Should you get back on after a fall?

Gina Kolata, my favorite science writer at the NYTimes, has an article this week about why it is so incredibly scary to fall off a bicycle.

The scariest line:

“Well, you’ve joined the proud majority of serious cyclists who’ve busted a collarbone.”


I haven't broken any limbs - and I've fallen twice on my head - and both times a helmet has left me feeling fine.  It's good she wrote this article in the autumn when most of us are waiting until spring to get back on our bikes!

"Can I go for a Bike Ride"

Weekend bikers.  Not always easy on the spouse

Bike to Work Week

I was able to bike to work just a single day of "Bike to Work" week earlier this month -- and biking in urban Boston is about as different as biking in Laos as you can get. Of course the roads are in much better shape.  And of course there are more cars.

Here's what surprised me though.   Through our entire 800 km in Vietnam and Laos, I never saw another recreational cyclist.  I saw entire families on motorbikes (sometimes with a refrigerator or some other unlikely luggage).  I saw small children on beat up single speed bikes.  But I never saw another western cyclist (except the fellow riders and guides on our trip).

Boston, on the other hand, is full of recreational cyclists.  Many ride bikes fancier and more expensive than mine, and a large portion of them, though not all, wear helmets.  

But here's what they don't do. They don't obey "one way" signs.  They don't slow down for stop signs. They don't push to the right if they are going slowly, and they don't call out "on your left" when they are speeding ahead.

I miss the car-free miles on the roads in Laos.  However, I am surprised to also miss the lack of fellow cyclists now that I'm back in the states.

The highlight of my ride home was a stop in Fresh Pond where a red-tailed hawk family has made a  nest on a fascade of an office building. Here's a link to a video from the Boston Globe.  There is frequently a carnival around the office building, with a gaggle of onlookers, some with cameras that have lenses longer than my forearm.  Even without binoculars you can see the parents and at least one of the chicks.   This is a sight,of course, that you would never see in Laos!

Sticky Rice (and Clean Water)

One thing I learned in Laos was that I love sticky rice.  I finally found some (Thai Glutinous) sticky rice here in the US (Three Elephants Brand) -- and followed directions from a blog and the rice came out - well - not quite as good as in Laos - but awfully good.  I also cooked some tofu with red curry/coconut sauce and an eggplant red chili dip - here's a photo from this evening.

The bamboo shoots just didn't come out quite right - maybe next time. 

You might notice the tell-tale bottle of water on the table -and notice that many of the plates are disposable.  Why, you might ask?  We had a "catastrophic" water main break in suburban Boston, and 2 million of us in Eastern Massachusetts are now boiling our water (or drinking bottled water).   Another thing I learned in Vietnam and Laos - how to brush my teeth with bottled water.

Here's a photo of the water section at Target in Watertown, a few hours after the announcement of the water main break:

My Photo URLs - 3/14-3/26

Here are links to all of my photos for the bicycle trip from SaPa, Vietnam, to Luang Prabang Laos. 

Roll One: First Day in Hanoi (3/13) 

Roll Two: First full day in Hanoi (3/14)  

Roll Three: First day of riding in SaPa, (3/15)Northwestern Vietnam 

Roll Four: Second day of riding from SaPa (3/16) 

Roll Five:  To Muong Lay (3/17) 

Roll Six: To Lai Chau (3/18) 

Roll Seven: To Dien Bien Phu (3/19-3/20)
Roll Eight: To Muang Khoua, Laos (3/21)
Roll Nine: To Udom Xai (3/22)
Roll Ten: To Luang Prabang (3/23) 

Roll Eleven: Luang Prabang (3/23) 

Roll Twelve: Back to Hanoi (3/24-3/25) 

Roll Thirteen: Seoul, Korea  (3/26) 

More Vietnam Photos

Nick Kozel of Minneapolis, a much more accomplished photographer than I am, took a few hundred great photos - and ultimately posted 36 that he likes most.    Here's one of his lesser works -- which does give you a sense of the road quality in Northwestern Vietnam.   The next photo shows multimodal transportation -- our guide Binh, me, Rick, a motorscooter, and a water buffalo all traveling up the road.   Motors win - and the water buffalo aren't as slow and lumbering as they look either. 

 

Here's a photo Nick took of Bill, a retired teacher, showing village children their image on his camera.  He had a wonderful way of bringing out the kids - who just adored him. 

Actually, everyone Bill photographed loved him -including two butcher women at one of the open air markets.  I'm guessing his camera got a bit grimy with this shot - but it was worth it. 

Nick's selected photos are at this link.  

I'll be posting links to all of my photos (using Shutterfly.com) in the next few days, and continuing to excerpt what I think are the best ones from the trip. I have a few stories left, too.

SaPa, Vietnam

Three Red Dao (pronounced Zhou) women

Mist shrouding the mountains near SaPa, Vietnam 

Terraced hillsides (and bikes)

Wreckage of French Catholic Monastery destroyed during war against colonialism

Hearth in Dao hut

Hut exterior

Hanoi Photos

1. A shop front from the "mannequin district"

2. Hanoi is a 'cafe society.'  Seems like everyone eats outdoors

3. Did I mention that Hanoi has resident roosters?

4. The Things They Carried

5. You'd hate to be a telephone lineman here!

6. Throughout Vietnam, there were what I believe were private lottery tables (bookies - out on the corners openly)

 More photos coming as I look through the stash.

Reentry

It’s been a week since I returned from cycling in Vietnam and Laos – and I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on the trip. I also rode about 60 miles this weekend here in suburban Boston.  A few thoughts about contrasts. .

1. Roosters:  The first day I wasn’t awakened by roosters was on the airplane across the Pacific.  There were roosters in the posh neighborhoods of Hanoi – and roosters near the state-owned resorts in northwestern Vietnam.   I’d probably put water buffalo in this category too.   I was riding through Concord, Acton and Carlisle yesterday and today – and there were plenty of horse farms –but I miss the water buffalo
2. Cars:  There are too many of them in suburban Boston.   I miss the Lao roads with just motorscooters, water buffalo, and occasional trucks.
3. Bikes: In Vietnam and Laos, we rode Trek mountain bikes that weigh almost 14 kg (30 lbs) and have tires fit for monster trucks. At home, I ride a Lemond Zurich carbon road bike – that weighs about 19 lbs.  The carbon road bike just breezes up hills compared to those mountain bikes – but boy was I happy to have the monster truck tires on the Hmong village trails in Vietnam and pretty much all the Lao roads.  
4. Roads: The roads in the Boston suburbs got a real boost from the America’s Recovery, Reinvestment and Repaving Act.   I rode on exceptionally smooth surfaces this weekend – a far cry from the interrupted pavement and rutted cowpaths in Laos.
5. Birds: We have so  many of them in Massachusetts – and there were so few nondomestic birds that we saw during the bike ride
6. Water: I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be able rinse my toothbrush and my mouth with tap water.   Clean water is such a necessity – but so unavailable to the majority of the world’s population
7. Smoking: There was much less of this in northwestern Vietnam and Laos than I expected in developing countries.   I’m not sure why that is – but the restaurants and hotels were pretty much smoke-free even if they had ashtrays.  Of course, in Laos, the air was thick with smoke from agricultural burning.   One of my bike riding friends was in Luang Prabang in December and told me the skies were clear and the air was clean then.
8. More water:  Laos’ last rain was in October, 2009.   Riding today in eastern Massachusetts, every river has overflowed its banks, and there are still scattered road closures due to flooding.  It’s easy to understand why people in a flood plain like the idea of building a dam!
9. Connectivity: I didn’t have access to work email for an entire two weeks.  Now I’m back and connected.   In Laos, I had plenty of time – but the uploads were so slow that I often couldn’t put photos in the blog.   Back in the US, the upload speed is much faster – but who has the time?  I’m still working on posting my shutterfly URLs – perhaps over the next week.  
10. Food:  I love sticky rice – and miss it already. My experience with sticky rice here is that Chinese restaurants often have it with dim sum – but it usually has pork.  I’m happy I’ve found what looks like a good recipe  – I’ll report back about how it works. First, I have to find some glutinous rice.  
11. Vietnam and Laos are enormously different.  In Vietnam, there is a huge rush – everyone honks their horn pretty much nonstop.  In Laos, the road from Dien Bien Phu to Luang Prabang closes for 4 hours twice a day so they can rebuild it.   By the way, today’s New York Times Book Review has an essay about how difficult it is to find Vietnamese who read Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War-themed short stories “The Things They Carried.”  The book review also has favorable reviews of two new books about the Vietnam War.

Health Care in Vietnam and Laos

	Vietnam	Laos	USA	Australia
Population	82 million	6 million	303 million	21 million
GDP (Purchasing Parity)	$2310	$1740	$44,070	$33,940
Life expectancy (M)	69	59	75	79
Life Expectancy (F)	75	61	80	84
Health Expenditure (USD)	$264	$85	$6714	$3122
% of GDP	6.6%	3.6%	15.3%	8.7%

Source:  http://www.who.int/countries - most numbers 2006

It was hard for me not to think about health care while traveling in Vietnam and Laos. Some of my fellow riders thought that these communist/socialist countries would of course provide cradle to grave health care to their populations. In fact, both Vietnam and Laos are developing nations, and as is typical of countries with relatively low GDPs, they have a primarily “out of pocket” payment system.  Both countries also have relatively little health care facility capacity, especially in rural areas.  Lonely Planet says about Northern Laos “for any serious illnesses consider flying to Bangkok” and warns that air evacuations can cost upwards of $100,000.

Our Laotian guide told us that if he or a family member were very sick, they would not seek care at a hospital, because it is just too expensive. The danger of pauperizing the family is too great.  A masseuse in Vietnam asked me, out of the blue, whether health care was “free” in a rich country like America. The ironies abound.  Vietnam (he told me) offers free care to children up to age 5. After that, city-dwellers can purchase insurance, and for others care is on an out-of-pocket basis.

During the second to the last riding day, one of the riders called forward to the two physicians to turn around.   A 6 or so year old boy had been hit by a pickup truck/taxi (we thought – although in retrospect it seems more likely to me he fell out of the back of the pickup).  An adult male had already rushed him (neck flopping – we were aghast considering the important role of neck stabilization to avoid spinal chord injury) and some of the onlookers were offering him a bit of rice whiskey (another clinical no-no, since it would make it more difficult to assess mental status). 

We examined him briefly – his brief neurologic exam was OK, he was able to move all extremities, and his abdomen was not tender.  He had a superficial scalp wound, and a nice lump on his back scalp.  We couldn’t have a verbal conversation with him, but he appeared to be answering questions appropriately.  There is relatively little traffic in Laos (compared to Vietnam) – and I’m guessing kids falling out of (or being hit by) cars is rare despite the rural villages clustered around the poorly marked roads.   We gave him some ice for the scalp bruise, and went on our way.  It’s not at all clear what we could have done if he appeared to have a ruptured spleen or a brain bleed.

Along the side of the road, most huts in Laos had an outdoor water faucet and a drain.  I believe this was the result of an NGO-government program to provide safe drinking water to the villages.  As much as I see a potentially tragic lack of access to medical care in rural Laos, it makes sense to prioritize public health needs like safe drinking water first.

Final Leg of the Trip

I’m back in Boston now – after an epic 36 hour journey from Hanoi.  I started on Asiana Airlines – and did a stopover in Seoul first.   (See last post about a visit to Gyeongbokgung Palace.)  From there we traveled on to LAX – where I was reunited briefly with my luggage, and reacquainted with domestic airlines.  USAirways shares a domestic terminal with Southwest – so the entire environment was chaotic.   The flight to Charlotte was overbooked, and seating took until 15 minutes after scheduled takeoff time due to the inordinate number of rollerboards coming on board.  I had my first pizza in weeks (pineapple and cheese – good, but not as good as some stir fried noodles with veggies.)  The flight from Charlotte, scheduled to leave at 10:15 was overbooked – but got off on time, and we arrived in Boston at 12:15am this (Sunday) morning.

When I say me, I mean me and the other passengers.  No sign of my luggage when the baggage handlers stopped the carousel and slammed down the exterior gate – so I couldn’t change from my shorts (lucky I had that fleece from my Seoul adventure). The US Airways lost baggage counter was busier than you’d expect at 1am. But the US Airways folks were nice and THEY didn’t lose my luggage.  Amazing how mean and angry some of the other passengers were. I just had 2 weeks in southeast asia - so I can be 'zen' about this. 

No luggage meant heading out into the cold weather here in my shorts (new meaning for being "chill"). By 1:15 am there was a line of 12 people and no taxis in sight!   I found a place under one of those heat lamps, and thought about what a challenge this could be to the Buddhist approach.   I ended up having a great taxi ride with Sayed, who kindly invited me to sit in the front seat because I was freezing. It turns out he’s friends with Sammit, who cuts my hair.  Small world! 

The luggage came by courier today – and the popped zipper on my suitcase that prompted me to fasten it with packing tape even popped back into place.   Not much sleep last night, though – so I won’t be starting the week quite as fresh as I’d like.

I’ll have a few more posts of perspectives over the next few days. Thanks for following along and being a part of my journey.

What happens when the airport toilet goes hi-tech?

Electronic Bidet in Seoul

Seoul Adventures

Me at the changing of the guards (notice my inappropriate dress)

I got out of the airport!

11 hours in an airport – even a lounge – just doesn’t seem like a good idea.  I followed a number of blog entry posts and decided to go to see Gyeongbokgung Palace.   Actually, perhaps I decided to see the Changdeokgung Palace  – which is on the UNESCO world heritage list.  However, the really helpful person at the information booth sent me right out to a bus to go to Gyeongbokgung.  Not right out. First she sent me to the stores on the third floor, where I procured a fleece.  I’m dressed in shortsleeves and shorts – and this morning it was -2 degrees Centigrade here (about 29 degrees Fahrenheit.)  Now I could have figured that out and left my fleece out of the checked luggage.  Oh well.

One other piece of unhappy news.   Early reports suggested that North Korea apparently sunk a South Korean naval vessel last night.   Later reports suggest that the vessel might have had an explosion not related to the tension between the two Koreas.  Seoul is perched diretly on the border – so although it’s a capital city it is also a potential frontier town if there is any broader conflict.   Let’s hope not.

Everyone is hugely helpful here – there were red-shirted transportation employees who knew I needed a helping hand as soon as they saw me, and whether at immigration, customs, or driving a bus – everyone wants to help. (Not everyone speaks English of course, but anyone’s English is better than my Korean!)

The roads leaving the airport are massive – imagine the Jersey Turnpike with almost no cars on it – going through a wasteland of landfill surrounding the new airport.  The ride on the airport  bus was uneventful (though a bit cold even in my newly-purchased extra fleece).  The driver spoke no  English, but made sure I knew when the stop came. As I got out of the bus, it was clear this was the right stop, but it was totally inapparent where the palace and the National Museum are!  Luckily, it was crystal clear where the police were (all over the place), and the pointed me in the right direction where the old royal buildings are just 2 blocks away form the heavily commercial district of the bus stop.

For placental burial (for the royalty only)

I wandered through the Museum – which has English translation for perhaps 1/3 of its exhibits – many of the rest of these are self-explanatory.   However, this trip has helped me see what a disadvantage it is to not understand the language where I’m traveling.  I had no idea that the Koreans revere their royal family – which brought Korea into the community of nations in the late 19^th century and pioneered improving relations with the rest of the world. I  also would not have guessed how much trouble they took to appropriate bury the placentas of royals - and early childhood education for the prince started in the womb!  

Korea's royal rule came to a dramatic end in 1910, when Japan annexed Korea – where it would plunder the peninsular nation’s resources and people until the end of World War II.   The last survivor of the royal family line died in 1950.

The Palace itself reminds me of the Forbidden City in Peking – but it’s not quite as big, and it is swarming with kids on field trips.  It’s also been restored lovingly, but there are big skyscrapers virtually touching the Palace grounds, and fighting against development here seems like a lost cause.  One more Asian incongruity is LED billboards and lights flashing upon the ancient palace grounds. The palace had ceremonial changing of the guard, and one of the staff shot my photo after asking “You cold?”  You can get a sense of this by looking at everyone else’s dress.

I had a nice hot chocolate (accompanied by Goldongbon – the royal version of bimbimbop -- at the museum coffee shop after freezing on the palace grounds.  I picked up a quick Korea travelog for the plane at the museum gift shop (Peep into at Korea, Kevin Hayes, 2005).  I was a bit disturbed to read of gastroenteritis from Korean food just as I was finishing some myself.  I skipped the Kim Chi this time – since I’m on the way home and trying to avoid a garlic dose.

Then I hoped to return to Incheon International Airport via subway –  anything to avoid standing outside in my thin fleece waiting for the bus. I found a very helpful employee who explained carefully the two transfers I’d have to make and suggested it would take two hours.  I thanked him (Come sah me don)  and went directly to the bus stop, where the same driver who dropped me off arrived quickly doing the return run. 

Next I’ll be boarding Asiana 202 to LAX – and it’s a daylight flight but I need to figure out how to sleep during that 12 hours otherwise I won’t be able to function at all when I get to the States.  I inadvertently left my zolpidem (generic Ambien) in my checked luggage, so I went to a pharmacy here where they suggested a very high dose of Benadryl.  I bought it just in case.

Back in Hanoi (and Leaving on a Jet Plane)

Reproduction of Common House at Museum of Ethnology

I struck out at Hanoi Airport.

We arrived at 5:30pm, and I searched for the Asiana Airlines ticket line – and it was nowhere to be found.  Turns out it doesn’t open until a few hours before the flight takes off.  Who knew?  I got the travel agency to give me their phone number – but even after I used the right prefix all I could get was a busy signal.  So – we decamped to the “Food Court,” where I had pretty awesome fish soup, and where there was a great wifi signal.

By 9pm, the Asiana line was open, and a helpful clerk took my itinerary and walked over a few stalls and furiously typed for about 40 minutes (2 short stories in “Good Scent from a Strange Mountains.”) The denouement was that there were no seats on the flight out of Hanoi --  and I appreciate their not keeping me in that line until 11:20!

I had made (nonrefundable) reservations at the Intercontinental in advance – and the hotel is even nicer than it sounded in the New York Times.   It’s built on an artificial island on West Lake, and luxurious beyond my imagination, especially after two weeks of drizzling showers over bathroom floors with drains.   It’s an oasis in Hanoi where all the staff speak English There was a generous breakfast buffet, a plush bed with a pillowtop and choice of 6 different types of pillows – and an outdoor pool where you can do real laps.   Honestly, it was hard getting myself out of this resort after the evening of peaceful sleep.  The internet was even fast enough to watch John Stewart ape Glen Beck (hilarious) and upload most of my photos to Shutterfly. (I’ll be posting URLs in the relevant blog entries in the future.)

Water Puppet Theater

I did get out though, and visited the Museum of Ethnology– where I read explanations about the housing and farming choices of the Dao (I spelled the tribe “Zhou” earlier – since that’s how it’s pronounced) and the Hmong.  The museum also has a huge outdoor exhibit where houses are reconstructed, including an impressive multistory community house (from Vietnam’s central highlands –not where we cycled).   There was a boisterous high school class on a fieldtrip – so it took awhile to climb down from the community house since the high schoolers were posing for multiple pictures.

Sculpture of Vietnamese captives when Hoa Lo was the French Colonial prison. 

I then went to Hoa Lo, the prison which was called the Hanoi Hilton for the dozen years that American airmen including John McCain were held prisoner there. Some Americans I know have been unhappy at the prison museum – the American POWs seem like a mere footnote, and the focus of the museum is the 60 years that the French colonials used the prison to jail various revolutionaries, including some of the founding fathers (and mothers) of current Vietnam.   The text highlights that the Vietnamese would have liked to try the Americans using criminal law, but were generous eough to feed them and give them another chance despite the damage caused by their bombing.  There are impressive sculptures of Vietnamese prisoners in the French era prison – and a memorial to the sewer used as an escape hatch by Vietnamese prisoners. There’s also the remaining guillotine used by the French to behead Vietnamese prisoners.

I did a bit more shopping – getting myself totally lost in the process – and discovered that even with all the diversity in Hanoi, there are some things that are impossible to find.  My assistant, for instance, likes exotic shot glasses.  Now I KNOW the Vietnamese and Laotians use shot glasses – we used them in a restaurant to taste the rice whiskey we purchased along the bike road.  Still none of the stalls anywhere had any shot glasses at all – never mind the ones that say “Hanoi,” perhaps with a painting of a woman with a triangular hat in a rice paddy.  I wonder now that I’ve been up and down Ha Bong asking whether in a month the place will be overflowing with them!    I also had this idea to get my son a sports jersey from Vietnam or Laos.  However, it turns out that Vietnamese and Laotians just don’t wear their teams’ jerseys.  The trendy folks wear Manchester United (AIG) or Chelsea (Samsung).

After shopping, I had a dinner of hors d’oevres at the Intercontinental.  Great shrimp paste on sugar cane. Then, I had a swim (brisk and breezy after sunset) and an exceptionally good massage in preparation for the 36 hours of flight.  Very civilized.  The masseuse told me that I should get massages regularly because my calfs were so tight.  Maybe that has something to do with cycling 800 km?

I’m writing this on an Asiana Airlines flight to Seoul – first real leg of the trip home.   I have a long layover here – so perhaps will get to see a tiny bit of Seoul outside of the airport.   

Leaving Luang Prabang

Will, Bill, Nick, Rick and me in Luang Prabang as we turned in our bikes

We had our final dinner at Le Elephant – an excellent French-Lao restaurant along Luang Prabang’s main street, Th. Sisavangvong– across the night market from our hotel.   Unfortunately the Lao set menu was  mostly beef, so I went for the French menu, with an intensely neon green vegetable soup and mushroom canellonis in a cream sauce.   Very different from the rest of the trip – and quite good. 

The night market appears to be a permanent fixture along Th. Sisavangvong.  There are acres and acres of silk hangings and puffy elephant slippers.  A little of this is made here (most probably the t- shirts, which are often so thin you can read the text on the back through the front  of the shirt).  I’m guessing that many of the goods are actually made in China, including the hangings in the style of the Hmong and other minority tribes.  But at 9:15 (preparing for a 10pm closing) the merchants start packing up – and by 10:05 you’d never even know that the market had been there!

Luang Prabang is so smoky that I felt like I had inadvertently walked into a bar when I opened the door of my (air conditioned!) hotel room in the morning.   It’s a charming city, though, with tourists all over, and restaurants ranging from American to French to Italian and Asian.   It’s also got watts and stupas all over.  Many are being renovated – and there are novice monks all over. I got out of the hotel a bit too late to witness the saffron-clad novices parading down the street and receiving the alms of small kip notes and balls of sticky rice from locals and tourists alike.  

Novice robes out to dry

National Museum

I was able to see the national museum, including a photography exhibit “The Floating Buddha” by a German photographer  Hans Georg Berger who spent years documenting the reintroduction of Buddhist education into Laos after the current government through its hands in the air when it realized it could not eliminate religion.  In fact, it’s likely the Buddhism that gives Laotians a sense of peace even in a relatively impoverished land. The quote I’ll remember from the exhibit is the one line distilling Buddhism “Cling to nothing whatsoever.”  The photos are truly amazing – I can’t find any to link to on line, though, and photography was prohibited in the museum.

The government also had an especially hard time figuring out what to do about the long legacy of the royal family in Luang Prabang, which gave way peacefully to the Pathet Lao (communists) in 1975 as the US fled the region.  The King, Queen and Prince were initially under house arrest and later taken to camps in the mountains or caves; they apparently all died there, perhaps of malaria, but it’s really a mystery.   The Palace has become the National Museum – featuring the royal family’s books, gifts from around the world, and their cars .   The museum is much like a shrine to the royalty. Like the Buddha, though, they are gone from this earth.

View from Phu Si

The guidebooks say that a walk up to the temple at Phu Si – the hill overlooking downtown Luang Prabang, is especially rewarding for the view.  Take my word for it – not in smoky March!   The temple itself is much more diminutive than many others in Luang Prabang, and I deferred on climbing down the other side to see the Buddha’s footprint.  The temple had no one else inside, though, and I sat down on a pillow cross-legged for a few minutes in the darkness there with the faint smell of incense – and did feel very peaceful

 I took a dusty 3 km walk to the Phousy Market – the less touristy market –and the sights and smells were amazing.  Not much for a tourist like me to purchase there except for dried river weed – which was delicious at yesterday’s lunch, but I’m convinced it would be river weed powder by the time I got it home, so I deferred.

Market at Phousy

We’ll be on an ATR72 prop plane out of the smoke of Luang Prabang and into the hassle and noise of Hanoi in another hour – where I will try to talk my way onto a flight a day early so that I can have two days to recover and reorient myself to East Coast time.   Given daylight savings, it’s one less hour of reorientation since I left.

4 Wheels to Luang Prabang

Today started out cool and beautiful.  We had a  nice non-Asian breakfast at Nong Kaiu Riverfront – with real (apple) juice and especially good papayas and apples, and there was a bit of a breeze that between 10-11 was almost refreshing, although it felt more like a punishing headwind after 11.

                                   

Yesterday Nick said he saw a working elephant on Highway 13 – and I  was a bit skeptical.  He had skipped lunch to power through the Nong Kaiu – perhaps he was hallucinating?  Well, if so, there is elephant hysteria – we all saw the elephant today.  The driver was pretty adamant that the elephant not drink water along the side of the road.  The elephant won, and gave the driver a bit of a soaking.

A dark cloud of smoke settled over the Nuom Ou River valley at noon.  It felt like early dusk, and the sun was obscured entirely.   There were scorched palm fronds floating through the air, and all of our eyes were burning.

Along the way, I couldn’t bear to miss taking a quick shot of the “free drug village.” Next to the sign, there were two young women with rodents on leashes – I would have glided right by had I not stopped.  Apparently these are moles – and they taste similar to squirrel.

Moles on a string - a delicacy

The perils of translation 

A special treat today was lunch at Joi’s family home.   The family’s rice farm is on the other side of the river, but in 2002 the government ‘requested’ that the village move to the ‘road’ side of the river – where the electricity was.   Now, they row across the river each day to tend their fields.

Lunch was the best of the trip.  There was dried river weed with sesame (tasted almost like crackers), bamboo shoot vegetable soup, mixed vegetables, chicken and beef, and roasted yams (with white flesh – but were they ever sweet).

Lunch at Joi's family's home. Note I couldn't take a picture without hands in the way!

I got on my bike to start the last 45 km into Luang Prabang and was immediately overcome by the smoke.   My eyes were burning so much that I had to close them so they would tear – not especially helpful in terms of ability to see.   So I hopped on the van after a few kilometers.  It was a bit disappointing to miss out on the last 20 miles of a 500 mile trip, especially since there were no hills.  On the other hand, I’m sitting in the van with the air conditioner aimed at me and the outside temperature is 38 Centrigrade (about 100 Fahrenheit), and this is feeling just fine.

Haze in midafternoon as we reached Luang Prabang 

Luang Prabang is a city full of watts and stupas – and I’m looking forward to getting to see the night market.  Some of the group is staying and doing a cooking class tomorrow – I’ll be boarding a flight back to Hanoi to begin my trans-Pacific journey.   I’m looking forward to being home, and can imagine it will be a few weeks before I can even look at a bicycle!

Addendum: Nick and I did get out of the van to ride the last km into Luang Prabang.   Cough cough sputter sputter.  The city itself was in a deep haze - but is charming -- the hotel has the best shower I've had in 2 weeks, and we had a lovely dinner at a French restaurant.  Internet is again ploddingly slow - and I'll post photos from Hanoi.


Further addendum: Full photos from trip to Luang Prabang (not edited and mostly unlabeled) are available at share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=9BZtmTVyyY8w