Tour de Laab

Hunting for snails around Sam Pan Bok Both of us agree that the deviation from Thailand into central Laos and Vietnam had been well worth the effort. I'm sure interesting opportunities would have presented themselves if we had continued along the Thai Mekong path, but the only site I know of that I regret not having visited is a place called Sam Pan Bok, or Three Thousand Holes. It's an area on the Mekong only visible during the dry season. Here, the river narrows to its thinnest width since leaving China, earning it the vastly inappropriate moniker "The Grand Canyon of Thailand." . As water levels drop, thousands of eroded holes in the rocky riverbed are exposed, but remain filled with water well into the dry season.  Taking a dip in one of the holes, with Thailand visible across the Mekong Enough Thai tourists visit that I had been able to discover it on the internet, but despite a fair amount of effort, I found absolutely no information regarding thi...

Rewards for staying off the highway Our dalliance over multiple food, coffee and art stops set us back so far as to nearly guarantee a night time arrival in Khâm Dúc, 112km to the west. Taking the backroads out of town through muddy concrete dikes and occasional dirt paths didn't help either, but was worth it to see more of peaceful, rural, coastal Vietnam that we would miss by getting on highway one. Unfortunately, ten kilometers of gradual climbing in the rain remained before us when the sun dropped below the rolling hills. In a stroke of good luck, a large truck chugged up the hill behind us, passing only a few kilometers per hour faster than we were riding. Brooke and I quickly jumped on our pedals and within seconds had grabbed onto the tarp covering the truck, earning a free ride into town. In celebration (actually in an effort to get rid of our Vietnamese dong before leaving), we went to a restaurant with a wonderfully mistranslated menu, where I saw the intriguing ...

Roadside graves continued After our success taking the coastal route into Huê, the choice between the shorter path on highway one and the scenic route along the coast basically made itself. Leaving the city proved remarkably easy, and soon the mysterious imperial tombs sprouted from the roadside with even greater density than we had seen on the ride into the city. Unfortunately the quality of the road deteriorated somewhat, and the Vietnamese drivers were a little more aggressive then they had been, probably because the road was only one and a half lanes wide. During one rest stop, several pairs of ladies selling snacks filled in some important gaps in our Vietnamese cuisine, letting us sample ban ep (thin rice crispy wafers with tomato, garlic or onion slices baked in), delicious fried rice flour balls filled with bean curd, and more fried rice flour balls with sesame seeds. Rain came intermittently after our snack break, but with enough vigor to keep us soaked. Still, we safely ...