Date	03/Dec/12
0 Riders
Rider of the day	Not awarded
Stack of the day	Not awarded

The continuing saga of 5 men & their bikes...

Day 8 – 10th Dec 2012 – Buon Thai - Phongsali
90klm’s Maximum Elevation 1390m
Moving Time – 2h 05m Stopped Time – 0h 51m
Moving Average - 43kph Overall Average - 30kph
On the road at 6.45am



As mentioned, we decide to get up early to get out of here. It’s the Khan Nam Lan GH if anyone else is brave enough, but to be fair, it did look a little bit better than the only other one in town. Make Boun Thai an emergency stop, not a planned destination.
That wasp sting from 2 days ago has finally decided to start doing something. It has 2 parts to it now. The main sting area which is larger than a 20 cent piece with a huge radial area the covers the whole forearm. Looks good & is only slightly itchy.



We head 20klm’s up the road & stop at a small village for breakfast. This isn’t the sort of place that does that so we end up having a cup of coffee instead & a laugh with the locals, again.


Off again & it’s a bit of a miserable morning with lots of fog & low cloud. I end up taking my goggles off so I can see as we start heading up hill. We’re taking it slow as this is a cold morning too. Not as cold as I thought though from what I experienced last year.
All of a sudden, we get to the other side of the first rise, & boom, we’re through the clouds. Spectacular is the word. No fog, no smoke & you can see forever. It’s like this all the way into Phongsali.





What, we’re here already? It’s only just gone 10am! 4-5 hours my arse. Honestly, you could do this in 1 ½ hours if you wanted.
We find rooms at the Viiphaphone Hotel & decide to get some food in us. There’s a small café just up the road so it’s omelettes & coffee lao all round.

Time for a look around town so we start wandering everywhere.









In my original plan, we were going to have 2 nights here, as a rest day, but after being here for 2 hours & having seen the whole town already the suggestion by Tommy to not stay for 2 nights is warmly received by all. This will put us back on schedule too after the unplanned 2 day stop in LPB.
It’s time for a late lunch so we wander down the hill looking for a restaurant. We find one & as language is a barrier, the lady just takes us into the kitchen, gestures that we point at the meat we want in the freezer & cooks it for us.


As we have nowt else to do & the bikes need a service we do all the airfilters, chains & as Carls bike won’t start unless you bump start it, we change the plug as it has next to no electrode left on it, that didn’t work so change the plug lead & that didn’t work either so it’s decided he has to do a valve adjustment on it. Bingo.






Come dinner time, we head back to the café we had breakfast as we like the place.
A few beers, more food then it’s time to retire.



Day 9 – 11th Dec 2012 – Phongsali - Oudomxai
238klm’s Maximum Elevation 1390m
Moving Time – 5h 52m Stopped Time – 1h 42m
Moving Average - 41kph Overall Average - 31kph
On the road at 7.30am



Damn it, it’s 5.30 in the morning!
I’m only guessing, but the loudspeakers blaring crappy music & some high pitched womans voice could only mean one of 2 things. Either Katy Perry is doing a concert or it’s the regular political/mayoral/communist propaganda broadcast. Oh well, we’re all up now so we might as well get an early breakfast & hit the road.
The views coming down the mountain are just as good as the ones going up.




Tommy & I are following Mike along the downhill run when the mad bastard undertakes a bus! Now we’ve all undertaken something on the trip as sometimes it’s the only way to pass them. Luckily the trucks coming the other way forcing the bus to the very side of the road where the cliff was weren’t 10 seconds earlier.
It’s a nice easy run back down to Boun Thai with a stop in Boun Nua for noodle soup breakfast. This is a crossroad/busport village for the road heading north to china with a dodgy meat on a stick breakfast market. We decide on the restaurant. Tommy gets chatting to some American hippy lady who keeps telling him he big & strong to be riding around.





At Boun Thai we leave the main road heading south & hit single trail immediately. It lasts all of 500 metres as the GPS has routed us through the backstreet of the village. Onto the main 1203 road & it’s a bit weird around here. There’s farm tracks interspersed with wide graded roads for a bit & it’s sometimes confusing. I think there’s a detour road being built as we come across it again. O well, the farm track are better to ride on anyway.
We follow this until it turns into the 1830 & finally hits the main 13-N
Mixed up pictures again…







Carls subframe brakes this time, so another amazing repair job with the cable ties.




My notes say Tommy’s bike fell over without him on it at one of the several river crossing we did today. No photo of it though.








There was no need to cross this bridge, other than to wake up the toll dude & confuse him a bit.



We get stopped near B.Namngeun by a couple on a KLX around 12.30pm. Tommy asks where they’ve came from & the guy answers Spain. Today asks Tommy? They’re on their way to Phongsali so I tell them it has taken us 4 hours (riding) to get here. They’re all happy thinking they can make it. I doubt it. They had no map, no GPS & along this route there are some confusing intersections. Not to mention we were going faster than most would on our own, not 2 up with a bit of luggage. Any report of a missing hot redheaded chick & some dude?
Kate has a bit of a scare along here. Too wide on a downhill left-hand corner & ends up hidden in a ditch. Good think Mike was there to see it so he can help her out. She chucks him her camera first to get a pic though.

We reach the tar 13-N then it’s race time again into Oudomxai where we get rooms at the palatial Dansavanh Hotel.








Day 10 – 12th Dec 2012 Part 1 – Oudomxai – Nale
89klm’s Maximum Elevation 1160m
Moving Time – 3h 11m Stopped Time – 1h 30m
Moving Average - 28kph Overall Average - 19kph
On the road at 9.45am



Yay, awakened again by the local loudspeakers. This time in delayed stereo.
Kate has decided she’s leaving & going her own way today.
We’re off to Nale for the night, or so I hoped. There’s a section I went to do last year where I turned back at the first crossing & someone else went to do but one of his friend broke a rib on the same crossing. I will prevail this year, by sneaking in the back way via the 2555 towards the Chom Ong Caves. The 1st section of 50klm’s to B. Tangkok is a mix of flatish river valley road & steep dried out muddy mountain road. Fantastic… until Tommy has a spectacular off. I’m out front so I miss it but the report was he came to the bottom o a gully bit where it’s rough. He was on full compression of the shocks so when he hit this lump in the road, he got huge air from the rebound, the front landed on a ridge & he went left handlebar first into the road. No damage to Tommy but a snapped clutch lever, broken plastic barkbuster & disintegrated mirror on the Baja.
The offending lump in the road.





All is good, we replace the clutch lever & it’s time to get going. We get to B. Tangkok & this is where the road slowly disappears & it eventually turns into about 18klm’s of single type trail with about 10 deepish river crossing. You beauty!
Video & Pics tell the story, with Ash having a lie down in the video.




















Now somewhere along here, Tommy has his second off. A bit of bamboo in a muddy/cowshit wet spot & he’s down in it. No pics though.






Now if you were patient enough to watch the second video all the way through, you’ll see why we’re stopped trying to get Ashes bike started. This is the last crossing too as the village is only 600m away.




Now again if you’ve watched the video all the way to the end, you’ll see a puppy running along. This will be the downfall of Tommy again & his 3rd off for the day.
Carl & I make it up the small hill into the village of B. Phouchale. (A new entry point. The river crossing that stopped me last year is somewhere else)
Meanwhile, Tommy has come around the bottom corner, the dog’s darted out in front of him & somehow he’s flipped the bike & gone tumbling down the hill through the herb garden with the bike on top of him. “All I could smell was mint & coriander, mint & coriander.”
Mike’s helping him, Ash is trying to keep his bike going so Carl struggles down to give a hand while I try getting the local kids to cheer & clap.




We all finally make it up the hill into the village, where they’re all out to look again & set off for a 12klm run & a well earned beer in Nale after conquering this trail. I spoke to Midnight Mapper (Don Duvall) about this section & he believes that apart from him, we may be the only others to ride it. I really hope that’s true.

We get into Nale around 2.15pm & try finding rooms. We ask at one GH & they’re full, so we try another. The owner indicates she has some & sends her hubby to run around & check all the others for us, so we settle in for a beer. Mike hooks into what we can only describe as barbequed cow veins on a skewer. We all try them & settle on a packet of chips. The first beer is down & we get offered noodle soup, so we accept while still under the impression there maybe rooms available. It’s getting later so we ask again if there are rooms & get told no, the town is full. Well bugger me, we think they just wanted us to spend a couple of dollars as we’ve been there for around an hour & a half.
This means we have to totally change our plans again & head into Luang Nam Tha for the night.


Day 10 – 12th Dec 2012 Part 2 – Nale – Luang Nam Tha
82klm’s with some of it at night.
I forget to turn my GPS on, so this is just a copy of the route up the main road.


Shit, this will mean our first night ride, after 2 big browns of Beerlao.
We start out & come across some more construction. It’s about a half hour wait until the knock off at 5pm, so Tommy suggests a bribe to get us through. I wave 50,000k at the bloke on the dozer, so he takes it & lets us through. The sneaky bastard didn’t tell us that just over the rise was more work going on & there was no way through that. He drove past us to do a bit there & didn’t even offer the $6 back. That was hilarious.



I take off my fender bag & put it under the cargo net. Somewhere along the trail it’s come loose & got ripped to shreds in the back wheel.
The road is again one of those rutted, rocky, hilly ones with patches of slippery mud & lots of dust. Credit to Tommy for staying down the back as he had the big twin headlights.
Being up the front with 4 bikes following me was rather cool. As none of the headlights pointed at the road due to the packs & fat blokes on them, I got a fantastic shadow show for the trip.
It was a fitting way to end one of the best trails I’ve ridden in Laos.

Into LNT around 7 or 7.30 & we get rooms at the Dokchampa Hotel. We head out for a feed at what looks like a popular restaurant. What is wrong with putting beer in a fridge? Ice in your beer just doesn’t work.
Tommy & Ash spy a tour ticket seller shop with rum, bourbon & gin on his shelves, so we invade & drink him dry with Tommy doing the pouring while under the guise of helpful English teacher. He made a small fortune that night.



I call it an early night as I need to re route as not stopping in Nale stuffed up the next day plans.


If you're not bored yet, Part 4 is next.