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. Continue reading →