Recovering from Muang Long

We seem to have trouble sleeping past the six am roosters, so despite not setting a alarm we found ourselves in the muang long market during the morning rush. Breakfast of sticky rice, pork laab, steamed red bean buns, bananas and peanuts stretched into the mid morning before our tired legs managed the spirit to propel us towards Muang Sing. What seemed like a relatively easy, fairly flat 50km ride east ended up being an appropriate coda to yesterday's death march. While still dirt, the presence of heavy truck traffic left the jostling rocky road bed exposed and intermittently raised large clouds of dust. Although the rolling river valley covered in Chinese banana plantations had it's upsides, no tears were shed when the pavement signalling the Muang Sing city limits materialized out of the dirt.

Surprises abound at the village market

This mostly uninhabited corner of Laos is tucked into a large bend in Mekong, bordered by even more rural Myanmar on the west and the Chinese state of Yunnan to the north and northeast. Compared to Thailand, the push of China southward is omnipresent. Massive, tightly packed banana plantations and sprawling rubber orchards arrived within the last decade, backed by Chinese investment for Chinese markets. Apparently, commercial agriculture provides decent money in comparison to the subsistence and regional markets it is replacing. At least among western sources, there is more than a whisper that Chinese business practices aren't exactly ethical. A Dutch hostel owner told us about rumors of mass sickness in banana workers, as well as statements that pesticides and fertilizers banned in China are used heavily here. Of course all of this drains immediately into the Mekong, and i suspect that all the small villages surrounding the plantations use it for their water source. Some of the offenses have been egregious enough that the Lao government revoked the concession to work the land.

On the road, two types of trucks exist. One is the Chinese behemoth, presumably on international routes, barrelling down the road with narry a concern for lazy dogs or chickens in the road. Luckily they yield sufficiently for bicycles. The other are the assorted Lao vehicles, usually slightly larger than a large American SUV. Some could be discarded from the Vietnam War era, but most are slightly newer but still slightly dilapidated patchworks of different truck species. Whether it's because they are smaller, have limited power or have more relaxed drivers, these smaller trucks don't inspire the same fear that the Chinese trucks do, and are ok with doing their part to avoid running over roadside creatures.

But back to Muang Sing ... about ten times larger than Muang Long, it is still a small town that could be seen in its entirety on foot. Our legs being beaten from the huge volume of dirt riding, we stayed close to the hotel and wandered into a random restaurant. The proprietor, more comfortable in Chinese than Lao, brought us to the kitchen when asked for a menu. After serving hot water with rice as an apertif, she opened the refrigerator, and mimed for us to choose from the array of pork cuts, intestines, liver, and hooves. Brooke picked a whole chicken, and thirty minutes later a delicious chicken broth filled with edible, almost creamy pieces of ginger and garlic appeared along with a steaming mound of rice. I got the  chicken head.

I don't know if the snake head made it into a stew or not

While we should have rested a day, both of us had seen plenty of this corner of Laos and were eager to move on, so we took the three hour ride east to Luang Namtha. While still featuring long stretches of broken dirt, road conditions improved greatly and we enjoyed a cloudy ride through the jungle of a national protected area. Landing in Luang Namtha seemed like teleporting back to the first world. Several buildings were more than one story tall, and multiple taller portly pinkish people were seen wandering the streets. We later identified them as Europeans.

While the food in the countryside is definitely Lao, it's been difficult to find variety. Sometimes the villages aren't large enough to support a restaurant, or we can only find a noodle soup stand, or someone selling pork skewers and sticky rice. A wider selection can be found at morning markets, but these stalls principally sell raw ingredients, an assortment of laab, fermented vegetables and sticky rice. The more exotic fare described in guidebooks is most likely eaten for special occasions, but we thought Luang Namtha would be a good place to broaden our culinary horizons. Being in the "big city" we decided to live it up and go to some more expensive restaurants. Brooke had a marginal pizza while I walked down the road to the district hospital with a scrumptious mango shake. After finishing my rabies vaccine series (13 dollars in Laos as well) we headed to a to restaurant specializing in hill tribe food. We had bamboo shoot and rattan soup, somehow flavorful and thin at the same time, along with a curry-like dish made with unnamed jungle herbs that left a sour, slightly astringent taste on the tongue.

One of many examples of French/Lao mixed architecture in Luang Namtha

A savory breakfast followed our sound night's sleep. Tucked away on a side street, we sampled a variety of "jeows," basically small portions of thick stews eaten by dipping sticky rice into them. The eggplant and peanut sauces tasted great and well suited to western palates, while the herb jeow had the same sharp, slightly sour slightly bitter taste we had experienced the night before. Still craving more, we walked from breakfast around the corner to another breakfast, at a restaurant that hosts impoverished hill tribe women on site while teaching them English and western cooking skills. Brooke had real coffee (as opposed to nescafe) and a chicken sandwich on homemade bread, I kept it Lao with vegetables and rice.

Dessert at the bamboo cafe, on meal 4 of 5 for the day

While our initial plan called for moving down the road, I surprised myself and Brooke with the day's advent calendar. For the last nine years, we have alternated making advent calendars for each other, each day filled with a small daily present. Brooke has led the way in artistry, with a squid attacking santa on a stormy sea, although the Christmas tree with drawers that I made two years ago was notable as well. This year the weight and space restrictions of the bike tour necessitated a reduced effort, but I still came up with an advent booklet to keep the tradition going. I had forgotten that today's prize was a rest day, which could be deployed at any time. Although I really thought we should press on after two short days, Brooke wanted to deploy the rest day, so I was unable to argue. 

This is how novel avian viruses arise

In hindsight, it was a fine time to spend an extra day. With so much rural riding, even small cities like Luang Namtha offer a dramatic change of pace. We spent the day at our very pleasant guesthouse catching up on various tasks without doing anything particularly notable, then had excellent wood fired pizza at the same spot as our second breakfast, immediately followed by lao food at our first breakfast cafe. The bamboo lodge's western spinoffs were so appealing that we found ourselves there again the next morning, as a post breakfast departure morphed into a lunchtime departure. Fortunately we broke free of modernity's orbit and pedaled east towards our next decision point - where we would choose whether to strike out on the dirt path once again.

Luang Namtha market