To the North

Lao coffee (with a splash of condensed milk), squid sauce, mango smoothie

From Luang namtha we rode a relaxed 60 kilometers east along easy rolling hills. Truck traffic picked up as we passed the turnoff to the China border crossing at Boten, but otherwise the road was peaceful and remote, and best of all, nicely paved. We took advantage of trucking infrastructure and stopped for the night at a guesthouse for Chinese truckers in the middle of nowhere, outside the miniscule village of Namotay.

Our next big destination was Phongsali, a long ways to the north. From Namotay, we could ride to Phongsali in three very long days on the main road, or in two shorter days via a dirt road shortcut. Recent experience made us wary of dirt - we had, in fact, promised ourselves to attempt no further long dirt days - but the shortcut was tempting. We decided to discuss our options over dinner. 

Dinner near Namotay

Unfortunately, our village was too small to have any restaurants. The gas station owner informed us that the nearest place to eat was seven kilometers down the road, so we packed our bike lights and reluctantly started riding. Barely a mile down the road we saw a big Restaurant sign! What luck! We noticed the very loud music, the table of very drunk Chinese fellows, and the sizeable number of well made-up young ladies, but we were undeterred. The lady in charge may have been a little surprised to see us, but she happily agreed to cook food for us, and it was delicious. After the inebriated guys drove away, the household sat down to dinner as well, and invited us to try the traditional Lao dishes on their table. There were several jeows (the dipping stew/sauces), spicier and maybe even more delicious than our own dinner. Overall, it turned out to be one of our better dinner experiences.

Setting out from Namotay

Minor cleat/mud difficulty

Feeling well rested and well fed, we decided to take the dirt shortcut towards Phongsali. To our great relief, we did not end up on an endless grind of pain. It was only an eight hour grind of moderate discomfort. The road was muddy in places, and uncomfortably bumpy for the final 30k, but the 80k passed pleasantly enough as we rode through a chain of villages and miniature rice paddy valleys along a river. We rejoined the main highway and stopped for the night in Bountai. Bountai is notable mostly for its lovely river, and for serving the best papaya salad of our trip so far (perhaps using small fish instead of small crabs for extra flavor). 

Rice ready for replanting

Approaching Bountai, eight hours later

After the papaya salad stand, we endured a long hungry search for anything a little more caloric. We finally walked into a restaurant with its lights off and its proprietor in his pajamas (at six thirty pm). A few Lao customers arrived at the same time and helped encourage the restaurant to mobilize. While we all waited for the chef to run to the market for ingredients, one of the Lao men struck up a conversation in decent English. He is a civil engineer working on a road project funded by the World Bank. The wait for food was so long that when our new friend's food arrived first, he insisted we join his table. We added our food order to the communal pot, and tried to restrain ourselves from eating too much of the three engineers' food, which they sorely consumed by transferring one morsel of food at a time onto a bed of rice. We had a fun attempt at mixed language conversation, and learned about the condition of various local roads. The engineers secretly paid, and stalwartly refused any contribution from us (we hope the world bank covered this one). The evening then took a truly delightful turn when the engineers bid us an early goodnight with the meal half finished and left us to shamelessly scrape every plate clean.

We left Bountai early the next morning in anticipation of a long difficult ride up to Phongsali's perch in the mountains. It ended up being our most enjoyable ride so far. The pavement felt fast, the hills weren't too steep, and road work was exactly where the civil engineer warned us. We ended the day on a gradual 2000 foot ascent to Phongsali with amazing views into the mountains on all sides.

Phongsali feels so remote, but is probably as large as luang namtha - just crammed on a ridgeline instead of spread out in a valley. We slow pedaled up steep narrow streets and around huge french-looking government buildings from its past as the provincial capitol, looking for a guesthouse with the best views of the surrounding endless mountains. 

Breakfast steamer

The hotel we chose looked fancy, and cost $13 per night instead of the usual $9. The architecture was nice and the view excellent, but we were most enthralled with the well laundered duvet cover. Our hotels in Laos up to this point have all been perfectly fine, and they have all shared the same standard amenities: oscillating ceiling fan, table, sink (usually draining onto the bathroom floor), shower with Joven brand in-room electrical water heater, western or squat toilet, separate water nozzle that Jove affectionately calls the butthole sprayer, firm mattress, probably clean fitted sheet, and stained blanket or duvet. (No top sheet.) Some have wifi and electric kettles, and most have mysteriously streaked or dirty walls, even when everything else is in good shape. Anyways, between Phongsali's unique beauty and the luxurious clean-walled\clean-duvetted room, I was determined to spend an extra day there.

Phongsali in the cloud

Cloud condensation

Overnight a cloud formed around the mountain, and we woke up to find our fifty mile view reduced to about fifty feet. The city actually looked pretty in the mist, especially the cobblestone alleys in the old Chinese quarter. It was a good day for sitting in cafes and exploring on foot.

Jove had agreed to stay mostly so we could visit a nearby grove of 400 year old tea trees. After seeing so many new tea farms in Thailand, and reading a novel centered on ancient tea trees in nearby Yunnan, it seemed like a thematically mandatory trip. The road to the tea was mud of varying depths, also inside the cloud. We fishtailed along in the mist, then rain, and then more mist, and thought of Seattle. The tea plantation looked ethereal in the cloud, and we wandered around under the old twisted trees for a while before making the mud return to town, with just enough time to hose off the bikes before dark.

Tea tree blossoms - very fragrant!

Our plan was to wake early the next morning and descend 1000m straight downhill on a dirt road to catch a boat ride down the Nam Ou river. After the tea mud ride, and with no sign of the air drying out, we began to feel less optimistic about the ride downhill. One of our nemeses on Lao dirt roads have been their exposed road beds. These fist size rocks peeking up through the clay make for a very jarring ride and feel like they will eventually break either our tires, frames or wrists. The tea road had it's share of this wonderful feature, and with this fresh on it mind we sat down at one of the few open restaurants - a Lao barbeque spot. We had not tried this facet of Lao food, and were pleasantly rewarmed by placing thin slices of meat (mostly water buffalo and pork) not on a metal dome perched over a bowl of coals. The drippings transform the moat of water surrounding the dome into a delicious, fatty broth in which vegetables and mushrooms are steeped abd eaten along with the meat, which was dipped in a scrumptious peanut tomato sauce. As delicious as the meal was, it did nothing to increase our enthusiasm for breaking our frames tomorrow morning, and we left committed to finding an alternate way down the hill.