22/4/25
We’d started leaving a bit later in recent days. Waking at 6am. The extra hour in bed was good for morale. We swung by the Café Amazon at the petrol station 100m up the road. This time we waited 10 minutes for the coffee machine to be up and running. We popped a bit of coconut milk in our coffee. A welcome return to our lives.
We were stuck on the 13 again today. Another slog. Not turning anywhere made everything a little bit more boring. It was all very similar but we were still enjoying Laos. For one, the people were super friendly. It was almost the second land of smiles. The road varied in quality but it was mostly smooth tarmac. The occasional pothole to navigate around. The traffic was slow. It felt very safe. We were still crossing tributary after tributary of the Mekong. Bone dry river beds usually.
We felt guilty for not finding the landscape and terrain more interesting. It was Laos for heavens sake. But it was just a boring place. The road was surrounded by houses. We couldn’t see any hills. We spent most of the time looking at the people. Their lives were so very different to ours. The saddest part was the amount of rubbish. Some people were living in and around it. Their accommodations were often the bare minimum. Abandoned and unfinished buildings were everywhere. Perhaps Covid really hit them hard here.
We stopped to fill up our bottles with ice. Its low density meant we only ended up with half a bottle full. It was cheaper, not in plastic and we’d have something colder for longer. We also copied ourselves from the day before. An electrolyte mix consisting of salt, orange juice and water.
There were a few guesthouses in the area. We were keen to get at least 70k for the day so picked Ying Luck, the last one. Also with the best reviews. We stopped 4 times in the last 8km. First we stopped at a restaurant. We were only after rice. The only person eating there, a man, piped up and asked using in English what we were after. It was noodles only. We took our opportunity. He seemed to understand our request but the first bowl still came out full of meat. Even a native couldn’t get vegan food!Another try and we had just noodles and leaves with beansprouts.
The next few stops were to gather some fruit. We had understood there were no shops near the hotel. But there seemed to be plenty. We ended up with fried banana, baby pineapple, watermelon and melon. It didn’t seem to be so sparse as has been suggested.
When we arrived at Ying Luck the gate was shut. It looked closed. We shouted “Sabaidee”. A man in a wide brimmed hat and a mask appeared and waved his arm vigorously. We weren’t sure if he was telling us to get lost. It was actually a gesture to slide the gate.
He was a very grumpy man. But the room was perfectly nice. We maintained our polite demeanour. It was 200k Kip. A big air conditioning unit on the wall. The television didn’t have any other buttons but a power button. When we asked for a remote to control the volume, the exceedingly grumpy woman insisted it didn’t work. But it did. She just didn’t understand we’d be plugging in our own device.
We snacked the rest of the day away. Lots of bananas, fresh and battered, with plentiful peanuts. We watched copious amounts of the Shield, started a show called the Flight Attendant and saw an episode of Matlock. It never stops being unusual to be hidden away in a box for 8 hours of daylight but it didn’t stop it being the right thing to do. We had our eyes set on an early night.
Surly They Won't Make It 