Midnitemapper
Senior Member
Yesterdays statistics, a long and great day.
How did the sign-maker manage to do this?
$3 accommodation
Bamboo bridge
Sunrise towards Vietnam
White center-lines, amazing
Wet and muddy river crossing
Whoops the water buffalow is on her side,
I blew past a small scooter on this track a few k's back, he was carefully picking his way around the mudholes.
When he saw me in this predicament, he smiled and carried on.
Just completing the ford upstream of this bridge, A copper comes out of nowhere and demands my passport??
Shophouse in a village cash register is this guncase, he probably does not get robbed!
Good transportation
Can a jackhammer be this much fun?
A quick stop at tourist attraction
Tham Pieu Hoax
Villagers in the area know the "official" story well, and will repeat it to any travelers. Quietly, however, some Xieng Khouang natives will tell you that Tham Pieu was in fact a North Vietnamese arms dump and hideout. The aircraft that fired the missile was most likely a Royal Lao Air Force T-28, whose rockets set off secondary explosions that killed numerous Vietnamese soldiers and probably some civilians as well. The cave's location at the entrance to the Ban Ban valley, the PAVN's main staging area for attacks on the Plain of Jars, made it an unavoidable target. The story is tragic, but the reality bears little resemblance to the Governments fantasy. Nevertheless, since the Party incorporated Tham Pieu into its account of the war, the details have been repeated so often that the Governments version is usually taken at face value. Some guidebooks dutifully repeat the government's line, but the bible of Lao backpackers, "Lonely Planet," notes that most of those killed were Vietnamese and that Vietnam repatriated most of the remains in the cave in the 1980's.
No shoes! well good time to dry then out from the river fords
Trying on a helmet
Nong Het
The Old Lada from the days when the Russians occupied this area.
And a new fuel station.
Great trail riding in the many newly cut tracks across the mountains in this area
