We’ve got company 🙂

The few weeks before we set out on this journey we were busy preparing everything and saying good bye to all our friends. The winter was unusually cold and one night I rode my bike along the icy cold streets of Göteborg to the yacht harbour to visit my friend and second cousin Greta at her sailing yacht. We had a nice evening and shared a bottle of wine. Greta interviewed me in detail about our coming trip and being an person who really likes outdoor adventures she asked if it was OK if she joined us somewhere along the route.

To be honest, I think neither Greta nor I really believed that it would become a reality for her to visit us. The logistical challenges were simply too difficult but two months ago we started to e-mail each other about the issue. A few days later Greta had bought a ticket, got her vacation approved and yesterday she arrived to Kunming airport. Our plan is to cycle together to Luang Prabang in Laos where she
will catch a flight back home to Göteborg.

When Wej and I arrived to Kunming five days ago it was raining and less than ten degrees. We stayed in a shared apartment with a German cyclist we had met along the way. Since the distance from Kunming to Luang Prabang is too long to be able to cover during the time Greta is here, we will have to start cycling from Mojiang some 250 km south of Kunming. 

The elevation profile from Kunming to Mojiang is flat or downhill with only a few not so big climbs. Wej and I thought we could cycle there in two days and I would than catch a bus back to Kunming to meet Greta and then take her to Mojiang. 

Before we started to cycle to Mojiang we got a message from another cyclist riding a few days ahead of us that the small road beside the highway south of Kunming was in a bad condition. Since the weather was good we coldn’t wait to get moving again but as soon as we got out of the urban area we ended up on a muddy road full of water filled potholes. Both our bikes and ourselves got completely covered in mud and after a while I could feel a scratching feeling from my bottom bracket. The feeling wouldn’t get away even after I rinsed the chain and the chanrings.

Not knowing what the problem was we decided to return to Kunming, get my bike fixed and wait for Greta’s arrival. The mechanic at one of Kunming’s best bicycle shops told me that my bottom bracket was OK but that my middle chain ring was completely worn out and my bearings and cone in my rear hub needed to be changed. 

The components on my bicycle seem to have unusual sizes and the bicycle shop we visited had no bottom bracket and chain ring of the right size. Greta was going to make a short stopover in Bangkok to borrow a bike from our friend Mah who also happens to be the owner of BokBokBike which is Bangkok’s best touring bike shop. Since the shop in Kunming didn’t have the parts we sent a mail to Mah to include two new tyres, two bottom brackets, new chainrings and some other minor parts in the box with Greta’s bike.

This long journey has taken its toll on our bikes but now we hope they are ready for the remaining +2000 km to Bangkok. 

We are so happy to have Greta here and we will try to do our best to introduce her to bicycle touring. We just hope the weather in Yunnan and Laos will cooperate…..

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Short update from south Yunnan

We have camped a couple of nights during the last few days and I have prepared a longer text about our ride from Kunming towards the Laos border. It takes longer time to write while sitting in a tent and it isn’t ready yet. When we checked in at a hotel last night and found out that there is internet in the room I decided to make a short update to tell that we are alright. 

We have cycled together with Greta for five days now and we have traveled on a minor provincial road that is very beautiful. The road passes small villages and occasionally some minor towns. The landscape is very hilly to say the least and the last three days have been a roller coaster. We have slowly climbed up the steep hills and speeded down the serpentines. The road has been in good condition apart from an almost 20 km long and very muddy section where the slushy mud sometimes reached up to the hubs of our wheels. 

This area of China has many minorities and for a few days we have been wondering when we will see the first signs of thai and lao culture. A couple of days ago we could see buildings that looked very similar to those in northern Thailand and when we arrived to this town we saw a temple that looked just like they look in Thailand. When went out to have dinner we thought that the people running the restaurant spoke something that wasn’t Chinese. Wej gave it a try and addressed them in Thai and they immediately responded in Lao. Thai and Lao languages are very similar (like Swedish and Danish) and even I could join the conversation. No need to communicate with sign language and using google translate on the smartphone anymore…. 

The distance to the border to Laos is now 100 km and our plan for today is to stay ride as far as we can but not cross over into Laos until tomorrow morning. Once inside Laos we won’t have any internet connection until we reach Luang Prabang either on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. This means that the next blog update will be published late next week. 

Please enjoy the photos below as a teaser for the proper update of the blog that will come next weekend. 

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Day 146 – 155 (Kunming – Luang Prabang)

Arriving Southeast Asia
When I arrived to Bangkok for the first time in March 1987 I was 17 years old without any experience of Asia. The airport was undergoing re-construction and was crowded and a bit messy. In the arrival hall I saw a group of buddhist monks and I remember my thoughts were something like ”wow…. is this really for real now…???” 

The staff of the exchange organization picked up me and my two fellow swedish exchange students, squeezed us into a small car and drove us to the arrival camp for the foreign exchange students. My first impression of Bangkok was it was a huge and crowded city with a messy traffic situation. The glittering roofs of all the temples we passed by seemed very exotic to the young and unexperienced version of myself and when we stopped to have some snacks along the way the smells and the atmosphere at the food stalls added to this feeling.

I truly enjoyed my exchange year even if it occasionally was very tough to be so young and far away with no phone, no skype, no internet, no e-mail i.e. none of the modern methods of communication that we now take for granted. 

Despite the occasional hardships I had got caught by Thailand and later chose to study Thai language and southeast asian history at the university. The academic approach to the language and history boosted my interest of the region even further and when I later started to work in Bangkok, Thailand developed into my second home country. 

I haven’t calculated how much time I have spent in Thailand in total but the amount of years have definately been enough to completely delete my initial ”wow feeling”. To me Thailand is nowadays just as exotic as a visit to a grocery store in Göteborg a rainy Tuesday afternoon….

Unfortunately I haven’t spent very much time in Thailand’s neighbouring countries and eventhough I know that there are great similarities between the culture in Thailand and its neighbours, I was very curious if it would be a quick or gradual transition from chinese to thai-like culture. A few weeks ago we started to discuss when we will start to see the first signs of approaching a more southeast asian landscapes and culture. 

Kunming is only 250 km north of the tropic of cancer and we thought that city might be the gateway to southeast asia. The city offered us 10 degrees and rain and it felt more like being back in Göteborg rather than close to the tropics.

Southern China is home to a diversity of minorities and some of them speak languages that belong to the same family of languages as Thai. We didn’t know what to expect but we were curious to enter the area where these minorities live to see if we could see any traces of ”thai-ness”.

The initial 2-3 days of cycling together with Greta was in a complete chinese environment. Language, food, people and everything was just like elsewhere in China, but then the change came rapidly over just a few days. People we met didn’t always speak chinese anymore and, as I mentioned in a previous post, we could even get by by speaking Thai to people. 

Being able to communicate freely without translation apps in the smartphone or using sign language was of course a relief and very convenient, but most of all it gave us a feeling of being close to home. Things didn’t feel as foreign to us anymore and we felt we were on our home turf. I think that if we would have cycled in the opposite direction we would have got the same kind of feeling when arriving in southern Denmark or anywhere else where Swedish could be used for communication. 

The further we got towards the Laotian border, the more people we met who we could communicate easily with. This was very convenient but it wasn’t only the common language that made us feel we had arrived to the proximity of Thailand. 

The last two weeks of rain and cold weather was gone and the temperatures rose and the sunshine came back. The landscape also changed and turned into something that we think resembled that of northern Thailand. The cycling was a rollercoaster up and down on steep but not very high hills. None of us know the names of thai trees and bushes, but we know what they look like and we saw many kinds of trees that we are used to see in Thailand.

Another thing that made us feel close to home was the architecture. Houses in villages we passed through had so many similarities to those in rural Thailand that we almost thought we were already there. When looking closely at some houses we could see that details such as ornaments were similar, but when looking a village from a distance it also looked like thai villages with a tight cluster of many small houses and a oranged tiled temple roof as a contrast.

Cycling up and down steep hills make us hungry and thirsty and every time we stopped at small shops to buy some snacks we found more and more products that were imported from Thailand. As long as we were in China most products were chinese, but there were some thai products too. Once in Laos it seemed that 80% av the products on sale were from Thailand and we felt like we had already arrived to Thailand. It seems like Laos import most of its consumer goods from Thailand, which isn’t very strange since they have a very similar culture and language. 

Just like in Thailand shops along the road in Laos always have a TV turned on in some corner and it seems that most people prefer to look at Thai TV channels. One evening we had our dinner at a small restaurant and at 6 PM we heard the familiar tune of the Thai national anthem. We have heard that song thousands of times and it is nothing we normally pay any attention to and we didn’t this time either. I think half of the song was played until we simultanously looked at each other realising that it really was the thai national anthem, that we were in Laos and not Thailand and that we had biked all the way from Sweden to that little restaurant. It was like a wake up call that we are getting closer now….

Everytime we saw something that resembled something thai we got surprised and happy. We pointed out thai looking things to each other and sometimes stopped to take photos. I find it interesting that ordinary things in Thailand that I find as exotic as going to the grocery store in Göteborg, can be so very interesting and exotic outside Thailand. After all a thai style ornament on a roof is not such exotic after all but I think that after cycling thousands of kilometers through snowstorms, burning desserts, across tall mouintain ranges and meeting new cultures, seing a thai style roof or hear someone speak a language close to Thai makes us feel that we are soon there even if we haven’t yet crossed the border into Thailand.

The cycling
My second cousin Greta is a person who is a true outdoor adventurer. The last years she has done expeditions on skiis in arctic environments and she is a very tough woman. Going on a multiday cycling tour in a hilly landscape was new to her and before she left Sweden she bought herself a brand new leather saddle that takes about 500-1000 km to break in. 

When planning our ride together we knew Greta is a person who don’t give up because of some rain or aching muscles. She is absolutely fit for a tough ride in the mountains, but all of us, Greta included, suspected that even if her muscles are strong enough for this kind of endeavours, her experience from skiing in the arctic maybe hasn’t prepared her bottom for sitting long days on a brand new very hard leather saddle….. The plan was therefore to cycle not too long daily distances – it was after all her vacation and we wanted to enjoy each other’s company without pushing hard and rushing through this nice and interesting area.

Since the distance from Kunming to Luang Prabang is too long to be possible to cover within the two weeks Greta has been with us, we decided to start cycling from the city of Mojiang some 250 km south of Kunming. Wej and I planned to cycle there ahead of Greta and take a bus back to Kunming and pick her up at the airport. When we left Kunming I got some mechanical problems and had to return to get my bike serviced. This meant that there was no time for us to cycle there anymore and we decided to wait for Greta in Kunming and take the bus to Mojiang together.

We arrived late to Mojiang and when we looked out from the window the following morning the rain was pouring down. It wasn’t cold like in Kunming, but getting wet is never fun. Wej and I use ponchos for rain protection, but we have no rain pants. This is no problem since the upper parts of the legs stay dry under the poncho and the mudguards take most of the water that gets sprayed from the front tyre. This is only valid IF there is a mudguard….. When I changed tyre a week ago I had to remove my mudguard and since then my legs get soaking wet in 5 minutes after it starts to rain.

Solving problems is a part of this trip and what to do to stay decently dry? It is simple – get some plastic bags and tape them around the legs and voila – you have created a new rain pant. It doesn’t look good and it’s certainly not high-tech, but it works.

Our first day on the bike with Greta was a 60 km gradually downhill experience. We didn’t have to use much effort as we rolled between the mountains on a small countryside road. The rain stopped after some time but it was still very humid and the road was wet. We didn’t want to camp and found a very nice newly built simple hotel in a town that has a name that is so long and difficult to spell that I won’t even try to remember it. 

Day two was going to be the climbing day. The first 45 km was going to be rather flat and then a climb of about 1000 vertical meters was waiting for us. 45 km is a good distance to warm up for such a climb, but there was a but……. After 20 km the condition of the road changed abruptly. It had been a nice sealed road but at a certain point the asphalt ended and the road turned into a dirt road. All the raining the last week had turned this dirt road into a ditch of soft mud and we had to zig-zag in order to avoid the largest potholes. Sometimes the mud was so deep that the surface of the mud reached well over our hubs. 

The speed wasn’t higt and even if we tried to avoid it we sometimes had to put our feet down in the slushy mud water. We rode through this for almost 20 km and when we got out we were severely delayed and wouldn’t have time to climb that mountain.

There was a house right after the muddy section ended and we asked the man who lived there if we could get some water to clean ourselves and the bikes. He then pulled out a water hose and we spent half an hour to get our bikes and ourselves decently clean again.

After our session in the mud we started to talk about finding somewhere to stay. There is not much flat ground in this area and where ever there is flat land, there is always a house. At the bend of the road we found a large flat area that was used as a deposit for gravel. No work was going on and we were alone there so we decided to pitch our tent on top of the piles of gravel. Gravel is dusty and we and our equipment turned grey after staying at Camp Gravel Hill….

We took on the big climb the following morning and it went very well. It was the first 1000 meter climb for Greta and she did just great. Not so far from the top we caught up with a french cyclist who rides a recumbent and we rode together to the next city where checked into a small hotel that had signs in thai and laotian, but no staff that could speak any of those languages. 

We parted with the frenchman the next morning since he had to take a bus out of the country due to his visa was about to expire. Our plan for this day was to cycle for 100 km but after 85 km we saw a path that led from the road to a little hill. We thought it could be a good place to camp and pushed our bike through out on the hill and parked the bikes beside a low concrete wall. Not until after the tents were up did I realize that this was actually a grave and there was another one 15 meters further on too. We had some fruit with us and when we left in the morning Wej did just like what she usually does when visiting a chinese grave – she put a fruit in front of it and gave it a ”wai”.

Next day we arrived in Mengla which is the last proper city before the border to Laos. Our plan was to ride past it but it looked so nice so we decided to stay and spend the evening just walking around and absorp the atmosphere. It all resembled a Thai city very much and Wej and I couldn’t stop pointing out similarities to Thailand. 

It is only 50 km from Mengla to the border and we arrived to the checkpoint by noon. After having lunch and changing money we left China after 77 very interesting days. We only cycled some 50 km on the Laos side the first day and stayed the night at a small guesthouse.

The next day we found the most exotic and unusual campsite so far on this trip. When cycling in Thailand it is always OK to camp at the buddhist temples and when passing a temple in the late afternoon we decided to ask if we could camp there. Greta pointed towards the tall drumtower and said it would be a dream to camp there. Wej asked the abbot if we could camp at the temple and he said yes. When she asked where, he pointed towards the tower and Greta’s first dream got true. We then had our evening shower in the nearby river and her second dream got realized too…. 

The roads in Laos had so far been good, but immediately after leaving Camp Drum Tower we got on a road that was in bad condition. First we had to do a major climb and then we had to speed down zig-zagging between the potholes and the loose gravel and we just barely made it to the small town of Pak Mong before it got dark.

That day we found no place to have lunch and when we stopped to ask where the next restaurant was we were informed that it was far away. Wej has an amazing ability to communicate with strangers and she and the housewife joked and laughed a lot and it all ended up in Wej preparing an omelette in her kitchen. Imagine stopping outside a complete strangers house and 15 minutes later being busy cooking your lunch in that strangers kitchen – it takes some charm and communication skill to get that far…. 

Thailand is usually called the land of smiles. Cycling in Laos proved that Laos is the land of the even bigger smiles. We liked China and the chinese people, but they were a bit reserved. It only took us one hour of cycling in Laos to realise that the laotians seem to be much more outgoing towards bypassing strangers. There is always a big smile and everywhere the children shout ”sabaidee” (hello) and wave at us. It will be very interesting to see if it will be like this when we ride across the Thai countryside.

Arriving into Luang Prabang was like arriving into a giant tourist attraction. Hotels and guesthouses everywhere and cosy restaurants serving nice food line the streets. There are plenty of foreign tourists here and we have spent a two days relaxing, eating and getting a very needed massage for our aching muscles.

Tomorrow we will start the four day ride to Laos capital Vientienne. I will apply for visa to Thailand there and while we wait there we will sit on the shores of the Mekhong river, drinking a Beer Lao and watching Thailand on the other side. 

P.S. Some of the photos in this post is taken by Greta.

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Day 156-159 (Luang Prabang – Vientiene)

When Greta’s flight passed over our guesthouse I was busy cleaning and checking my bicycle. It was nice to get back its original colours from underneath all the layers of dust from northern Laos and south China. What wasn’t as nice was to discover a broken spoke in my rear wheel, but I am glad that I discovered it then and not when we were packing to leave the following morning. 

The two broken spokes I have previously got on this tour have both occured when hotel staff have moved my locked bike without lifting the rear wheel. I don’t know if this was the case this time, but at least I got to practise how to change spokes and true a wheel without proper tools.

We have read many blogs telling about how hard it is to cycle in Laos. The road is supposed to be bad, the mountains tall and steep and the temperature like a pizza oven. When cycling towards Luang Prabang we started to think that those accounts were severely exaggerated – we started to think that cycling through Laos was like a walk in the park…… Then came the climbs south of Luang Prabang….

In the deserts of western China we could tick off our first no.2, i.e. +200 km in a day. On the first day after leaving Luang Prabang we could tick of the second no. 2 which is climbing more than 2000 meter in a day.

After uphill comes downhill and the following day was going to be fun. That was at least the plan until I woke up in the middle of the night and felt all my joints were stiff and my back was aching. All of these are classic symptoms that tell me I will soon get ill and when I woke up in the morning I didn’t feel well at all.

It took ages for me to pack my stuff and we delayed our departure a couple of times until we around mid day decided to not cycle. I went back to bed and spent the rest of the day sleeping or reading my book.

I need to apply for a visa to Thailand and since it takes two working days and we have decided to cross the border on Saturday I had to apply no later than on Thursday morning.
The unplanned restday wrecked our plans of a nice and gentle ride towards Vientiene and now we had to speed up in order to make up for lost time.

I felt much better after resting for a day but I was still a bit weak. The aim was to cycle 150 km to the town of Vangvien. It went well for about 100 km but when my speedo showed 110 km I completely lost all my power. We stopped at a shop at the far end of a small village to buy a softdrink and discuss what to do.

Going back is never an option but I would have needed a pack of hungry wolves behind me to muster enough energy to ride the remaining 35 km. It wasn’t simply going to work. Wej who is a master of communication had already started a conversation with the young lady running the shop. Without telling me she asked the lady if we could pitch our tent somewhere near her house which was behind her shop. The answer was ”no, it’s not necessary because you will sleep in our house tonight”….

The family then fed us and prepared mattresses for us to sleep on in their living room. Meeting complete strangers like this is the best part of this trip and here in Laos it is even better since we are able to talk directly without using dictionaries or body language.

We were still delayed and it was almost exactly 200 km from our host family’s house to the Thai embassy in Vientiene. It could be possible to cycle in a day but the sun sets so early now that there is simply no time to ride that far before it gets dark. Our plan was then to ride as far as possible or at least 150 km and do a very early start on Thursday in order to make it in time to the Thai embassy.

When we set out in the early hours it was still misty and a bit cold but as soon as the sun came up, it chased away both the mist and the nice temperatures. We stopped to have breakfast in Vangvien which is a famous tourist town. 

At 17.00 we saw a nice looking motel. We still had about 35 minutes to sunset, but we were satisfied since we had reached within striking distance to Vientiene so we decided to check in at that motel. The place looked good and had a huge garden, but there was nobody there and we were close to giving up when someone finally turned up. Investing in a nice motel but not have any staff to take care of guests looks to me as a recipe for a future bankruptcy. 

Our bikes were loaded at 5.45 the next morning and we set out in complete darkness. The dawn came not long after and at 6.15 it was full daylight.

Laos used to be a french colony and being a colonized by foreign masters must be national tragedy on an astronomical level but at least there was one little small advantage in being colonized by France – the ”khao jii”.

Think of a freshly baked french baguette, think of it grilled over a charcoal fire and filled with yummy indigenous laotian fillings such as sweet hairy pork (moo yo), pork paté, coriander and spicy sauses. It is a perfect mix of local cuisine and french baking traditions. We had it every morning when we visited Vientiene 8 years ago and when we arrived in Luang Prabang we wanted to have it again, but in Luang Prabang they don’t grill the baguettes first which is a major mistake that won’t make them anywhere close to as tasty as the grilled ones that are for sale here in Vientiene.

A ”khao jii” baguette should be grilled on the spot and served with the very strong and sweet Lao coffee. We have enjoyed it every morning we have been here and it is a reason in itself to some day return…. 

We made it in time to the Thai embassy and today I got my passport back endorsed with the last visa and we are prepared to cross the 14th border into the 15th and final country of this journey.

And being in the fourth capital city on this tour we had to get the photos taken in front of its most wellknown landmark, the Pratu Xai….

We try to carry a minimum of equipment on this tour and I think all of you have seen my white and green cycling jersey so many times now that you are fed up with it. Well think of me then… It’s the only one I have and I have been wearing it almost every cycling day since Bulgaria and I have handwashed it in wash basins in public toilets, streams, lakes, showers or anywhere else where there has been some running water, but rarely in a washing machine. 

Take a good look at it in the photo below because it is the last time you will see it…. 

Our dear N’Arm and her friend Kong have designed the logo that is on our business card and now they have even designed new cycling jerseys for us. We got them delivered to our hotel this morning and we are more than satisfied and owe both of them a big thank you. We will wear these cycling shirts with pride from tomorrow morning when we cross the Mekhong river into Thailand and all the remaining way to Bangkok.