Still cycling in Laos

Sabaidee!
So now our next attempt to include some photos but it is very slow..two photos in 20 minutes...anyway, therefore you get a little bit more text!
We made it to the capital Vietiane with our speedy japanese friend and spent a few very needed relaxing days in the city. Very small, not too much to see but relaxing all the same. Found a great Scandinavian bakery and thanks to the french colonisation some great baguettes. Sadly we here had to say goodbye to Tadashi as his next and last journey ends cycling to Bangkok, we thoroughly enjoyed the cycling experience and stories (of which he had plenty) and would love to meet again.
Off again on ourselves, this time heading south where not many tourist ever venture. The scenery changed completely, giving us flat roads as long as we followed the mekong river which stretched about 300kms. Only a few guest houses along the way, which are often used as love hotels at the same time! A lot of the Thai or Lao business man have at least another girl next to their wife which she doesn't know about??? anyway, this is the place to meet and we were wondering sometimes why it is all pink and very cheesy romantic rooms...but very clean and we just had no other choice, ether!
We hit on a small problem on day 2 after leaving the city. getting to one of the larger towns we had seen late in the afternoon we found a guest house and relised that our money had run out completley, we located a bank only to find out there was no atm and could only change travellers cheques, but having left these at the room and it closing in 5 minutes we asked wether we could do the transaction the day after. the only problem travelling is that you seem to loose track of days and thinking it was fri we walked to the bank early the next day and stood at the gates wondering why it was closed ad what to do next. After quite a while we relised it was sat, the local bank shuts on the weekend and we were stuck. Aggggghhhhh, the lovely boy from our guest house had to lend us the bus fare to go back to the city and we retraced our last 2 days on bus to reach an atm!! The joueney was def an experience however as there was no more space for us so we sat on very wobbly plastic chairs in the isle the whole way, praying for our lives as the driver seemed to have a death wish and by inches missed a small child crossing the road swerving to the other side of the road and creating an uproar on the bus!
Problem solved and back on the road south we stopped for the night only to bump into 4 other bike tourers staying at the same place! 2 from Thailand who have been cycling for 6 years around the world and 2 french guys who have juat finnished India and Bangladesh, great to meet others and hear there stories.It was here that Nils got his first offer from a Laos lady who fell in love with his beard and hairs both of which are never seen on a Laos man! However we think she wanted to get her daughter in with a westoner! After a short and funny conversation with our new Thai friends they all decided that it was one of the French guys who was the most handsome without a girlfriend so the heat was taken away and mr French soon went a shade of red!
Today we cycled 100kms almost with no break, very exhausting although pretty flat, however we didnt want to stop as once we did our bodies sweated more sweat than we cound have though possible, sweat in the eyes is never a fun thing, so pedaling the whole day is actually a much nicer experience. We visited a few schools along the way and handed out books to the head teachers that we had bought in Luang Probang, as most schools do not have such things and it was really great to give something to the children.Outside is one huge rain storm thankfully one that has waited untill after cycling, lightning and thunder and possibly some floods tomorrow. Although we are quite experienced now at cycling through floods as hopefully a few pictures will show. One day we went through a whole village that was washed out and the water came up to our knees! The locals watched as we sped through and cheered us with laughs and splashes.

so, now finally some photos, like always in random order and supersizable when you double click on the pic. Enjoy!!

Tadashi and George fighting through the floods
Goodbye Tadashi!!!

rain brings flooding every year
today we dress like locals, he he!

(don't repeat this at home, special qualified doubles)

A close encounter with a racing pig!
A well needed break in a village along the way
At the top!

One thirsty George after a day of climbing Looking back at our path upwards

Setting off for our Laos adventure
Up and away in the mountains of Northern Laos

After 5 days one silk scarf is finnished
Wading through the flooded walkways of the waterfall

Bridget, Ben, Chris and George


Birthday party of one of the workers in green valley

our little bungalow we stayed in for two weeks
Nils cracking his first coconut fresh from the tree

Laos i want to marry you....

Hello you, thanks for calling in again!

We made our way down to Vang Vieng, had some hard days of cycling but some very good experiences. Let's start at the beginning, Luang Prabang, the old residence city of the king when Laos was still a monarchy is very beautiful and has a very relaxing vibe to it and lots to see and do. We didn't plan to but we ended up meeting a very nice French couple which are traveling the world since 4 years and went kayaking together with them for two days. There were some massive rapids in between the flat bits and everybody capsized at least once, but it was great fun and the stay in a little village over night was very interesting. We slept together with all the locals in a big bedroom everybody together without walls in between, no shower except water out of buckets and the men wash first before the women allowed to wash...at night we had to drink the self made Lao Lao (which is a schnaps made from rice and tasted like old meet, about 50% alcohol) and teached them to play mau mau which they loved...

When we came back to our Guesthouse we had some pastis with our french friends and found out a japanese cyclist arrived. Takashi Sato his name, cycling around the word since 6 years (made far over 100000kms already), just cycled down from tibet through china, waited one more day so we can cycle together down to Vietiane (the new Capital city). The first day took us up into the mountains, over two hills, more than 80kms and 2200m uphill and the last 4 hours in pouring rain... the whole thing on a diet of noodle soup and cake. But we finally made it and the views on the next day which we spent over 1600m were so wonderful that we did not mind all the effort. After a 44km downhill we arrived in Kasi and the views again, never seen anything like that before! There on the market we saw our first dog to eat, they had a little market store with only dog meat, like small puppies fresh from the barbecue or bigger dogs with or without fur, yummy! In all the villages we came past we had to say sabaidee ten thousand times because the children would come running out on the street and want to do high five, waving while you are rolling past, really amazingly friendly! The last day we did a relaxing 60kms to Vang Vieng, where i am sitting now, sad because i cannot upload photos again, because they use satellite internet. Well, you will be rewarded with some very nice photos soon...

Anyway, except of some of Montezuma revenge we do have a great time here and it is just such an fascinating country, come and visit!

You will hear from us soon again, stay tuned for the photos!

the pumpkins

Climbing Ton Sai and Cycling from Chiang Mai

hello!

So... from Bangkok we went straight to Ton Sai, for a bit of relaxation and of course climbing! After a pretty long journey on bus and boat we were happy to get to a beach not only beautiful but surrounded by climbing heaven! thinking we would only stay for a week, we eventually ended up there for 2(would have been much longer if Nils got his way!). We did a lot of climbing, bouldering,deep water soloing and kayaking. maybe not the most relaxing beach holiday! think we will re visit this beautiful part of Thailand as there is definatley much more rock un climbed or found.

After, much discussion we decided not to stay down south, we could have easily blown our budget on more climbing, snorkling,diving ... but decided we wanted to get on our bikes before our visa's ran out, so back to bangkok it was. Thankfully the bikes were still neatly kept in the storage room as we left then, and we head off that day to the train station(which is not as easy as it sounds with the Bangkok madness of traffic). This then lead to a 15hr journey in 3rd class to Ciang Mai, however uncomfortable it was a great way to see the countryside around you and experience proper thai travel.

Chiang Mai is a really lovely city, easy to get around by bike, lots of temples and markets to visit, very arty and lots of culture, very different to the south. We visited the zoo and saw many animals that we learnt will be in the wild in laos, so we are on the look out now for approaching tigers, pumas, elephants,bears,snakes and crocodiles!! Still a city is a city...lots of traffic and people and we quickly got on the bikes and started to cycle up(up,up,up...) to the countryside. Wow this just got better and better, we cycled through remote farming villages, hill tribes,lush jungle, steep rice fields on the hills and for a week we were the only white people we saw. The heat of the day time is amazing and venturing up nearly 2000meters in the increasingly hot weather was to say the least challenging! but the people egged us on chearing and waving as we passed, sweating like pigs on a barbie and trying to conserve water, we made it! i could not describe how lush and beautiful the scenery is , its just breath taking, and views like i have never seen before. we came very close to the burmese border, and finally hit the mekong where we looked over and could see laos only a few meters away across the river which flows all the way from Tibet. Something we both found amazing and hard to comprehend. Once we reached the boarder town we travelled down this river for 2 days, to Luang Probang(laos). Again this journey is pretty slow and hard on the bum, but well worth it. And here we are, in laos, chilling in the world heritage city for a bit and then back on the bikes to head south. We hope you like the pictures( these will be added soon when we find an internet cafe that lets you upload). Life is good,and we are getting increasingly brown and getting into the asian life style. Love to you all the Pumpkins! x x x

Bangkok

Hello everybody, this time from Asia!

The pumpkins on a new continent!

Very exciting for us, especially for Nils, because he has not been here before! We had about 10 hours flight instead of 7 hours because of the strong headwind, couple of times we had to put our seatbelts on because of the turbulences in the 747-300 from Jetstar, "Touristbomber" is the right word because it is crammed and you don't have much space.
Arriving in the brand new Airport with the second highest capacity of planes landing and starting in the world didn't seem to be the same country than outside. One step in front of the door and you get blasted away from the humidity and temperature, about 32C, that means sweating a LOT!!!
Fortunately it was much easier than we thought to get the bikes to the city and we travelled by local bus to Khao San Road, the only place we new, crowed by westerners and lots of cheap accomodation. Very easy to find a room, double with fan for about 380 baat, 11 Au$, not even 4 pounds. Quite hot and with no daylight but after our adventures day we didn't care too much, anyway better than a tent and no cockroaches in sight!
We were really lucky that we made it finally to bangkok because when we arrived at the airport in brisbane, luckily quite early, wanting to check in, they told us that there was no ticket booked and we wouldn't be able to fly. After a while we were advised that to travel to bangkok you need a valid ticket going out of thailand, to a valid destination, meaning england or germany in our case. That hit us hard because neither of us had money to pay a flight that we didn't really need, bargains were not available at the airport and all that under time pressure because our flight was waiting. After a lengthy conversation with a very nice and patient Quantas lady we knew what to do: we had to buy a fully refundable flight to london or frankfurt and than call them once in bangkok to get the refund. Fully refundable means not cheap, over 8000 Au$!!!! So we stood there, thinking, if we couldn't get 8000$ from somewhere we would loose our flights and the money we payd to bangkok, get stuck in australia so george would overstay her visa which means possibly a fine, excellent! After trying all the cards we had, we could just cover one flight. So we had to phone Nils father and get him to pay over the phone for the other flight and convince him that he gets the money refunded...the time was getting very close to check in time but we finally made it after all this unexpected trouble.

Back to bangkok, very busy city, all the locals quite used to foreigner, called farang here, just stalls and stalls and stalls, everything you can dream of and pay for it you can buy here very cheap. So we spend most of the first day, while recovering from the long flight, eating and exploring around the city. The next days we had exciting things to do like the first tuk tuk drive(got ripped off straight away, we found out later), looking at temples, trying all kinds of food, wandering around the Chinatown, very crazy place! One highlight was the floating market where we were the only farang around and sat together with locals eating freshly cooked food (radfish and battered chilli tofu with veges)yummy! Every moment here is adventure for us because it all works a bit different, like haggling for everything you buy (george still pays full price because to friendly to haggle, ha ha!)and we try to learn a couple of phrases in thai language. Quite difficult because one word can have five meanings depends on the tone in which you say it in!

We are now waiting for a bus that takes us to a 12 hour or more bus drive down south to Krabi. (Costs about 10Au$) We are looking forward to see the rural areas and locals that are maybe not as used to farang and the coast, climbing...

So stay tuned you will hear from us soon....

the pumpkins

assembling the bikes in our room
Khao San Road, shaped for tourists
good bye Australia, flying out of Brisbane
our bikes in boxes getting loaded in the plane
temple on the Chao Phraya River

The Grand palace in the distance
outdoor restaurant...great food and very spicy
tuk tuks in action in the always crowded streets


nursery in the suburbs
the floating market
eating on floating pontons
monks depend on daily offerings from locals because there are not aloud to have any posessions


no rules on the streets, cars and motorbikes squeezing through every little gap
public school
lots of markets supply the food for the 9 million people living in bangkok