Out of the clouds, onto the river

Communist roadsigns 

With the vagaries of Lao public transportation looming before us, the alarm stridently broke our sleep so we could arrive at the bus terminal forty five minutes before it's reported eight am departure. Any misplaced optimism regarding road conditions withered when the blinds were opened, showing persistent fog that toyed with coalescing to rain. After depositing the key with the still sleeping doorman, we grabbed sticky rice, pork jerky / bacon, bananas, peanuts, tiny oranges and fried, mildly sweetened dough balls for the day's meals. 

Good morning from Phongsali

The muddy rut leading to the bus station convinced me that if we were unable to take the bus, we would stay in Phongsali or turn around before descending the 1000 meters to the Nam Ou. Fortunately, the ticket office, completely abandoned yesterday afternoon, had a teenager selling tickets who confirmed that the bus could take bikes. Sure enough, the portly bus driver turned porter chugged into the station a few minutes later and strapped the bikes to the roof. Fingers crossed, we took a seat and awaited the buses imminent descent. However, people continued to show up for forty minutes past the scheduled departure, even stopping the bus as it left the station to cram into the now standing-room-only passenger compartment.

I don't think I have ever taken such joy in motor based transport. Peering out the window, I watched as the bus (mostly) smoothly navigated the bike wrecking, muddy, exposed rocks and occasional tire sucking mud pit all the way to the river, where a pair of Canadians stuck out on the dock. All of the foreigners and a couple locals joined our northern neighbors in trickling onto the boat, a forty foot long, four foot wide cigar shaped contraption with a series of parallel wooden slats as seats tucked under an open-sided wooden cabin running almost the length of the vessel. 

Similar to our boat

Fairly quickly we pushed off into the Nam Ou under the whir of an outboard motor. At this point, the river is a placid reservoir, stained reddish brown by erosion from upstream construction. Until fairly recently, I believe 2015, the Nam Ou ran as one of Laos' two long distance navigable rivers, the other being the Mekong. However a series of seven Chinese funded and constructed dams have since broken its continuous flow. While the electricity generates ostensibly will benefit Laos, people's opinion seems to be that it will spell the end of river travel on the Ou.

Kids from one of the river villages

That being said, watching the jungle rise in jagged, tree covered peaks from the banks of the river didn't force global geopolitics into my brain. Rather, my thoughts strayed to imagining tigers and wild elephants drinking from the edge of the river, and how it would have been the only realistic means of long distance travel in the region even into the 1980s. These reflections came to an end as we rounded a bend and came across the first of the dams.

Bypassing one of the days with a Spanish couple

Appropriately named

Dams have always struck me as post apocalyptic, like a monument from a civilization whose other works have long since decayed. Here, the sixty foot tall cement wall ended the river's path, with two towers jutting above the reservoir, but no signs of any living humans on the structure itself. Stopping at a pile of rocks and sand on the dam's shoulder, our floating cigar disgorged it's motley assortment of tourists, riparian locals, and a fully functional motorcycle that had driven to an upstream landing and been lifted into the boat. With each completed dam, interruptions like this are expected to become such a burden to river travel that even tourist traffic will die down, much as the local freight traffic already has. Of course, the US of A has it's own history of damming incredible rivers, but it is sad to see the tiny riverside towns and know that they will probably fade away, even as the scenery is wonderful.

They take whatever cargo can fit

A small flooded temple upstream from a dam

While the rest of the tourists took a converted pickup taxi to the next major town, Brooke and I strapped our bags on and pedalled down what we hoped would be a flat, pleasant 60km ride to the same city. We took a break from the unfortunately bumpy road at a roadside hut to eat lunch and enjoy the views. Brooke stepped into the grass and came back with a leech seeking out an attachment on her shin, but she discoverd it before it could rob her of any oxygen delivering capacity (I would later find a bloody spot on my hip where one attached and escaped). Satiated and back in the saddle, we were surprised when the pick up full of our fellow boat passengers passed us 45km into our ride - apparently they had waited two hours for a second taxi. While I would not have minded skipping this extraneous dirt section, the scenery mostly made up for the poor surface and we arrived in Muang Khua with no harm done to the bikes apart from an extra inch of mud on our drive trains.

Looking at a tributary of the Ou, which used to have the same green color.

The city itself didn't strike me as particularly remarkable. As a medium size city (tiny by US standards, maybe 5000 people) it lacks the charm of the smaller villages, and the abundance of tourists means food that is both more bland and more expensive. The highlight would have to be the oddly pornographic bathroom in our otherwise unremarkable guesthouse. I spent the night coughing due to a minor cold, and we set off in the boat again the following morning.

Mural on the bathroom wall of our guesthouse

Riverside gardens pop up when the river recedes in the dry season

In contrast to yesterday's ride, the Nam Ou ran as a river for much of today's trip, with much faster water than the reservoir we had been in previously. Our pilot handed over the reins to his ten year old son as the boat shot through small rapids, submerged islands and abundant unfazed water buffalo. As we got further downstream, we could see the karst crags of the Annamite mountains reaching westward toward us. Fairly suddenly, the river seemed to slash through the midst of thousand foot tall pillars, and white sand beaches from eroded limestone appeared at each bend of the river. The spectacular stone could be loosely compared to Kings Canyon, with far more greenery and water highlighting its tropical location in a way that I have never seen before. Luckily I worked my way to a standing portion of the boat in time to see the 360 degree view of the area before this most incredible section ended in the city of Nong Khiao.

Our new driver

Hills surrounding the Ou

We choose a slightly more expensive (15$ instead of 10$) hotel overlooking the Ou and were impressed by the owner's English. As he greeted other guests, it seemed that his Thai and French equaled his English. Later Brooke would find that his Spanish bettered all but his Thai. It turns out that he had trained as an orthopedist but the communist government had been unable to pay him, so he took a placement in a medical exchange with Cuba. Following his return, he still struggled to make ends meet in Laos, so left medicine to work as a tour guide before starting one of the first guesthouses in the city. He lamented the changes that the dam downstream had brought to the river in terms of changes in the fishing, decreased beauty and most of all the destruction of local people's livelihood - all for what he described as zero compensation to individuals. His orange trees that were flooded by the reservoir were appraised at about 8$ each, but two years after the river's rise, he still hasn't been paid even this pittance, which he blames on corrupt Chinese companies and a duplicitous ex president of Laos. Certainly makes me count my blessings seeing how this very educated person had to give up medicine, while I am able to travel for several months on the wages of a similar job.

Regardless, the view and his Lao language lessons and cooking were so wonderful that we stayed an extra day, promising to make up for it with a double length day to Luang Prabang. We mostly passed the time reading in the hammock on the small balcony overlooking the river, but also took a short walk out of town to a medium size cave. Wedged tightly in between two karst walls, about 200 people had taken refugee in the cave during the Vietnam war when CIA controlled bombers dropped American bombs on the surrounding countryside, leveling Nong Khiao as well as most other population centers in the area, while leaving the region riddled with unexploded cluster munitions. Being in the area, you can get a sense of the military futility of bombing a site like this, and the legacy of the war in Laos seems mostly a betrayal of American ideals. A silver lining is that Obama had become the first sitting president to visit Laos, and had increased annual aid to 30 million - on the same scale as a single modern fighter aircraft, but still viewed positively by Laotians. After leading a war that literally decimated the population of the country, I'm amazed at that Laotians don't seem antagonistic towards Americans.

Stairs to a Laotian hideout

A case used to hold cluster bombs, used as a lamp holder at the hotel

An unexpected scooter seat

Following the first measurable improvement in our Lao language and several other great meals, including a couple of jeows of chili garlic shallots and herbs pounded in a mortar and eaten with sticky rice, we had to pull out of Nong Khiao before we sunk any further roots in the area. This could easily be a place to come back to spend a lot of time, but we have to keep moving south to Luang Prabang since our visa expiration is within sight.

Sunset from the guesthouse