Deep Inside Rural Laos (Biking to China) EP.17
hello everybody and welcome to paksan here in Laos today we have quite a big day in front of us we have quite a big adventure in front of us between 60 to 90 km mostly flat though but we're going to be cycling through some of the most rural parts of Laos so we're very excited but first let's grab some breakfast it is 7:10 am and we finally managed to leave the house earlier than we usually would but yesterday we had asked the owner of this fantastic sandwich shop they actually have really really good sandwiches when he will open today and he said 7:00 a.m. but uh he didn't fortunately he's not open we want to support all of the local businesses that we find because to be honest there's very few but any of the ones that we do find we want to put our money into but unfortunately he's not open so we're going to go without breakfast today maybe we can find another sandwich shop or anything like that on the way because both of us are really happy uh both of us are really hungry we woke up really hungry so I'm just like kind of I don't know sad now about that because we were planning on buying like four Banh Mi so that we would have like breakfast and lunch on the go but uh that's not happening quickly found ourselves another shop here that sells breakfast and uh it looks like they have noodle soup or something like that uh this one yes too a very very lucky find I think this place here was quite literally just about 20 or 30 m up the road this lovely lady here seems to be selling hot and fresh bowls of noodles it seems to be I think the most commonly available thing around here particularly in paksan that we've seen so far everybody sells noodles in a broth with some type of meat and loads of green stuff we're not complaining as long as we have breakfast we're good to go are you wondering how we get such good coverage even in rural areas and across country borders without being stressed over buying new SIM cards here's how we do it don't waste time searching for SIM 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excited for this this looks like my type of a noodle dish this is going to be a good day tell you what there's no better sight right now than we could imagine it's currently 7:22 a.m. so let's have a bowl of noodles let's have a bowl of hot noodles with crispy pork I never thought that I would say that better than nothing this time a year ago there's nothing worse that I could imagine at this time in the morning but hey life times change life changes super hot this guy is watering watering the road oh what's this orange what sort of a mysterious drink is this pork is very very fresh yeah very nice oh wow I'm very glad that we found this this fella is just watering the road yeah so that the dust doesn't fly into the food my God I want to get some of these crispy onions actually just the crispy onions I love these might also be fried garlic that is so good and these noodles here appear to be rice noodles so you got rice noodles crispy pork crispy onions some other type of mystery meat here as well laos um they always add like something something in there that you're not too sure what it is and and then you have a couple of these are these quail eggs again oh you've got I have congealed blood and you have quail eggs and I have some some little quail eggs as well which is a great little addition extra protein can't really go wrong can you think this is a nice what's this that's the mystery meat that I was talking about it looks like skin and I don't know what this is no idea give it a try looks a little bit like a Tang or some like orange Tang doesn't taste like anything just kind of tastes like oh maybe it's like a really light tea could be just like a light uh maybe like a Ocha like a very light tea like the the tea that you get for free at like Japanese restaurants but we're in Laos let's try these noodles they are proper sticky noodles like real super like wafer thin rice noodles so they probably just soak up all of that broth when I bit into them it almost felt like I bit into just water mhm but incredible flavor of this perfect way to start today I'm very happy too I just hope that we will get on the road actually on the road before 8 cuz this is so hot I think that we will take a while to actually eat it 40,000 Kip for breakfast that's less than 2 Euro so Bellys are full of noodles and crispy Porky goodness and now let's hit the road it's still quite early 7:40 so we've got 20 20 minutes to 8:00 so let's get going ooo so peaceful here on the roads right now quite literally nothing around here whole lot of fields there on the left a lot of abandoned buildings Blended in with Fields there on the right side we're slowly making our way towards the part of Laos where there's mountains over the next few days it's about to get a whole lot harder for us found probably the world's grimiest sort of setup here for a toilet no need to document this I need to document it right currently about 15 km in which is like absolutely nothing but it's feeling exceptionally hard today because we have quite a bit of headwind that's coming directly at us so it's not fun the majority of the noises that we've heard today is just roosters and random dogs and uh that's about it oh it's a bin a lot of times you'll see people actually cooking in these things but this one in particular is it's not made out of steel so there's usually it's made out of like some sort of a steel and then there's a fire underneath it it's an interesting way to store garbage though this is the little the road that connects to the lovely bathroom area to the main road I wonder how many times a day the bus come comes to these bus stops I can't imagine it's too frequent hello hello there loads of Street vendors along here along the banks of the mekong and they're selling husks of corn that I think that they they're quite literally just boiling away and you can have them as like a roadside snack and they also have there's actually a woman here that's collecting the corn have a look at that she's weighing the corn up hello she's bagging up the corn and weighing it I'm assuming that she gets a certain amount per kilo I've have no idea how much that would be but uh yeah it's mad it's not something that you see too commonly on the road sides of Thailand it's very different here corn here you also see there's another I think it looks looks kind of like a pumpkin but it's not a pumpkin it's almost like a squash or something along those lines I don't know what it is to be honest they have a a whole different array of stuff here hello oh have a look at this WOW found a church in rural Laos would you believe it that's cool look at this what a cool place I didn't I wasn't expecting this whatsoever there's absolutely nothing around us but this Village here has this beautiful Church there's somebody coming there's somebody coming yeah oh amazing very very dark can we look very beautiful it's open close close open I'm not sure don't have to put it all the way just to see just to look come oh yeah yeah hey thank you thank you what a nice man for bringing us in we just had like a nice little pray prayer there for the rest of our journey back onto the road we go thank you so much byebye bye byee she was horizontal oh yeah poor woman must have been in agony yeah I can't imagine how hard that is it's another church what what's going on here the church on the mekong it's the east of Laos maybe or Southern Laos maybe we're heading south yeah I don't know are they maybe more Catholic here for some reason it's very interesting wasn't expecting this at all anyway there's two things there's two types of things that we are more than happy to give all of our money to one of them is religious establishments it doesn't have to be Christian or Catholic both of us are Catholic Roman Catholics but it doesn't have to be specifically churches we love giving money to anything religious because it gives people gives people purpose in countries most of the time so we enjoy doing that the other thing that we like giving money to is local businesses as long as we're spending money with those two things we're happy hello once those two things are getting money then we're good because those are the two things that I think help they help Society run hello hello makes me feel like we're the back street boys here wow you want one look at the kittens oh yeah grab one of these These are nice electrolyte drinks uh let me see I have a Pepsi or maybe a mirinda actually I'll take one of these actually sounds good what else do they have not much I think this will be all right hello he's like absolutely not you want anything else I'm not sure I don't know what I'm just kind of have a look what they have Euro cake wondering oh these are noodles these are instant noodles we're not going to be able to make instant noodles strawberry Oreos strawberry cream Oreos think I'll have two packs of these bad boys other than that the selection is very slim Colgate keep your teeth clean uh Wafers two of these as well I don't know what these are pandan flavor red cream cake just anything really where we can have some calories are you emptying the shop I just got bits and pieces all right nice little bit of carbohydrates see the kitten has a love heart sticker yeah I think it's from the girl she also has the sticker the sticker uh for all of this how much this Ginger one is real feisty charged at the camera when uh when I put it I like him a lot oh 50 50 this Pandan and cream cake is actually that's not bad at all orange Mirinda nice and cold also got one of these here Superstar twin wow Superstar twin I think it's from Thailand actually might be from Thailand mayora I'm not sure no Malaysia it's from Malaysia it says product of Malaysia oh okay interesting oh no it says product of Indonesia but imported by Malaysia so it's a it's a real sort of sold in Thailand and brought into it's a bastard child chocolate barar that is southeast Asia company yeah pretty much oh it's two it looks good that's why it's called a twin because it's two yeah it's ni not bad the thing here in Lao is that all of the snacks and pretty much everything that you see except for beer lao is going to be imported so any type of food that you get in a supermarket it will be imported even like a lot of the fruit and stuff like that will be imported from Vietnam or Thailand or China as well a lot I think apples and oranges apples and oranges are imported from China I think look at the puppy oh my God Puppy full of stickers yay hello did they put you on the bench and there's also a chicken and chicklets it's a full uh full full house cats puppies chicken everything bye-bye I'd say about nine of every 10 gas stations that we pass by here in Laos so far look like this one they're just quite literally entirely abandoned and some of the ones that aren't abandoned seem to be owned by Vietnam or China so it's crazy really trying to get into the groove today with the cycling but for some reason it seems to be quite difficult and we're now like 36 km in for today and I just feel kind of tired and burnt starting to cycle on the side of the mountains here in Laos oh just looking at it just kind of makes me feel like the next few days are not going to be nice wow how beautiful is this is cycling over the river I suppose it might be it's probably the Mekong and then here on the left you can see all of the hilly areas that are waiting for us oh my God it's starting to get hotter and hotter as well it's beautiful here though what an unbelievable view nam kading River nam kading River wow that is the sight and a half oh wow we just had to stop for a second to appreciate the view tell you what guys look at this oh crazy the more and more that we cycle in Laos the more and more that I think both of us are starting to like the environment that we're in don't get me wrong it's tough like it's genuinely tough for a lot of reasons like finding food sometimes is challenging finding cash and stuff like that but just look at this the natural beauty of this country is uh very much underrated I think I don't think well I I know for a fact there's very few tourists that pass through this region of Lao right now it's incredibly underdeveloped underestimated uh um yeah I don't know it has so much potential this guy is quite literally digging off the river banks Laos seems to have like just a real like crazy A crazy amount of uh potential to be like I think it has the potential to be one of the leading tourism destinations um in southeast if there was a little more infrastructure investment uh and like more thought put into stuff like in these areas it could be huge like literally huge but I think people people around here are just struggling too much so like the thought of putting money towards the tourism industry or anything like that that's way down the list first uh what needs to be done is to p people need to be lifted a little bit economically in different ways there needs to be better jobs and obviously a better economy before any of that happens so I think it's probably a long way off for Lao at the moment I feel like proper proper organization is is missing yeah if uh somebody was to take some part of the economy into their hand and organize it properly I think there's so much potential and uh so such a prosperous fure future ahead of Laos but really only if it's in the right hands yeah what a beautiful place to put a temple amazing fascinating to see at this pit stop that we had just here we just basically stocked up on some water but this shop here has a handcarved board that is from the lan xang it's impossible to talk on these roads they have a handcarved wooden board that is depicting the lan xang kingdom it's now 11:40 um we have about I don't know 50 km or so down 52 52 km down and another 37 to go if we want to do the wholeway I think we we might attempt to do it I don't know I'm still like a little bit like tired and burned but uh it's very it's quite early because we started cycling so early so I do feel like uh the chances of getting there relatively early are quite high so hello so fast hello it's mad to see at a lot of the gas stations here in Laos they openly display missiles like bombs now I don't know if there are the original casings of bombs that would have fallen onto Laos back during the Vietnamese War it's pretty it's a pretty Stark reminder of what happened and horrible history that this country has very very dark found ourselves a Vietnamese restaurant lady let's have a look what they actually have I hope that the translator works oh you speak English nice nice you like to uh noodle or rice or you want noodle or rice what would you like uh rice fried rice fried rice yeah fried rice and we have uh have seafood pork okay two two pork two pork fried rice with h with egg with egg yes thank and the for the drink we take ourself okay okay thank you ooh that looks very nice so it's pork fried rice with an egg on top it looks amazing there's more oh soup thank you yeah this is basically the perfect little roadside rest up we got ourselves the pork fried rice we got some broth we have everything that we need basically to assemble our dish too it feels like we're sitting in like a game time Arena basically because this guy is's watching Thai TV so like like Thai game shows on YouTube right now so it's an interesting setting to say at least there's like nothing but mountains and national parks behind us and then there's Thai game shows and beef fried rice in front of us what what more do you want yeah very tasty all done with the food just paid there it was 104,000 I feel like that's kind of the norm for what we're paying if you get like two proper dishes and two drinks um in a normal like sit down type of restaurant and I'm not talking about breakfast type of restaurant just like normal sit down restaurant usually you're looking at about 100,000 Kip which is very very fair and I think it's a good price it was amazing that's a lot of wood if you know what I'm saying right final Pit Stop wasn't too eventful we just grabbed some water 78 km in final 11 km final 11 km to go traditionally traditionally dressed Lady it's cool look at this for a market huh it's got all the bananas you could ever want ginger loads of Ginger loads of pumpkins there's a half naked baby and uh gardening tools all the gardening tools perfect what more could you need can buy a machete pack of bananas and you're Ginger some ginger and you're on your way now you only have to find hot water you only have to find hot water I haven't seen hot water in 4 days oh you guys we are so done oh this is now officially the longest the longest ride on the bicycle that we had so far and we have another 5.6 kilometers to go it is hot and uh I feel like we can't even drink as much water as we're sweating back out so it's like okay we're stopping every hour or so just to fill up our water bottles because we keep chugging the water away we have made it to our hotel 90 km day let's just pray that they have a room available because if not I'm going to sleep on these stairs oh nice very nice take the shoe okay it's okay w we very nice okay 50 Okay why are we still filming it's still filming right everybody so we made it to Vieng Kham completing our 89 km Journey for the day the longest that we've managed to cycle so far believe it or not now if I can close this bloody door welcome inside of our hotel this is actually the most expensive hotel now that we've stayed in so far but it's 250,000 instead of 150,000 but it's also an actual hotel and not a guest house so I think that's the that's the reason and I can see exactly why the price is more so you have a very powerful swiveling fan most of the fans we've had you just turn it on it stays in one place it's crammed full of dust blast dust in your face it's really horrible this is not the cas the people I just hope that the people can hear us because it's very windy in here yeah true it's a powerful fan we also have a nice enough TV which we're never going to use anyways we have a freaking Kettle which is the first time that we've had access access to hot water we were literally only talking about this we didn't have access to any hot water really like as in to make uh we had hot showers we didn't have hot water to make coffee uh since we entered Laos we also have a mini fridge can you believe it which we can store anything we want really from the store in there which is amazing the possibilities are endless possibilities are endless we have a nice very nice double bed uh it is hard which is kind of just the case I guess around Lao in general but uh I'm not upset about it anyways it we're kind of situated on the bottom floor here in the courtyard which is very good because we can access our bikes super quick we also have a AC it's currently set on 16° I have no idea why that's way too cold and we also have this really uh weird looking lamp here with some place to hang our clothes now let's check out the bathroom 250,000 what's that in Euro like a 10 it's like € 10 little bit more than a 10 I think so it's still ridiculously affordable when you think about it anyway this is the bathroom don't know oh the light there you go it's on that is the light uh this is it pretty straightforward you've just got your your shower I think it has hot water toilet and then you also have a sink as well it's 11€ per night yeah that's very nice the only issue I'm seeing so far is with the door the door has a lot of like gaping holes in it it looks like someone like tried to kick the door down or something before yeah it would just be an issue with mosquitoes if we have the light on when it gets dark I'm sure the mosquitoes will come through mosquitoes can easily access this here look at that it's actually I feel like if I press this too hard that it's just going to go it's it's moving though yeah it is moving that's all right though anyways we're only here for one night tomorrow is the beginning of a lot of elevation a lot of mountains a lot of hectic Madness towards Vietnam yeah quite literally you have uh what is it just under 2,000 just under we have a, 1,800 Meters of elevation in front of us which is we're going to cycle up a mountain where we have two national parks on on each side and then we're going to go down the entire mountain and then we're going to have another Mountain up yeah so you have to cycle two entire mountains to get to Vietnam Naomi's Visa by the way for the Vietnam to enter Vietnam was just approved mine is still pending because I have a new new passport so they're probably thinking that I'm some weirdo or something I just got a new passport it's nothing crazy so hopefully mine gets approved but Naomi is now able to enter Vietnam which means we're motivated to get moving but I'm not going to leave you here if you don't get the Vietnam Visa we just go to Thailand and find another way go to Thailand and fly to China see you guys in the next episode
2025-02-24 08:17
