Yesterday we hired a motorbike, a Chinese made 125cc mo-ped that feels more like a huge plastic toy than it does a mo-ped, to drive the 215km journey down to Pakse. No fuel gage and no speedometer where frown in for free by the very nice gentlemen who let us hire his bike.
After getting some greasy fried eggs in our tummies, it wasn’t long before we were heading down the single road that would take us all the way down to our first destination. The first half of the drive was really easy going… we passed hundreds of little villages all about a km apart that were surrounded by beautiful mountains and fields.
A local going from a to b
We stopped of at a temple and watched this young monks playing around.
There were very few cars were on the road, the road conditions were great and the sun was beaming down on my neck and forearms; it felt great to be out in the Laos country side revving along with a huge back in between my legs – This is just how I imagined it would be. Great.
Getting some petrol with this old hand pump petrol machine!
The second half however, was a completely different story. It had started raining, and if you have visited South East Asia before, you’ll know what I mean by saying the rain is different here than in the west. It falls down hard and sometimes the rain drops are the size of golf balls. The good thing about the rain here is that it comes and goes in short bursts – normally stopping anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.
This is when we knew we were heading into some serious rain!
We stopped 3 times waiting for the rain to stop, however on our last stop we had waited so long that it was becoming dark – We had no choice but to just embrace what nature was throwing at us and continue the 70km that was remaining in the rain. The rain was hitting my face to the point of it was stinging, and the poor visibility due to no lighting made for one exhausting journey.
It felt great when we finally arrived and was able to check into a hotel, was able to get a shower to wipe the gunk from my face and most importantly, open a few bottle of beer Laos :)
I wonder why but the Laos looks exactly same like the western part of Nepal. Same kind of roads, same houses and almost same dress that is worn by the lady in the makeshift petrol pump.