Asia on a tandem

We covered a lot of ground by boat in Laos. It's an amazing way to travel, shame there's less and less of it as the rivers are being dammed. As with Cambodia, it's remarkable to see the pace of change in Laos, mostly due to Chinese influence. We crossed a couple of bridges being built for the new Vientiane railway, it's hard to imagine the impact it will have once it's ready. But it's also equally hard to imagine what places like Luang Prabang or Vang Vieng must have looked like a few years ago, I'm aware we've already visited a Laos in transition. It felt a lot more undeveloped and remote than the other countries we visited up to now, which was interesting to experience. Some of the landscapes are incredible, though I don't think we rode through the most dramatic parts.

There's two reasons for this: one is the smoke, which was a real downer for us unfortunately. Laos was as bad as the North of Thailand, if not worse. We parked the bike in the guesthouse's garden in Luang Prabang, and we could see soot accumulating on top of it. Secondly, we heard reports from other cyclists that the main road to Vientiane was taken over (and being destroyed) by trucks working on the railway. The stretch between Luang Prabang and Vientiane was on my bucket list, it's one of the roads I really wanted to ride because I'm a sucker for karst landscapes, but I ended up thinking we were there on the wrong time and it wasn't going to be enjoyable.

So we came up with a plan to ride in search of another karst area, so we wouldn't feel shortchanged. Satellite images show a lot less burning in Vietnam, so we decided to ride East and go to Sapa and the Ha Giang province. I left Laos feeling like I'll want to go back again, the little stretch of road 1C we rode to Nong Khiaw was really pretty, I'd love to ride its whole length one day. But now we couldn't contain our excitement in going back to Vietnam, to our own surprise.

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