The Friendship Tour

All tours begin and end the same, with O getting disassembled and wrapped.

  It’s the in-between of that process that the stories unfold, the bucket gets filled.  This adventure found us visiting a new country for the first time in years.  We landed in Luang Prabang, Laos with our boxed tandem, a couple of panniers carrying our clothes and enough US currency to get us through immigration.  We then sourced a local sim card for the phone from a young woman sitting at a rickety card table outside the miniscule airport and figured out the ATM machine and guessed at the currency, our first withdrawal of a million Kip was about $60US.   

Our hotel was on the Mekong, the river of legends.  After dropping off our stuff we went out for a Beer Lao and lunch.  Luang Prabang is a World Heritage touristed town.  It has everything; food, scenery, adventure, history, markets, handicrafts, and delightful people.  We spent four days walking the town, the bamboo bridges over the river, and drinking coconut water at the Obama cafe.   

From LP we took to the national highway which was pot-holed, often gravel, winding, full of semi-trucks hauling stuff to and from China or Beer Lao about the country.  We rode through a rain forest on a blue-sky day, and could hear the water dripping from the leaves on trees and the bamboo growing.  We rode through small Hmong villages full of children that delighted in yelling “hello” or “goodbye” and would giggle joyously when we would respond.  We ate soup for breakfast, lunch and often for dinner, sometimes with congealed blood or a chicken foot floating in the broth, sometimes with very little floating except a few rice noodles.  We stayed wherever we could and were thankful we were too tired to care and grateful that despite the appearance of the establishments we were not bothered by insects or other life forms.  After a few days of rural poverty and a lot of up, we found ourselves coasting down into Vang Vieng.  VV is a hippy tourist town.  Lots of kids having fun.  We got stoned just riding through the streets.  We stayed a couple of days, talking to people, getting massages and eating something besides soup.  From VV we rode to Vientiane, the capital and home to (for now) to some old friends.    We visited Tom (one of the first potters to volunteer to help us start a pottery project in Umpium Mai refugee camp) and his wife Andrea and their kids.  We had not seen Tom and Andrea in 23 years.  It was a magical evening catching up on their lives, meeting their teens and hearing about their plans.  The next evening was a visit with Vanessa and Collin and their children, we had not seen them in 12 years and had a lot of catching up to do.  Both couples were working on interesting projects and had a lot of insight into Laos and their feelings about the U.S. 

The stirring of memories kept Curt and I engaged in conversation while we cycled to the Thai border to change our kip into baht, get stamped out of Laos and ride over the Mekong into Thailand. 

Immigration in Thailand was easy until they tried to charge us for bringing in two bikes instead our one, very long bike with two seats.  We got that sorted with our limited Thai and rode into a parking lot and found a young woman sitting at a card table selling Thai sim cards.  With a working phone and a new stamp in our passports we rode off through rural Thailand toward our home for the night.  Curt and I speak pretty good “food Thai” and passible “how do I get there and hotel Thai” and he speaks a little bit of general Thai so we were able to eat, sleep, find our way and sometimes get help if needed.  Our riding goal in Thailand was to ride to Ubon (S.E Thailand near the Laos/Cambodian borders) to visit Lep, our Karen/Thai daughter in the area she was doing research. Ubon is in Isan, a flat, rural district of Thailand that we’d never visited.

Lep and her colleague, Ice, were staying at the same hotel as Curt and I.  When they were working or attending meetings we explored.  When the kids weren’t working, they took us on excursions, to national parks, to see drum and gong builders and to eat.  We ate in small villages and at road side stands, we ate on floating barges, at sushi restaurants, in gardens and at giant cafes, eating was our main activity and we celebrated each meal and snack.  In Thailand eating is Sanook, a serious fun having event.  After four days with us it was time for them to begin researching in earnest and for us to continue our tour.  We headed west with a new goal, to reach the beaches on the Gulf of Thailand. 

The temperature in the afternoons was between 37/39 (98 degrees) and the smoke from the burning of rice fields hung low in the tropical heat.  We got up every morning at the butt-crack and road hard, flat miles, only stopping to buy ice to fill our water bottles and to choke down a fast lunch.  We checked into our rooms by 2:00 when possible to crank the aircon and shower off the road grit.  Our routine was up and out by 7am and in by 2:00 until we reached the sea.

Once on the gulf we enjoyed a week of beach bliss.  We rode short days with mild sea breezes pushing us along the tropical coast.  The smell of smoke and exhaust was replaced with the smell of the ocean, flowers and mango, pineapple, jackfruit, durian, tamarind and rambutan.  We swam, walked, tanned, ate and beered on the beach.  We were in a “mai pen rai”  (no worries) state of being.

And then it was time to ride toward, and into Bangkok.  Five weeks had gone. 

Back in Bangkok we first had to first recover from the harrowing ride through the city with more or less the same population as the entire country of Portugal.  Once recovered we disassembled O and put her back in her boxes.  While O slept we experienced Bangkok.  We took the river taxi up and down the Chao Praia, sky-trained to the malls and food courts, tuk tuk’d to the street markets and walked kilometers.  We shopped, got massaged, and we ate.   Lep was back in Bangkok so we dined and played together one last time, group hugged, and said our teary eyed “see you next year” and we flew home. 

We are so grateful to have not only each other but our health and the support of our family and friends, without all those ingredients we could not do the crazy stuff we continue to do.

Thank you,

C’s