Luang Prabang – Hongsa

25th April 2014        200km      32’C

Leaving Luang Prabang early this morning, I had two choices for the route to Hongsa.   Option 1 was a direct line, crossing the Mekong and off-road for about 150km.  Option 2 was slightly longer, 200km, but mostly on-road path (well, called a road, by Lao standards)    No one was able to tell me the state of the off-road track, other than if it was to rain it would be impassable.   I was quite keen to try that route as it passed through very remote villages, but the forecast was for rain, and I’m still using a set of road tyres on the bike.

I headed to the ferry at 7am, but the ferry was not yet running so I changed the plan and went via the normal road. I was quite disappointed with myself for not taking the off-road path and felt like I had missed an opportunity, but it turned out to be the right choice.

The on-road option was very scenic with views over the mountains that were stunning. There were plenty of sections where the road was completely missing, some of the potholes were large enough to park the bike in!   I was going a little fast and dropped off one that was a 2ft drop into the bottom.

On arriving in Hongsa, I checked into a $4 guesthouse, which if described as ‘basic’ would be a huge exaggeration.

Hongsa is a small town, but houses a large number of foreign construction workers, from Thailand and China.  The workers are building a lignite (brown coal) fuelled power station, which will generate power primarily for Thailand.   Needless to say, Hongsa is not a very attractive place.

I had lunch in a Sichuan restaurant with a bunch of construction workers who were hitting the beer Lao pretty hard for a lunchtime.  Finishing lunch, the heavens opened and it bucketed down.  I felt this was some validation of my earlier decision not to take the off-road trail, as it was mostly bulldust on the trail.  When wet, the bulldust turns to something like soap, so slippery its near impossible to ride on.

This rainstorm made me feel much better about my earlier decision to take the easy option and removed the sense of disappointment at the missed opportunity I’d felt earlier.

Tomorrow I’ll head back across the border and into Thailand, in order to visit Chiang Mai to pickup the set of off-road tyres for Mongolia.  Although as my current rear tyre is wearing away faster than I had anticipated, the new tyres may need to be installed sooner rather than later.