Message Stick

We left Vientiane on a night sleeper bus bound for Pakse. Despite being a foot too short for our height the double mattress style sleeping arrangements was surprisingly comfortable, even with my water slide injuries. We arrived feeling remarkably refreshed and checked into a lovely hotel with free wifi and cable TV and that’s pretty much were we spent the rest of that day after sorting out our impending motorbike tour. The ‘Southern Swing’ is a classic route around the south of Laos’ Bolaven Plateau. Mark was very excited about the whole adventure but I, as usual, was just worried about possible crashes, fatalities and complicated insurance claims. Just when I had reassured myself that we were responsible adults with 24 years collective road experience and all would be well we picked up our 125 Suzuki ‘Smash’ and it just felt like a sign from above.

It turned out however to be one of the real highlights of our Laos experience. Mark rode very well, assisted greatly by my expert pillion positioning. We rode 350km around spectacular scenery of coffee plantations, tribal villages, weaving communities and a series of truly impressive waterfalls. Many of the roads were sealed and in surprisingly good condition but others were impassable on anything other than a bike or 4×4 vehicle. The people were the real highlight calling out “Sabaai-dii” (Hello) and waving as they realised 2 large white folks on a tiny bike were heading through their remote village. Aside from our first visit to a familiar fuel station when we started the journey every other top-up was done by stopping at a little wooden shack. A kid would usually appear from nowhere and syphon off enough dodgy looking pink fuel to keep us going until the next one. On our return to Pakse we were sad to give the bike up and I think if we have any money left over after this trip that will be one of our first purchases when back in Blighty.