Morning road

We got up relatively early today. The whole reason to go this far east was to reach a town called Vieng Xai (Victory town) to go on one of the half-day tours there. Vieng Xai is where the leadership of the communist faction hid during the civil war (and for the most part the CIA led a secret war against them while bombing Vietnam). The tours start either at 9 am or 1 pm. We decided on the earlier one. Our gear would stay in Sam Neua, in our hotel room, for the day.

The 30 km ride through the morning mist was quite magical. In good spirit, we arrived at the visitor center. Since we were early, we had plenty of time to get changed and even got treated to a cup of hot tea. Other than us, two families were on the morning tour with us. One Australian NZ expat couple with their two kids and a French family of five overlanding on push bikes.

Not much to see from the outside

The tour included visits to 7 caves in the area and was accompanied by a superb audio guide. The entire region was target of one of the heaviest bombing campaigns in world history. First by the Royal Lao and Thai Airforces, later directly by the US. In response, the politburo of the Patet Lao started to use and expand the natural limestone caves of this area for their base of operations. These natural bunkers developed over time into a shadow capital complete with school, hospital and even a theater over the 9 years of bombing. The living quarter caves of the seven politburo members were even fitted with airtight shelter rooms for fear of chemical weapons.

My right arm is still pretty useless after our crash yesterday. Therefore, I will cut the history lesson a bit short this time.

We were pretty impressed with the French family holding up great and biking from site to site on their assorted two wheelers. Since it was lunch time after the guided tour finished, and it is always nice to meet other overlanders, we asked them if they would like to go have lunch with us. They were keen, so we waited a couple of minutes while they packed their stuff from the hotel room in town. Given they carry as much stuff as we do, we were pretty impressed how quick they were.

I was most impressed with mom Géraldine’s tandem

The Indian place in town was closed so we settled on what has been described as the “restaurant where tourists go”. At least that way we got to sit in one of these pagoda-like huts laid out with carpets and mats. Géraldine and Antoine with their kids Inès (11), Joseph (9) and Albane (6) have been on the road for as long as we have. They have traveled all the way to Istanbul and since been hopping and skipping around Southeast Asia. It was quite inspirational meeting them and seeing how they manage a trip like this as a family. We still think push bikers are insane though. 🙂 After an hour we said good-bye as they needed to head to the Vietnamese border while we cruised back to Sam Neua.

23.855: the number of bombs and rockets dropped by US military forces in 2015. The US is not at war.