a short but doozy uphill stretch and lots of kms! At least the incessant rain we experienced over the last week in Laos has eased, leaving humid but pleasant riding conditions.

Unlike our previous Thai experience, food stops were easy to find today- probably because it was more of a major road. We hit Chiang Rai late afternoon, took us a while to find somewhere to stay that would happily look after our bikes at a reasonable price ( and also that had a room/ bathroom…we feel like we don’t need to do the backpacker dormitory thing anymore…)

No trouble finding food ( and beer, even wine!!) here…and tourists abound. It’s a city…and not particularly looking forward to facing those hectic roads in the morning