Hit(ch) the road!: Laos and its relationship with european stomach

After climbing Fansipan I just had a nice evening in Sapa and then I escaped back into the endless middle of nowhere. Hitchhiking in Vietnam is not really easy... they really dont have this kind of culture and i am not able to explain it as I dont speak Vietnamese and there are really few people who speak english fluently enough. Somehow I still got to Dien Bien Phu for the night (hitching a bus... they were ok with not paying which makes even harder to understand their mentality.... people who are anyway going to same direction dont stop, but busdrivers who are riding people to make living are ok with bastards like me 🤷😉).

I was "wild" camping in Dien Bien phu city just under a small roof between houses. Next morning i did some shopping... only souvenirs I wanted were the local coffee maker (or filter.... or how to call it) and coffee itself..... and i had the possibility to wash my hair in the shopping mole, so it was doubble win. It was already 8 in the morning, so it was time to get back to road ( yep,in Asia people tend to wake up, eat and go to sleep much earlier than in Europe - wake up before 6, have breakfast at 6-7, lunch at 11 and dinner at 19-20, at 22 many people already sleep. Compared to my routine everything gets done ca 2 hours earlier).

Getting out from the city took a lot of time and many kms of walking. Finally one car filled with young guys gave me a lift to the border between Vietnam and Laos where I needed to wait 2 hours, because they had lunch break. In canteen they didnt serve me... i dont know why. I wanted to get the same food that locals were eating, but for some reasons they didnt want to sell it to me... lady who worked there was just looking at me with angry face. Real hospitality I need to say.

At 1 pm i finally started to cross the border. The border belt between two countries was really wide, maybe 4-5 km, so i was really lucky that one guy with motorcycle offered me a lift to Laos. It was raining heavily..... To get Visa on the border i needed to fill some papers but because of strong wind papers wanted to fly away, ending up in a small pool.... it would be much more friendly to provide some room for people who need to fill those papers 😒
Visa costs 30 USD, or if you have Euros, then still 30. +20 000 kip (Lao money) for service on sunday or after 4 pm. + another 30 000 kip for some other stamp.
so all together it was 40 USD.

The same guy with moto gave me lift to next bigger village.... some 60-70 kms maybe. It was physically quite hard, because the road was curvy and mostly going downhill, so I was always pushing the driver forward, away from the seat.... to avoid it, i needed to hold myself fixed with my legs.

Already in the first village I felt big difference between Lao and Vietnamese people. Differrently from Vietnamese nobody said hello or smiled to me. They didnt pay any attention to me actually, which was nice actually.... but when i went to ask in a canteen if i can go to toilet the answer was no and they even offered me an angry glimpse. It was similar also in other villages that i crossed to get in Louang Phrabang.
I got a ride to Moang Xai in furgone...

view from furgone

there were already 3 women and a small boy sitting on the floor. Of course they started to ask for 10 USD in the middle of the ride, even though i explained the situation already in beginning.
In Moang Xai some locals recommended me to put my tent next to police office, because they thought it would be most safe. It was safe, but the result was 2 hours of showing my passport, things in my backpack etc. First i set my tent next to the building, but then one guy got the idea that its not safe there and i should put tent inside the building.... so i needed to pack my tent again, take it inside and mount it again. WTF, why didnt you say it before? I already felt tired and weird in my stomach (i ate some tasteless bbq meat, sticky rice and eggs... something of it was not really acceptable for my stomach). All night long there was washing machine working in my stomach and i probably had quite a high fever because i felt very cold.

I got up with head ache and still the bad feeling in my stomach. Even thinking about food made me feel like vomiting.

this beauty matched well with my mood and feelings

Hitchhiking didnt work at all, so i tried to walk but i felt too weak for that. After 5 hours of hopeless walking/waiting i got a ride to somewhere in between Moang Xai and Louang Phrabang. I got some more angry glimpses and after 2 hours of hitching I ended up in a van (local bus-like thing) which took me to my destination for 4 dollars. At least there were two person who spoke english (one of them from Lao and another from Denmark). The engine of the van stopped working10 kms before destination, so we were waiting another 40 minutes for another van to pick us up. Here moving from one point to another takes time.... Distance doesnt count that much.... more important is to pay attention on relief and conditions of roads and also on possible villages where the van will stop to buy some vegetables or something..... in small villages food is cheaper, so usually there are some shopping breaks during the bus ride. My stomach was still unhappy

And still is ;(

But today (12-th of sept) was better day. I met an British guy in hostel with whom we decided to visit Kuang Si waterfalls just 30 kms away. How? First we were thinking of going by tuc tuc, but as we were both missing some physical exercise, we changed our minds and decided to go by bicycles. There is a bike rental just in the guesthouse, so it was easy. Well, biking there during midday was not the easiest thing to do, especially with this bloody washing machine in my stomach, but...