Cycling the bolaven plateau, Laos
Cycling the Bolaven Plateau in Laos.
Being awake often and at odd hours means that I don’t wake up till 6.40, and I can’t even remember any of the dreams, there’s just a feeling of mild anxiety. This is just not how I prefer to do it – I’ve been blowing my nose all night and waking with a dry mouth from not being able to breathe through my nose. I had tethered my bike to the banister on the hut’s verandah but a decent hacksaw would have been all that was needed to saw the hut in half and walk off with the bike. Luckily the bike’s still there but the hut’s gone – just joking. No breakfast in sight so I cycle to the Lao border where, over the other side I can get a bus to Pakse the regional capital.
It’s like a song-thaew but bigger with three benches, a sam-thaew I suppose. It is one of those situations where the driver will not go until it is full, so we wait there a good 40 minutes before he starts the engine and latecomers suddenly surge aboard, squeezing the contents of the market into every nook and cranny. It is packed – he counts his passengers out loud to be sure of the fare and stops at yi-sip gow, twenty-nine: it’s like a student record attempt on a phone booth. Well at least the trip proper has started. Well stop started, we go ten metres and there is a customs check, then another 50 to a drivers’ papers check – the passengers all groan at this one.
My new travel-chums are mostly betel nut mouthed old ladies yakking away merrily. Younger folks have T-shirts with English writing on them – it is often nonsense in this part of the world, like ‘Strawberry rainy house, a musical chance heart’, or ‘Lucky Mary surprise enchanting roads’. I assume that words are chosen at random and no one understands them anyway, least of all the people who are going to read them on a bus. One girl knows what her T-shirt says though as she keeps masking the writing from me with her rucksack. Her bright day-glow pink top like one of those CHOOSE LIFE shirts, sitting not two yards from my face, says in big letters, ‘Fuck Off Wankers’ - a masterfully succinct message in its way. And she knows I know what it means and she knows I know she knows I know. This makes her very embarrassed. And so she should be, the scallywag!
Being awake often and at odd hours means that I don’t wake up till 6.40, and I can’t even remember any of the dreams, there’s just a feeling of mild anxiety. This is just not how I prefer to do it – I’ve been blowing my nose all night and waking with a dry mouth from not being able to breathe through my nose. I had tethered my bike to the banister on the hut’s verandah but a decent hacksaw would have been all that was needed to saw the hut in half and walk off with the bike. Luckily the bike’s still there but the hut’s gone – just joking. No breakfast in sight so I cycle to the Lao border where, over the other side I can get a bus to Pakse the regional capital.
It’s like a song-thaew but bigger with three benches, a sam-thaew I suppose. It is one of those situations where the driver will not go until it is full, so we wait there a good 40 minutes before he starts the engine and latecomers suddenly surge aboard, squeezing the contents of the market into every nook and cranny. It is packed – he counts his passengers out loud to be sure of the fare and stops at yi-sip gow, twenty-nine: it’s like a student record attempt on a phone booth. Well at least the trip proper has started. Well stop started, we go ten metres and there is a customs check, then another 50 to a drivers’ papers check – the passengers all groan at this one.
My new travel-chums are mostly betel nut mouthed old ladies yakking away merrily. Younger folks have T-shirts with English writing on them – it is often nonsense in this part of the world, like ‘Strawberry rainy house, a musical chance heart’, or ‘Lucky Mary surprise enchanting roads’. I assume that words are chosen at random and no one understands them anyway, least of all the people who are going to read them on a bus. One girl knows what her T-shirt says though as she keeps masking the writing from me with her rucksack. Her bright day-glow pink top like one of those CHOOSE LIFE shirts, sitting not two yards from my face, says in big letters, ‘Fuck Off Wankers’ - a masterfully succinct message in its way. And she knows I know what it means and she knows I know she knows I know. This makes her very embarrassed. And so she should be, the scallywag!
The bus pulls into Pakse which has a bank, thus qualifying as a regional ‘hub’, nothing else about it is very hubby. Whilst swapping Baht for Kip, I notice girls in the counting house with huge piles of banknotes which are so dirty that they are wearing facemasks to ward off the money-germs – maybe it’s a robbery, a very bold one. I can’t find a restaurant and really need to eat, in the end I settle for a bowl of pho before setting out at 10.45. As foretold in the guidebook, the road is entirely uphill. The landscape is brown, the air is hot and the gradient is unrelenting; it’s going to be one of those ‘What am I doing this for?’ days. I am cycling through the hottest part of the day, (it is definitely in the 30s), there’s a fine line between healthy exercise and harmful pursuits and this is at the masochistic end of the scale. It’s bordering on silly.
The road climbs 3000 feet in 55 kms, my pedals are whizzing round in low gear, I must look like a hamster in its treadmill – I feel like one. I make frequent stops for drinks or just stand astride the bike, panting whilst glugging on my bike-bottle. After 20 Ks I pass the vocational college which offers courses in livestock and dress-making, I shall keep a sharp lookout for cows in frocks. And I do hope that they are polka dotty and that the whole thing is finished off with a bow on that tuft of hair between the horns, it’s important to get the details right, but I’m sure they tell you all that at the college.
I also keep passing signs for Ban Lak and each time the distance to the town is greater. First it is 30 kms, later it is 35 (5 kms later I guess), then it is 40. This puzzles me as I try to visualize a map with a road loop feature that could make sense of this. I can’t work it out but if I understand things correctly, you can never get to Ban Lak, even if you come from there.
The guidebook suggests 3-5 hours for this trip and I usually come in somewhere in the middle of their range but this is a hard day for me. I am gobbing phlegm, can’t breathe, have got stomach cramps and am tired from lack of sleep - oh yes, and I’m soaked with sweat. So it’s six hours in the end, my second worst ever ride at some awful average speed. As I wobble into Paksong on the plateau, I trundle past a game of volleyball and a game of takraw (like volley but played with feet – three per side) on the tranquil village field. Everyone cuts a leisurely dash except me, I look a mess, like Fungus the Bogeyman on his bike. I find the Paksong Guesthouse and over the road sitting outside her shop is the girl in the pink T-shirt – it is obviously working as there are no wankers in sight. It’s early evening and I can feel the elevation in the cool air as I sit on the verandah sipping a cold Beer Lao - liquid gold - which is so satisfying after such a punishing day. I half expect a lynch-mob with pitch-forks and lighted torches from the village: “Send the monster out landlord, we know he’s in there, don’t stand in our way, we will not be deterred,” but they don’t find me.
Early morning is great – I can see my breath as I tuck into warm bread and butter in the barn where a stuffed gibbon is nailed to a post. As taxidermy goes, I have seen better, the bare femur, for a start, rather loses it points for execution. The animal looks like brown candy-floss on a stick. Breakfast is by far my favourite meal of the day and as an early riser I am nearly always up before everyone else; I like the solitude, the calm and the hope for whatever the day might bring. Terrible things perhaps when you are on the Bolaven Plateau – we shall see. The first 40 kms comes up double-quick. It is fresh, bright, clear, downhill mostly, and the road surface is smooth. Yesterday’s woes have evaporated with the dew and now I remember why I do this thing. It is green up here on the plateau with lots of trees and bushes.
Everyone on the plateau shouts hello and beams a huge smile, even the adults – these are the best farang-wavers yet, they positively rush to the road when they see me coming – as a family; “Come on Grandpa, look lively – all together now, helloooo.” It’s as if the plateau is a Conan Doyle lost world where innocence has survived intact. Their happiness is so infectious it has left me in a carefree mood, “Helloooo”, I yodel back. I get to Tad Lo covered in a fine red film caused by cars coming the other way which created a cloud so comprehensively enveloping that it could have been a plane crop-dusting. Luckily, when I check in at the hotel there is a hose in the garden so I am able to jet my bike clean, followed by myself. The guesthouse overlooks the Tad Lo Waterfall on the Set River, it is really picturesque but I decline the $17 rooms overlooking the falls, and settle for the ‘garden view’.
TBC
The road climbs 3000 feet in 55 kms, my pedals are whizzing round in low gear, I must look like a hamster in its treadmill – I feel like one. I make frequent stops for drinks or just stand astride the bike, panting whilst glugging on my bike-bottle. After 20 Ks I pass the vocational college which offers courses in livestock and dress-making, I shall keep a sharp lookout for cows in frocks. And I do hope that they are polka dotty and that the whole thing is finished off with a bow on that tuft of hair between the horns, it’s important to get the details right, but I’m sure they tell you all that at the college.
I also keep passing signs for Ban Lak and each time the distance to the town is greater. First it is 30 kms, later it is 35 (5 kms later I guess), then it is 40. This puzzles me as I try to visualize a map with a road loop feature that could make sense of this. I can’t work it out but if I understand things correctly, you can never get to Ban Lak, even if you come from there.
The guidebook suggests 3-5 hours for this trip and I usually come in somewhere in the middle of their range but this is a hard day for me. I am gobbing phlegm, can’t breathe, have got stomach cramps and am tired from lack of sleep - oh yes, and I’m soaked with sweat. So it’s six hours in the end, my second worst ever ride at some awful average speed. As I wobble into Paksong on the plateau, I trundle past a game of volleyball and a game of takraw (like volley but played with feet – three per side) on the tranquil village field. Everyone cuts a leisurely dash except me, I look a mess, like Fungus the Bogeyman on his bike. I find the Paksong Guesthouse and over the road sitting outside her shop is the girl in the pink T-shirt – it is obviously working as there are no wankers in sight. It’s early evening and I can feel the elevation in the cool air as I sit on the verandah sipping a cold Beer Lao - liquid gold - which is so satisfying after such a punishing day. I half expect a lynch-mob with pitch-forks and lighted torches from the village: “Send the monster out landlord, we know he’s in there, don’t stand in our way, we will not be deterred,” but they don’t find me.
Early morning is great – I can see my breath as I tuck into warm bread and butter in the barn where a stuffed gibbon is nailed to a post. As taxidermy goes, I have seen better, the bare femur, for a start, rather loses it points for execution. The animal looks like brown candy-floss on a stick. Breakfast is by far my favourite meal of the day and as an early riser I am nearly always up before everyone else; I like the solitude, the calm and the hope for whatever the day might bring. Terrible things perhaps when you are on the Bolaven Plateau – we shall see. The first 40 kms comes up double-quick. It is fresh, bright, clear, downhill mostly, and the road surface is smooth. Yesterday’s woes have evaporated with the dew and now I remember why I do this thing. It is green up here on the plateau with lots of trees and bushes.
Everyone on the plateau shouts hello and beams a huge smile, even the adults – these are the best farang-wavers yet, they positively rush to the road when they see me coming – as a family; “Come on Grandpa, look lively – all together now, helloooo.” It’s as if the plateau is a Conan Doyle lost world where innocence has survived intact. Their happiness is so infectious it has left me in a carefree mood, “Helloooo”, I yodel back. I get to Tad Lo covered in a fine red film caused by cars coming the other way which created a cloud so comprehensively enveloping that it could have been a plane crop-dusting. Luckily, when I check in at the hotel there is a hose in the garden so I am able to jet my bike clean, followed by myself. The guesthouse overlooks the Tad Lo Waterfall on the Set River, it is really picturesque but I decline the $17 rooms overlooking the falls, and settle for the ‘garden view’.
TBC