Turing Machines Do Indochina

We have made it to our destination! The biking was not hard today except for increasingly intense traffic as we penetrated into this big city of Hanoi. The weather was reasonably good and there were not many hills before it became completely flat the second half during this 68 mile day to Hanoi. Our actual finish line was to this bike shop that is now boxing our bikes for transport on flights home with us to Boston and Chang Mai respectively.

Here are a couple of shots trying to capture a sense of the traffic in Hanoi. In addition to capturing the traffic this also captured Ray about to have an emergency diarrhea attack and having to convince the store owners to let him use the toilet immediately:

Here is a shot of Ray making a new friend in the place on the outskirts of the city where we decided to have lunch:

The bike shop and our hotel are in the West Lake district of Hanoi. This is the view that welcomed us when we reached the lake and were only a few hundred meters from the bike shop:

And this, finally, is our location at the end of this long mountain bike adventure:

This post is from March 9, 2017.

This post is from March 8, 2017. 

Because of 70% chance of rain and temperatures in the 50s today and being fairly high up in the mountains we decided to take a rest day today. We are currently two days ahead of our scheduled arrival in Hanoi so we felt this was wise.

Communications continues to be a challenge but sometimes it has its comical moments. This morning when we were trying to tell a woman at the guesthouse desk that we wanted to stay an additional night she clearly did not understand and we clearly did not understand the sounds coming out of her mouth. I went back to the room to get my phone in order to use Google translate, but by the time I got back Ray was telling me that he had managed to communicate with this woman that we wanted to stay an additional night and that I should pay her. He said it had taken him a couple of minutes to understand that the woman was explaining that she was a deaf-mute and she couldn't understand us. He had succeeded in communicating via sign language the request for the additional night, but it was extraordinary and bizarre that we were in a conversation with a deaf-mute and we could not tell the difference between that and a conversation with a typical Vietnamese these days for nearly 5 minutes. After that the woman asked me with sign language if we were bicycling today and I answered her with gestures that no, we were going to sleep in the room instead which she understood. So it turns out that the efficiency of our communication with a Vietnamese deaf-mute was superior to that of communicating with normal Vietnamese!

We made 71 miles today so this town. We had real Vietnamese baguette for breakfast but from a small vendor off the street. They were $0.10 each. we also bought two cartons of soy milk each and drank that as there was really no other breakfast to be had and that was enough. My cough is probably slightly better today. The first 60 miles of biking were pretty flat and fast and that went easily however the last 10 miles were a steady uphill 10 mile climb which took a lot out of Paul. We ended up at about 800 m above sea level or 2700 feet and both Ray and I were a bit cold. It was cloudy all day today and we were a little bit afraid of rain and by climbing to this altitude the temperature is on the cool side for the little clothing that we have. We are hoping that any rain holds off for another 2 to 3 days so we can get to Hanoi without biking in the rain.

We got started later than normal today. We did not start biking until about 9:20. This was largely due to the exceptionally delicious and good breakfast that we had in the hotel restaurant this morning and also the fact that we thought we were only going to do 40  miles today. As it turns out, this town that we wanted to go to was actually 50 miles away so we did not get here until a little after 3 o'clock, and that included only two short 10 minute breaks for drinks and energy. Shortly after leaving the town this morning we started a 10 mile long climb that gained about 2700 feet of elevation with grades between four and 10%. That one climb took me over two hours of nonstop grinding uphill. Ray was nice enough to stay behind me the whole way but he could've gotten that over much much faster. During the day we saw some interesting scenery:

My cough and breathing were definitely not worse today. I only need to keep things together for another 4 to five days since we are only 200 miles from downtown Hanoi right now

This is the sign for our hotel tonight:

This little critter was right on the main street of the town as we walked to a restaurant:

Our restaurant was actually pretty western style and we had spaghetti for supper and they had karaoke so Ray gave a one song performance:

This post is from March 5, 2017. 

We made it to this town which was our intended destination in only about four hours of biking today. This was only a 48 mile day. Paul's breathing continues to be a big challenge for him so we have decided to take a more direct route to Hanoi than we had originally scheduled. We are trying to figure out that route now to make sure that it makes sense in terms of daily mileage and availability of lodging each night. Here are some shots of the scenery today:

This is our location tonight:

This post is from March 4, 2017.

This post is from March 3, 2017.

We started off this morning to warmer and dryer weather at around 9 AM. We had to do about 19 miles to the border between Laos and Vietnam. The last 13 miles of those was a moderate but steady climb. You exit through Laotian immigration about 2 miles before the actual border and go through Vietnamese immigration about 2 miles after the border. The border itself where there used to be some sort of customs office is now a kind of no man's land. Everything is in ruins there.

As I neared the top of that 13 mile climb Ray had gone ahead to check things out. I was grinding away and breathing heavily nearing the top when I saw Ray biking downhill towards me yelling "They're going to close in 10 minutes you have to hurry up". It turns out that the customs and immigration offices close between 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock each day for lunch.  We did not know this before hand but information like that is hard to come by in this part of the world, except for reading blogs like this one. In any case I did manage to get to the Laotian border control station at about 10:50. The process of stamping our visas to exit was fairly straightforward and we were done by 10:57. We asked the officer where did we go to enter Vietnam. He pointed in a vague direction which we eventually understood and we pedalled off after he said "you have two minutes". We were thinking that somehow it would be around the corner and we might make it by 11 o'clock Well, the Vietnamese immigration is about 4 miles away, so no amount of pedaling was going to get us there in two minutes.

During that 4 mile ride through no man's land we saw these signs:

Naturally, when we got to the Vietnamese customs house it was shut until 1 o'clock so we found a very small restaurant where we had some soup. There was a busload of students  from Laos  that were going on a three day holiday to Vietnam. We spent some of the remaining time until 1 o'clock resting and talking with them here are some photos of those moments:

When 1 o'clock came the people in the bus were polite enough to let Ray and I go first so we were done with our immigration into Vietnam and the check of our visas in about 10 minutes and quickly went through the security control gate. Right after that there was a small store where I was able to change my remaining Laotian money (Kip into Dong) into the Vietnamese dong currency. I also bought a Vietnamese SIM card for my IPhone so I now have a Vietnamese telephone number and I am able to do data here in Vietnam even without a Wi-Fi connection. The descent from the border to Dien Bien Phu looked very easy on the maps I have been looking at but the road was in terrible condition and I actually lost my computer sensor and hurt my panniers during that 15 km long rough dissent. The panniers have lost all their internal structure and are catching on my spokes.  I need to somehow reinforce them before we continue. Here are some views during that descent. Note that the grade sign is in fact covered with thousands of bugs:

When we finally reached the valley floor we had about 10 miles of flat biking in this Dien Bien Phu valley in order to get to the city. These are some of the many views of massive rice fields we saw on that drive:

This is our location as of tonight:

This post is from March 2, 2017.

We biked 70 miles today and arrived at our destination exactly on our original schedule, at least for now. We are now about 20 miles from the border with Vietnam.

We awoke this morning to the sound of a heavy rain outside. It was also quite cool. I used my windbreaker for the first time on this trip as we walked to our breakfast. Thankfully the rain ended and though it was cool and cloudy all day long we remained dry.

The first 50 miles today were we're fairly easy with just moderate climbs following a river valley. During that portion we saw many bamboo bridges crossing that river as you can see in this photo:

Along the river we stopped for a midmorning energy break in a small town and we saw a lot of people dressed in  costume different than we had seen elsewhere:

This is our location tonight:

My diarrhea is getting better each day and that is no longer such a problem for me. However my asthma and my lungs are bothering me quite a bit on the big climbs. I don't really know what I'm going to be able to do about that.

We have been very fortunate that Ray speaks Thai for our survival here in Laos. Despite what we thought many Laotians have understood enough of his Thai for us to order rice, chicken or eggs, and ask for prices. Not tonight, though. We are in another Chinese restaurant meaning owned and operated by non-Laotian speaking Chinese for the purpose of serving transient Chinese customers, of whom there are many due to all the dam (and damned) construction here. Anyway neither English nor Thai was getting through in anyway for the most basic request of what can we eat here. The Chinese woman brought out her smart phone and entered the Google translation app and we literally asked the questions about the food and placed the order by each speaking our question or response and the other listening to the phone when it translated it. Ray says he has done this many times before but for me that was a first and quite interesting.

This post is from March 1, 2017.

We made our planned 69 miles today to the small town of Mueng La. The day was full of a lot of big climbs, at one point climbing to over 5200 above sea level. Had I known what the day was going to be like I'm not sure I could've made myself leave the guest house this morning considering my illnesses, but we did make it and I'm feeling OK - I think The antibiotics are starting to work. On the climb out of the town this morning we quickly encountered this horrific crash:

We see a lot of water buffalo along the roads. For example:

After one of the big climbs today the scene of this valley that we would descend into greeted us:

This is our location as of tonight:

We are hoping to reach Vietnam the day after tomorrow.

One comical thing that happened tonight was when we were shopping for our energy drinks for tomorrow in a small thatched hut "store" on the main road through this village. I was trying to find some form of potato chip that was not squid or a seaweed flavored. Suddenly Ray, the owner of the store and her children all let out small yelps and Ray whirled around asking WHAT?  It turns out that a lizard had dropped from the thatched roof onto Ray's back and was clinging onto his back. I swiped it off onto the ground and all was well though we were all a bit surprised.

This post is from February 28, 2017.

We departed the relative comfort of Luang Prabang this morning at 7:20 and made it 71 miles through moderate terrain to this town of Pak Mong. We are in a guesthouse but this one and this  entire town is a bit primitive. We are frankly afraid to eat most of the fly-covered foods on display in the restaurants here. What's more, I now am on Imodium to control explosive diarrhea that started last night. This of course leaves me weak. Also my lungs are doing worse than usual despite regular use of my asthma medicine.

We have met today a German adventure cyclist, a French couple cycling. and a Brit on a motorcycle.

Here are a couple of shots of when we met the German cyclist. He is significantly more heavily loaded than we are. Note the white disks of sticky rice drying next to us:

We see many extraordinary sites that we don't stop to photograph. Today we saw people making yarn on spinning wheels and women working with .looms.

Here is a shot of some scenery after one of the bigger climbs on this distinctly not-very-hilly-for-Laos day:

This is our current location:

Today's post is from February 27, 2017.

Just relaxing today to try to recover a bit before we continue to push on. I do have a bit of an upset stomach from something I ate and did not sleep that well last night so I do need this rest day. There will also be some walking around the town and looking at the history that makes this a UNESCO world heritage site. I will include some pictures of this below.

This post is from February 26, 2017. 

We biked 71 miles today through easier terrain and somewhat moderated temperatures. Once again we left at exactly 7 AM to beat the heat and we didn't really know how bad the terrain would be. We reached this town at 2 PM with two 15 minute stops for water and energy. Because the terrain was somewhat easier I was able to think about taking pictures and not just about suffering so there are a few shots of the countryside we went through today below. When I say the terrain  was easier it still involved several big climbs including one that was about 1200 feet vertical within 2 miles and in general there were a number of 15% grades today but still a lot easier than the previous two unbelievably hilly days. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO world heritage site. More importantly, there are sinks in our bathrooms and open restaurants!

Here are some shots of some of the terrain today:

We crossed the Mekong for the 3rd time this trip:

This is a shot of one of our water breaks and me resting my sore right bunion.   That is also the foot with the artificial ankle:

Here are some shots of sites we saw while walking from our guest house to the tourist area where we had lunch and supper:

This shot shows our current location on the map of South East Asia:

This post is from February 25, 2017.

We are safe in the guest house for the day. By making it here tonight we are now exactly on our original schedule. Today was about 54 miles and extremely hilly but it was once paved and also the temperatures were a little bit less hot until noon time. Because we were scared of how the hills might affect our ability to make distance we ate "breakfast" in our rooms at 6:30. There really were no places to eat in that town in the morning anyways so last night we bought coconut juice, soy milk and bananas and ate them in our rooms after making a slight repair on my bike. We were biking by 7:20.

It is so hot and we are working so hard that we don't actually have normal appetites during our biking. But of course we need to replenish fluids and electrolytes and rest from time to time. Today I saw a store where they had a bunch of watermelons on the table out front so we stopped there.  Ray and I split a small watermelon. We asked for some salt and put the salt on the pieces as we ate them. It was the perfect lunch considering the conditions. Certainly better and more appealing than the water buffalo broth with curdled blood from yesterday!

Every day there are some comical moments that really are noteworthy but I am usually too tired to remember them all when I compose the blog in the evening. One thing that happened today though is still very clear in my mind. We were biking down a hill at  good speed and we encountered three young cows. They were frightened by the sight and sounds of our approaching and started to run. Two of them broke off but one of them continued to run faster and faster by the side of the road and was keeping up with my speed. It was clearly afraid and thinking I was chasing it. After about a half a mile at a full gallop it crashed through the underbrush and appeared to go down a very steep hill. This whole situation was comical but also dangerous because the galloping cow at any point could've veered directly in front of my bike causing a bad collision.

Here are some shots of some of the more civilized country side we went through after we got out of the mountains today. We really don't get to take pictures of the most dramatic scenery we are seeing because the biking is too exhausting to stop and take a picture:

Just for kicks I am including a picture of my bike in my guesthouse room last night. It is basically a laundry rack each night:  We try to wash our biking clothes nightly to avoid developing skin problems.

Here is a map showing our location as of tonight:

We were very fortunate to find a store near our guest house that sold bicycles and bicycle tires. So I bought a tire tonight  that was almost the same size as the one I had and we just mounted it so my worries about biking on that crudely patched tire are over. I have to admit that my heart was in my throat on some of those big descents today with that questionable tire with the 3/4" slit..

This post is from February 24, 2017. 

We made 54 miles today which was our plan. The conditions today were different then we've had before in Laos. In general we were on much better roads then we have seen before in this country. The pavement was good and the roads were created such that the climbs were not more than 11%. That was the good news; the bad news was that it was 105° today and we climbed over 6000 vertical feet in the crossing of several big mountain ranges. Strangely though this town looked like almost nothing according to the maps we had used for planning. It turns out this town is the site of a major power plant and fertilizer factory. From what we can see it looks like it may be built with Chinese help. In any event we were overconfident about getting lodging  because we had heard they were many Guesthouses in this town by the people we had asked yesterday and during the day today. However it was some type of big meeting going on for people involved in the power plant and therefore they were almost no lodging rooms to be had. We finally found some very basic accommodations. There's no sink in the room but there is running water and we were able to wash off with a kind of. hose with warm water so that was not so bad. We will be OK tonight and did not get too exhausted despite the heat. Tomorrow should be more difficult because the road will not be as good and we have to do another similar 54 miles to get to our next destination. I was happy that my tire repair seemed to hold up OK today. 

Because of the intense heat and all the work involved in all of that climbing we were not disposed to take many pictures today so I'll just include the one shot of the map to show where we are now:

Could not find new tires or tubes here but we got a motorbike shop to patch my bad tire as well as the 3 punctured tubes. We have now mounted the bad tire on the front and the undamaged tire on the back where there is more weight. Fingers crossed. We don't come to a town that *might* have bike tires for at least 2 days. Tomorrow is going to be about 55 miles and is supposed to be all paved though hilly.

For the sake of explanation on Tuesday midday we departed the Mekong River and began climbing inland. Wednesday, a difficult day yesterday, was spent climbing over a broad range of 5000 foot tall mountains which was more than  a 4000 foot elevation gain for us with many ups and downs. When we arrived at this town last night we had returned to the Mekong River but many miles downstream from the point of our departure.  At this point both banks of the river are in Laos. This is what the Mekong looks like from our lunch spot on this rest day:

This post is from February 22, 2017. 

We biked about 45 miles today through extremely difficult conditions. They were many thousands of feet of climb some of which was between 12 and 18% grade, again in about 100° heat. The road surface conditions were really atrocious. Paul had three flat tires today. When we inspected Paul's rear tire we saw that the first flat had actually torn the tire, creating a 3/4" slit and all other flats after that were happening in this same spot. There is a picture below of Ray working on changing Paul's second flat tire. This was very difficult because we needed to patch the hole in the tire in addition to changing the tube. Additionally the pump that Ray had was not very effective (huge understatement). The first flat tire took one and a half hours to fix before we were mobile again. Ultimately we patched the inside of the tire with duct tape and a 2000 Kip bill which is the Laotian currency. This kept the second repair going almost all the way to our destination - just 2 miles short of a destination  when Paul's rear tire flatted for the third time that day. At this point we need to replace the tire as it is ready to shred. Thankfully the town we are in tonight is a fairly large town that has a bike shop (so they said - turned out to be a MOTORBIKE ONLY shop). So tomorrow we will get one if not both of Paul's tires replaced plus buy a new pair of inner tubes.

While fighting the road conditions the heat and the flat tires we were also passing through some of the most amazing scenery. We were biking on a very hilly ridge line high up in remote mountains. The people in the occasional villages lived in houses set on stilts such that the snakes and rodents could not get into their dwellings at night. These were very remote villages and usually the people would come out to cheer us when we biked through. The only pavement we have seen in 90 miles has been short stretches of a few hundred meters in these villages. On a few occasions we were able to find something that passed for a store, meaning someone's house that had a refrigerator and some bottles and snacks out front that we could buy. The only thing that we ate today were some bags of salted chips or something that supposed to be chips. We had many, many bottles of water and coconut flavored drink.  There were many comical scenes while we bought these things to the amazement of the on looking villagers. Truly it was like bicycling through a National Geographic article. Unfortunately I was so exhausted and concerned about reaching a real destination for the night that they were a few pictures from today. When I saw the kind of dwellings that the people were living in these villages I was very motivated to make it all the way to the single town that lied at the end of our day so that we would not end up begging to sleep in one of the infested huts on stilts.

This is a shot of one of the more developed villages that we biked through today.  Note the rare stretch of paved road:

This is a shot of Ray working on Paul's second flat tire of the day:

This is Paul's bike rolled into the guesthouse room with the third and final flat still present:

Here is a shot of the map showing our current location:

While getting a beer shortly after arriving here which was after dark I met a Swedish man who lives in Laos country  happens to be from the same town in Sweden (Trelleborg) where my father grew up. Small world!

This post is from February 21, 2017. 

Today started off easy enough with 6 miles on asphalt back to where the Friendship Bridge crosses from Thailand. Then things got difficult as the road changed to dirt for the next 40 miles. This was not simply a case of dirt roads, but washboard with a loose gravel. This went on with undulating hills with a few difficult climbs at about 16% grade for 40 miles.

After about 20 miles on the dirt we reached a location where a tributary of the Mekong river enters from the east. We turned east along the northern bank of that tributary river. During the next 20 miles we encountered a large tractor trailer truck that had slipped off the edge of the road and was on the verge of plunging down the cliff into the river below. It was causing a great deal of commotion and it was such a tight squeeze it was difficult even for us to get our bicycles around this accident.  Many cars and trucks were backed up in both directions and we believed that situation was going to persist for many hours. We felt fortunate to only be stopped for a few minutes.

After a total of about 46 miles we came to a town that we believed was 20 miles short of our final destination which was a guest house that we had seen on Google maps during our trip planning. We have been biking in 100° heat and Paul was very cooked and very tired and was afraid of cramping and bonking. We rested for 15 minutes, refueled with lots of water and iced tea and began to bike again. Two minutes later, just before we left this very small town Paul noticed a sign for the guest house that we believed to be 20 miles ahead on the left-hand side of the road. It turns out the Google maps had misled us into thinking it was another 20 miles and we were very thankful that we were actually already at our destination.

Here are a couple of shots of what it looked like biking south along the east Bank of the Mekong River this morning:

This is the truck accident mentioned above:

These are shots from the inside of my room in the guest house that we reached tonight, showing my hand-washed laundry:

This was the restaurant that we ate in tonight. As you can see conditions here are more primitive then we were experiencing in Thailand:

The blue dot shows where we are tonight:

This post is from February 20, 2017. 

We biked a total of about 72 miles today. We arrived at the Mekong River at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. This is the border between Thailand and Laos. The border crossing process was complicated especially for people traveling on bicycles. First, we had to go through the exit process at the Thai border control on the west bank of the river. Then for some reason we don't fully understand bicyclists may not drive over the bridge over the river but must put their bikes on the passenger bus and ride with pedestrians. The process of putting our mountain bikes on to the bus was difficult. After crossing the river and taking our bikes off we then had to obtain visas for Laos which involves filling out a bunch of paperwork and paying a fee of 350,000 Kip which is about $40. It also required providing a passport-sized photo which thankfully both Ray and I had brought in anticipation of this possible need. We finally started biking again after a total downtime of almost 2 hours due to all of this border crossing. We biked our final 6 miles to this town and are now staying in the Bokeo guesthouse which is basically a small hotel.

This is a shot of us arriving at the Thai border control on the West bank of the river.

This is the view from the bus as we and our bikes were driven across the Mekong from Thailand to Laos:

This is the scene of Ray with our bikes in the back of the pedestrian bus:

This scene welcomed us as we begin to bike in Laos:

This map can help you visualize the progress we made since yesterday:

Today we biked 75 miles through 93° heat. Today we had a pretty serious climb. It went gradually at first and then ended up being very steep, even reaching 18% for a short while. The climb was actually several miles long. I actually had to get off the bike a couple of times when it exceeded 15%. Ray is in much better biking shape and especially climbing shape than me and he was able to make it to the top without any problem. This type of hill will be something we'll see more of and even much harder versions and longer versions so it is humbling for me, Paul.

Chang Rai is a big city and we ate our last 'Western' meal for a few days at least.

This post is from February 18, 2017. 

We made 50 miles today that were fairly easy except for a few climbs. One was over 2 miles long and about 6 to 8% grade but that was nothing compared to what will be coming up in a couple of days. Paul had a minor fall today that resulted in the following scrapes:

We often have stopped at 7-11's here in Thailand for re-supply.  Thailand is full of them.

Amazingly, Ray found a bottle of scotch he left here 6 years ago. 

It is now gone. :-)

We've gotten off to a good start on our trip. We left Ray's condo in Chang Mai at about 11:30 this morning. Assembling my bicycle was fairly easy. The only glitch was that I got a flat tire immediately while still in his condo. The flat must have occurred somehow during the transport on the airplanes. The following picture shows what the scene looks like in his condo as we assembled the bike: