Tag Archives: UXO

Day 217 – Victory town

Morning road

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 →

Day 215 – UXO

Mountains, Gandalf, mountains!

Mountains, Gandalf, mountains!

Things were not half as spooky waking up this morning. We, nonetheless, hurried to get everything packed up and on the road again. The main reason was that we were not expecting to get any breakfast in this village  – or better say, the promise of baguette in the next town was much more alluring than the likely rice soup here.  So 20km later, we were at the crossroad town Phou Khoun. No baguette was to be seen, though. Instead, we settled on fried battered banana (cold and eww) from the market plus coffee and cookies in one of the guesthouses.

Although we had “only” 160 km to go today, it soon was clear that this is a whole different kettle of fish from zipping up the Mekong lowlands. I will not complain, though. Thousands of turns on a scenic mountain road made the whole thing quite enjoyable. Once the morning fog lifted, the views only got better. Before lunch, we hit our destination, the provincial capital Phonsavan. This is a good place to find a bed and use it as the base to explore the Plain of Jars. Continue reading →

Day 204 – The loop

We were expecting hills, but cliffy limestone is a positive surprise

We were expecting hills, but cliffy limestone is a positive surprise

Staying at the Traveller’s Lodge in Thakhek, you can be pretty sure that everyone had been on the loop or is going to go on the loop. “The loop” is an actual loop from Thakhek back to Thakhek through the mountains which is recommended by the Lonely Planet. However, it seems to be a generally popular route as we have seen a few people with hand-drawn maps from their guest houses. 

The Lonely Planet suggests to take 4-5 days for the loop on a real motorcycle, not a scooter. Luckily, we brought our own real motorcycle so we don’t need to go through the trouble of hiring one but somehow, we didn’t see the point of taking 4-5 days for a 350km loop. Maybe the length of our journey starts to show. Continue reading →