No signal, the map goes blank

December 19, 2023

Don Khong to Mounlapamok

Dear little friends,

Loading up in the sunrise in front of our guesthouse, we looked across the street at the restaurant. Deadsville. We had eaten muesli sans papaya in our room so off we went. Oh man, that little road was rough, our heart sank. Oh, but wait! There was a new parallel road of nice concrete, whoop! Was this because of the new bridge across the Mekong to Don Khong? One can only speculate.

View from our room at Pon's Riverside Guest House.

Upstairs sitting area at Pon's Riverside Guest House.

Pon's Riverside Guest House on Don Khong.

We were aiming for a car ferry up at the north end of the island, but when we turned toward that the road turned to crap, vast potholes, rocks, the usual. After skimming up most of the island we were now limping to the west hoping there still WAS a ferry. Finally we reached the ferry landing, which was big and imposing and looking like maybe all was good. But the car ferry? Well, I wouldn’t put my car on that ferry, and there was nobody manning it either. Fortunately for us there was a small ferry with a guy smoking in it, he called to somebody, who called to somebody and a teenaged boy came down and took us across the river.

Mind you, the Mekong is pretty wide here even though we weren’t even crossing the entire river. The boat was small, the boy was young, and halfway across he lowered the throttle on the engine so it was going pretty slowly. A little nerve-wracking, but eventually we were beach landing on a pile of sand and the guys helped us push our bikes up the slope. Whew, back on the mainland.

So we got a beach landing even though there is a paved ferry landing that is apparently only for the car ferry.

There is a road of sorts and we tooled down it. Some places were really rough, some were okay, there were clattery bridges and people calling out from under their houses as we went by.

Tributary stream to the Mekong in the dry season.

Temple rest stop, where Bruce discovered several wooden Buddhas, a rarity these days.

This we learned: green onions love being grown in pots/coconut shells, bomb shell fragments, anything other than in the ground.

At 21 miles we came to a crossroads of sorts, with a large ferry that had cars and trucks coming off of it. We stopped for an iced coffee and contemplated the scene. The last time we came here nine years ago there had been a similar crossroads/ferry kind of funky town with a very busy market. This wasn’t it, there was no market, just an open space with a sad tree and a lot of plastic trash.

The other car ferry, this one looks like a maybe.

Our coffee lady. Like a lot of folks in these parts she was a bit gruff at first but ended up smiling when we complimented her coffee.

Both of us double checked our Google maps. Remember, we were flying blind, no Lao SIM card because everybody in the country was registering their phones for who knows what reason. This coffee place was very funky, not your cute Vietnam or Thailand WiFi coffee place. I may or may not have gotten a mouse turd in my ice, I’m trying not to think about that. Anyway, no signal, my map had gone blank, Bruce’s had gone blank, the guesthouse I had marked wasn’t showing up. So we threw the coffee ice into our water bottles and kept going.

It wasn’t until about 4 miles later when Bruce stopped to photograph something that I glanced at my phone again, and… yes, that had been the intersection we were supposed to turn at to get to the guesthouse I had marked. “Fiddlesticks!” I said, but it came out some other word, can’t remember what.

Now, there are dreamy parts of Laos and non-dreamy parts of Laos and we already knew this was the latter. This crossroads was dusty and poor and that it had a guesthouse at all was remarkable. There wouldn’t be another one until Champasak, 45 miles further.

The other option was to find the temple we stayed at last time, where the elder monk spoke English and put us in a little guesthouse, pure luck. Even stranger, Chris Pountney had stayed there the night before us! But we didn’t really know where that temple was, how much further, would that monk still let us stay there? Was he still alive?

We were already tired from some really rough riding, so we decided to turn around. Oh man do I hate turning around. Who doesn’t hate backtracking? The Lao folks saw us go by again, which was cause for remark although there’s a lot to be said for not understanding what people are saying about you. We got back to the crossroads, turned west, and a mile later wheeled into a nice-ish looking guesthouse with no English on their sign. There were some funky things about this place but it’s Laos, we don’t have high expectations ever. The hot water heater was hooked up to power but not to water, fortunately we were hot and the warmish solar-heated water was fine. They had pretty good soap for once.

Air conditioning, a locking door, a restaurant where they made us some good fried rice, it was kind of an “any port in a storm” situation that could have been a lot worse. But we had put 8 extra miles on an already tough day and the next day was going to be much farther. We lay down on our sort of comfortable twin beds and set the alarm for 5 am.

Today's ride: 31 miles (50 km)
Total: 412 miles (663 km)

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David MathersSorry to hear about your screechy belt. The silicone spray might be hard to find but you could try rubbing candle wax on the belt to reduce the sound. Good luck! 🤞
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4 months ago

Bruce LellmanTo David MathersThank you for this suggestion, David. There are candles everywhere over here and some are tiny. I could rub the candle in all the grooves of the belt. I think it might work especially if the wax is a hard wax.
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4 months ago