The “Good Road” to Oudon Xai…

Vieng Phokha was the first major town I headed for... I figured that I'd get there in an hour and a half...

I guess I should have gone back into my memory banks and looked up the section “Don’t believe everything you hear about road directions and conditions…”

I had been told that the roads in northern Laos had seen dramatic improvement over the last year or so, and the Chinese were actively engaged in building new roads in the area, to link their own roadwork with those of Laos and Northern Thailand…

They needed better road conditions to send all those defective plastic toys into their neighbouring countries in exchange for commodities such as timber and minerals, you see…

It began so well...!! The wide, well surfaced road wound through thickly forested countryside...

I left Houei Xia at 10.15am, and optimistically believed I could make Luang Prabang, 380 km away, before nightfall… I had between seven and eight hours to do it in after all, a full tank of fuel on board, and a few major towns to buy water and snacks in along the way… Easy peasy…!!

The first few kilometres buoyed my optimism even further… It was a newly surfaced road, and it wound through picturesque countryside… I became immediately aware that Laos was Thailand’s much poorer neighbour…

Tiny settlements lined the road, the homes made a mixture of timber for the main frames and woven reed mats for walls… Grubby children played in the dirt, waving as I zoomed by…Pigs and stray dogs wandered among the scrawny, long-legged chickens

Small plots of land had fallen under the “slash and burn” technique, and were planted with basic crops such as rice, on the level areas close to the rivers, and fruit and vegetables up on the higher slopes…

Typical dwelling of the hill tribes that inhabit northern Laos...

Coming around a long smooth bend, I saw that the road up ahead had changed colour, and texture…!! It went from smooth black, to uneven brown…

This gravel section came as somewhat of a surprise... "I don't recall this being part of the program...!!", grumbled the Big Fella...

I slowed down and entered a long section of compacted dirt road, keeping in the tyre tracks of vehicles that had gone before me, and off the strips of “marbles” that had been pushed to either side…

A few kilometres later, we were back on the tar, and passed through the villages of Nam Sei, Dong Chai and Xot… Then it was back onto gravel, and into a long stretch that was being worked on by small groups of road-builders, supervised by Chinese foreman… They were easy to tell apart… The locals shoveled dirt, while the Chinese foreman sat in their four wheel drive vehicles and read their newspapers…

Then things began to go a little pear-shaped...

For the next sixty kilometres, we rode on almost every type of surface imaginable, except mud (Thank God…!!) Our speed dropped off completely, and in some sections I had to crawl along at barely 30 km/h…

With my tyres pumped a little too hard for the conditions, they shot pieces of gravel off the road and into the jungle...

I got to this section just in time...!! I was able to ride down the right hand side for the next few kilometres...

Graders pushed sand along before them, making things even more difficult by effectively closing off more than half the road… At one point I had to “walk” the bike over a heap of sand almost two feet high, to get out of the way of an oncoming truck…

With the stretch to Vieng Phoukha almost complete, I focused on the next bit to Luang Namtha...

The heat forced us to stop for a quick rest outside Phon Thong...

The Chinese border at Bo Ten was only 20 kms away... I briefly considered a quick visit, but considering the road conditions, and the time it had taken to get this far, thought better of it...

It went on like this until we reached the outskirts of Vieng Poukha… Strips of completed roadway, then stretches of torn up tar and gravel…

It was one of those “rollercoaster of emotions” rides… One minute you’re zooming along, leaning through long lazy bends , and the next you have a death grip on the handle bars while you negotiate potholes, deep cracks, loose gravel and narrow gaps between road working machinery…

I rode through Luang Namtha without stopping, and arrived at the junction that would take me south east to Oudon Xai, or north to Bo Ten and the Chinese border… I stopped here to consider if it was worth my while to ride the 40 km round trip to the border and back, just to take a peek into China…

I figured it would add an hour to my ride and decided that it wasn’t worth it…

I stopped to look down on this little "smallholding"... The water in the little dams is used to irrigate crops with, as well as breed fish in...

The next 80 kms were a bit of a nightmare…

Work on this section was in progress for most of the way… Just outside the town of Na Mot, at the beginning of a long steep climb up over a mountain range, things came to a grinding halt…

The road was completely blocked by a team of morons that had dumped gravel over its entire width… I rode to the front of a long line of cars, trucks and buses that had been waiting there for half an hour before I got there… We were told that they would let us through in “3 minutes”… Those three minutes stretched into fifteen, and then thirty…

The plan to get to Luang Prabang today is permanently shelved...

By then I had dismounted and stood chatting to a Scot and his two Canadian companions, who were traveling through South East Asia by bus…

For the next hour, I rode in the dust thrown up by these SUV's...

A steady column of gravel-laden trucks came up out of a crushing plant a few hundred metres away, made a wide turn and then reversed down the road in front of us, and around a corner out of sight where we were waiting, to dump more gravel on the road…

I got tired of waiting and rode through the barrier, ignoring the calls of the guy holding his flag to stop the traffic… A convoy of SUV’s was parked up ahead of me, right in front of where the grader was working…

They must have been carrying some VIP’s because the team around the grader worked furiously to clear a path for them through the thick piles of gravel, and when the SUV’s finally got going, I tucked in behind them and following their wheel tracks through the gravel, walking the bike in parts where it sank down over the rims…

Once through this area, the road twisted and turned through sections that were mostly gravel… The SUV’s were in a big hurry, and on the few sections that were tarred, sped up significantly, and never allowed me to overtake them…

I had to be content with chewing their dust for the better part of an hour… I knew that if I stopped to let them get ahead of me and allow the dust to clear, then I risked all the other vehicles catching up and having to ride in their dust as well…

My right hand pannier becomes a casualty on the road to Oudon Xai... Cable ties to the rescue...!!

And my fuel bottle holder is ripped off it's brackets...

Coming around a sharp bend, still riding in a cloud of dust, I hut a large pothole that send a massive shock from the tailbone up into my helmet… I heard a loud “BANG” behind me and looked back to see what had happened…

My right hand pannier was swinging next to the bike…!!

Before I could stop, it banged down hard onto the ground again, held on only by the strap that held my duffel bag to my saddle, and was looped through the handle of the pannier…

By braking so suddenly on the loose gravel, I almost lost control of the Big Fella, but managed to stay upright…

I sat looking dumbly down at my pannier, where it rested on the ground next to me…

The locking device that holds it to the frame had snapped in half… I reattached the pannier to the frame using four of the largest cable ties I had, and prayed that it would hold up until I got to Oudon Xai…

I also saw that when the pannier bounced down onto the ground, the rare fuel bottle holder had taken the brunt of the impact, and had torn loose from it’s lower bracket…

I rode the last 30 kms very carefully, tried to avoid every bump and rock on the road, which was impossible, but I did manage to get to town without the pannier breaking off again…

I had long ago given up the idea of pushing on to Luang Prabang, so cruising down the main street of Oudon Xai, I spotted a large hotel off to my right, and pulled up under its portico… The staff rushed out to greet me and within minutes, had my gear in the lobby, while I parked the bike among a large display of potted plants on a raised cement block…

I wasn’t sure if Willi would see it parked there when he eventually arrived, or if he would look for accommodation elsewhere… I had last seen him five hours before in Houei Xai, looking for a place to change money…

The cavernous lobby of the hotel...

The hotel lobby was a vast room that had various samples of handcrafted furniture displayed in setting scattered throughout… I later discovered that the owner of the hotel also had a furniture factory and a sawmill…

The large wooden staircase leading to the upper floors were in the process of being decorated for a wedding that was to take place the following day… I idly wondered if I should stick around and see what mischief I could get up to…!!

A bright and incongruous welcome at the hotel in Oudon Xai...

Setting up my laptop was a pointless exercise without an internet connection...!!

Beautiful wooden floors, made from a variety of indigenous hardwoods...

The rooms were spacious and clean, but I could not get an internet signal despite the staffs best efforts to assist me…

A few hours after I arrived, Willi came ambling into the lobby… He checked in and we didn’t see each other again until the following morning…

I ordered a bowl of soup and together with a few cups of coffee, sat looking out over the busy main road…

I wondered where and when I was going to be able to get a new “locking-catch” for the pannier, and if it was worthwhile having one flown in from South Africa, or trying to get in touch with the manufacturers, Hepco & Bekker in Germany…

I went down and looked at the Big Fella again, going over the back end as carefully as I could to see if there wasn’t any damage that I might have missed earlier…

Thankfully, everything seemed to be in order, except for the thick layer of dust that covered almost every inch of the bike…

A light drizzle during the evening washed most of it away, and the next morning dawned cloudy and cool…

©GBWT 2011