Xam Neua

Arrived 29/6/2011 – the birthday ride!!

The stupid things you start doing when riding by yourself for so long.

My birthday and what a day it was!  Hills, steep steep steep hills and more hills that are really steep.  Hills. I think hills is about all I can say this stretch of road.  100km or something (my speedo stopped working because of the rain) and it has been the hardest day of riding I have had so far.

Looking down to Nam Neun.
This was only about 2km up the hill

Start of the day it was 6km from Nam Neun to Phulao and you guessed it , straight up a hill.  An hour later Phulao emerged – 6km of granny gear climbing and it wasn’t just to make it easy for myself it was fricken steep!!! 

The Top after an hour of climbing.  Happy I stayed
down in the valley there wasn't much up here.  

Of course Phulao was not the top I can’t even really remember when I got to ‘the top’.  Every time you have wee descent you just climb twice as high after.  When you think there can’t be any more hill and you make that final corner and there is another few kilometres waiting for you / challenging you to climb it.  The few times I got my GPS going it put me at around 1300m and I would have easily climbed about 3 – 5 big hills around this dropping maybe 600m each time, it went from cool to warm so I am guessing something around this for the descents.

Luckily for my birthday I was given about 3 hours of dry riding.  After that it was off and on with torrential rain, rain and showers.  It is an epic stretch of road that you really feel you are in the middle of nowhere being alone on the road for solid periods, looking across the endless mountain ranges and passing through very basic mountain villages.  A few attractions along way; ancient standing stones (would have been cool to see but didn’t have time and not overly inspired to go 6km up a dirt road in torrential rain) saw another waterfall just off the road and tried to find some hot springs but as usual the signs were unhelpful and I never found them after making about a 50 minute detour.  Did find a steep, muddy dirt road that clogged up my wheels so they couldn't really turn!  That was fun......pause........

Something-a-rather waterfall.
Just a good excuse to stop and eat.

...............NOT.  But you just have to laugh at yourself. Probably could have hunted around a bit more but I was over it and just wanted to get to Xam Neua.

A milestone for me and the road! 

No presents sent to me but I did get a great birthday present from some locals.  A couple of kids waved and said hello and started to run behind me then awesomely began pushing my bike and me up the hill.  It was for a good 200m or so pretty impressive I thought and totally fantastic!  Gave me a massive smile.  Laos kids rock!

There are no more directions.

Found some nice looking rice fields though.

The mighty Xam Neua

A 6pm arrival in Xam Neua, unknown hot spring detour didn’t help the cause, but it didn’t matter I was out of the hills, had easier days ahead and enjoyed a big feast for dinner.  Got talking to a German guy, Daniel who was doing a motorbike tour around Laos and Vietnam.  However, his tour came to a bit of a halt when he was riding in the rain down the stupidly steep hills and came off his bike splitting open his knee – very impressive.  He managed to get some help from some locals to get him back on his bike to make the last 60km to Xam Neau where the only doctors were.  Rough.  He had some photos of it and it looked bad ass – has made me a bit more cautious.

The past two days of riding although they have been a massive challenge but looking back they have made some of the best days.  Achievement, testing yourself, the feeling of isolation, seeing people’s look on their face when they see you and the people that are excited to see you.  It was definitely

Some epic, adventurous days.

Xam Neua Market.
At this site on June 30th 2011 a wee kid stood in the middle of the entrance, dropped his daks and took a leak. Hilarious, not a care in the world even with people trying to drive through.

The airport - awesome