Out Of Laos And Into China.

Our last night in loas was spent camping in a burnt over wasteland, which turned out to be some hilltribe lady's garden. We found this out after we had pitched our tents and stomped all her seedlings to smithereens. $1.20 made it all better and off she went on her merry Akha way. Incidentally, the woman was like a million years old and had perfect teeth. I'm pretty sure they weren't dentures but maybe her village has comprehensive dental coverage. We ate a dinner of watermelon, cucumbers, french bread, and water and went to sleep. Around 2 am, the moon disappeared and lightning and thunder began to break up the sky. I realized we had pitched our tents on what would quickly be a flood plain, and yelled over to charlie that bad things were about to happen. Racing an oncoming torrential downpour, we hauled all our gear up the muddiest, burned-overiest hill ever and buckled up for a roller coaster ride. The sky tore open and for the next 4 hours that little laotian valley rocked and rolled. The lightning was so fierce I could of read a book without a flashlight. I didn't of course because books are for intellectual elitists.

We packed up, soaking wet, and set off for the Chinese border in a downpour. It was amazing how fast the landscape and village scape changed. Brick started replacing thatch, and laotian slowly started giving way.

I'm not going to lie. I had my doubts about china. Anyone who's read my last blog can attest to that. The fact that the last town before the Chinese border sold nothing but libidinal aids did not assuage my fears. I'm not making that up. It was a town devoted to selling dildos. One of the oddest things I've ever seen. That being said... China has been absolutely, drop-dead, shiver-me-timbers, awesome!

We've been here for about three days and we have yet to meet anyone who was not gracious, patient, kind and downright awesome. The culture shock, for me, was pretty extreme. No one here, and we've been here for 4 days, speaks english. No one! When we want to eat, we walk into the kitchen of a restaurant and start pointing at things. I refuse to speak pidgin and they refuse to speak english and it is a ton of fun. That actually might be one of my favorite things about the chinese so far- even when they know you have no idea what they are saying, the don't dumb it down for you. They keep on jabbering at you, and you can keep on jabbering back in english and eventually something happens. For instance...

We had ridden big, big hills all morning and by the time lunch rolled around, all we wanted was some mcdonalds- that or pizza hut. We got stopped at a tollgate by some very friendly tollgate workers and after Breckan drew a very detailed picture of a McDonalds extra value meal (complete with the golden arches on the fry container), we were assured there was one in the next town. I felt it was a little dubious, but then Charlie started yammering about how McDonalds is in the real estate business and the next town was a great place to put a mcdonalds and then two minutes later I was on board and ready for some cheeseburgers. Three minutes later, with very broken hearts, we rolled into a dirt scratch of a Chinese town. Literally, the first guy we stopped to talk to, started scratching things in the dirt. It was sad. I was sad. Jesus was probably sad too.

Somehow we ended up at cop station (this happens to me quite often in the states). However, in China were everything is wonderful and people aren't jerks, instead of being arrested and told I owe the state of Utah a lot of money, a police officer offered to drive us to a town 24 kms away so we could buy some pizza. We stood their dumbfounded for a moment. Perhaps this was some kind of tricky communist trick. You know the kind that ends with people reading CNN articles and being like, "Oh man! What idiots! If I were in China I would never get into a police car. Those guys deserve the bamboo slivers under the fingernails." But because we are awesome, and not lame, we jumped in the car. It took 24 kms to figure out each others name and before you know it, we were dropped off at a pizza place. The cop made it known he had to get some gas, and that he'd be back. We gorged ourselves on pizza (which is way better than rice) and like clockwork, our police escort showed up again. Before driving us back we stopped at his friends house who taught us Chinese for "Pork," "beef," "chicken," and "can we camp here." This has since saved me from drawing stupid pictures of farm animals on my palm while trying to order food.

So there you have it. The Chinese are freaking awesome. The bathrooms leave a little bit to be desired... but you can't get everything you want. I'll put some pictures up soon. Right now though, go check out Charlie's blog.

We Are Far Behind On This. Chiang Rai- Laos.

With two days to spare and only about 100kms to go, we took our sweet, sweet time to get out of Thailand. Sweet corn stands turned to watermelon stands and when we finally stopped for some, the nice lady wouldn't stop cutting open watermelons until charlie started throwing up watermelon. We stopped early in the evening after Charlie and Kyle were lured with the promise that the worlds smallest town, and accompanying world's smallest carnival, might offer girls to dance with. The enticing girl had a word growth under her ear so I wasn't to excited about the prospects. However, the town was quiet and it had an amazing waterfall and the local teacher let us camp in the grass in front of his school. He checked in like 4 times over the next 14 hours to make sure his school was treating us ok.

Night comes incredibly early in these little Thai towns and by 6:30 everything is usually shut down. After a dinner of soup and a bag of free mangoes. We headed to the aforementioned free carnival. The dancing girl set-up was awesome!!! For 20 baht you could go on stage, a stage surrounded by staring thais, and pick a girl/really-old-woman-in-gogo-boots and dance kind of close to her fro two crazy thai country songs. We of course went for that. Charlie was forced to dance with the weird growth girl, but I got a fat girl in a hello kitty t-shirt. I totally scored. The dancing festivities were followed by a kick-boxing match, which was more of fight to the finish by two local kids. The one kid got finished... really, really finished. He had a hair-lip which made me feel extra bad for him after he lost. The girls seemed to like him though.

On to laos we went, and crossed the mighty mekong around 3 pm. By the time we got things sorted out and I once again became a kipanaire, it had gotten late and we decided to stay in the crappy river town. We pitched our tents, once again in a school yard, and awoke to find my super sweet red chuck taylors stolen. They were very sweet and now they are very stolen. We slogged 75 kms and and stumbled into the drunkest town in laos around 4 pm. If you've ever traveled in Laos, you'll understand this is quite a distinction. They let us set up camp next to a river and also let all one million village children stare at us the whole time. By the time we got our tent up we realized we were going to have a rough time finding food do to the drunkness of the village. We find a nice sober lady and she cooked us up some tasty dinner.

"Why is everyone in this village so, so very drunk."

"Oh we have a new wall."

"You are throwing a party for a wall."

"It's a very nice wall. It's a beautiful wall. I'll take you to our new wall."

And off we went to the wall. It was a nice wall, but not a beautiful and certainly not a wall deserving two seperate parties. We were once again offered copious amounts of gasoline smelling liquor and I ate some pickled water buffalo skin.

The evening came quick and the village had no electricity so we were tucked in and sleeping tight by 7 pm.

Where I Don't Include a Picture Because Laotian Internet Is Slower Than Any Internet In The World.

We rolled into Chiang Rai after pushing out an 85 km morning. The roads where smooth, the scenery fantastic and every 2 miles there was a place selling grilled corn. I didn't eat any corn, but I liked the idea that I could at any time. Rarely, in my everyday life, do I go about things confident that at anytime I could satiate a sudden desire for sweet corn. For almost four hours I confidently pedaled knowing that any cravings for sweet corn could be pounded into submission around the next corner.

We blew into Chiang Rai, drafting like a tour team, around noon. First stop, a guy who sold ice cream blocks out of a cooler strapped to his bike. Breckan suggested I start carrying her panniers and she starts carrying the "ice cream cooler." This sounded like a good idea until I realized I would be carrying her bags for the whole trip and after about a day, she'd be carrying an empty cooler- not full of delicious ice cream. The ice cream blocks were actually pretty cool. He just cut up this big chunk of ice cream and stuck a stick on it. The next stop was a delicious, oh so delicious, khao sooy place for lunch. We rode through Chiang Rai for a couple of minutes before stumbling upon a guest house with the nicest lawn I've seen in Thailand. The owner for more than helpful and drew incredibly good maps, for a girl! If you're in Chiang Rai, stay at Baan Rub Aroon Guesthouse. The place slams!

The evening was spent eating and eating some more, and then we ate some more. I ate at another Khao Sooy place that had been in Chiang Rai for 80 years and was now being run by generation number 4. The marketing team had gone all out when searching for the perfect name. "Khao Sooy Restaurant." Keep it simple guys. Keep it simple.

We spent the next day in Chiang Rai riding around and looking cool. Something that was not hard on our super sweet bikes. The next morning we took off for Laos. We had two days to get to the border because Kyle was having passport problems.

Where I Do Not Erudiate Problem Number Two But Instead Write About Riding Our Bikes.

We are about two minutes from crossing into Laos and since it's harder to find internet than twinkies once you sail across The Mekong, I'm updating here. I was going to write about the second problem facing us before heading out of BKK, but have since decided it would only be interesting to Jon and some guy who finds welding and metal work interesting. Since I don't know a guy like that, I'm abstaining from discussing the problem. Let's just say Surly customer service might be the best customer service department in the world. Never before have I had a customer service rep suggest, "Well you could cut our product in half and try to make it work that way." Especially when they were referring to a medal rod. Awesome Surly. Awesome!

Breckan, Charlie, Kyle and I threw our bikes, and what seemed to be a copious amount of bags, into the back of a neighborhood guy's truck and off to the train station we rushed. We quickly learned something that Charlie and Kyle had learned in Indo. Traveling with bikes when you are not riding them is the biggest pain in the whole wide world. Our bags took up aisles and bunks and we accidentally suffocated an old woman who got lost under the mess. We felt really bad about that. I mean she was really old, but still...

Once we disembarked in Chiang Mai, we got on our bikes and then instantly got stopped by some old white lady who wanted to talk about the ten miles she once rode on a bike at one time and how cool that was and how she always was traveling places and doing things and how she loved to wear baggy breathable clothes and eat like "local people." We escaped her, thank buddha and all the other things in Thai temples, and hit the road. Since our train was forever late, we only got about 40ish kilos in before stopping in a tiny tiny town, who's sole claim to fame was a hot springs. We set our tents up in the soccer field, put on more clothes than we were already wearing (since we didn't want to offend local sensibilities with our glistening and ripped out bods), and washed up good in the rotten egg smelling water.

We rose up early in the morning and headed out. The hills were tragically bad about 60 kms out of chiang mai and the going was slow... for breckan! I had zero problem and started doing all sorts of crazy tricks on my bike while riding up the hills. It's because I'm in superior shape. By 2 pm we were out of the hills and cranked a massive amount of kms before finding a reservoir off the road. The caretaker of the resovoir (you can see him below: he is the ancient Thai guy holding an even more ancient gun) was positively ecstatic to have four white people staying at his beloved reservoir. He assured us, over and over and over and over again, that his reservoir was the safest and prettiest reservoir in all of thailand, but if problems did arise, he had zero problems blasting evil doers to buddhist hell.

"Have you ever shot anyone with this giant barrel loading rifle."

"No."

"Have you ever shot it... period?"

"No."

"Do you worry that the gun is literally bigger than you?"

"No. I eat sticky rice."

Once again I had no idea how that answer related to my original question, so I once again told Breckan and acted like she was stupid for not knowing how eating sticky rice and shooting muzzle loaders correlated. "I" (that was his name. His dog was named "I dog") pulled up a mat and pretty much shot the breeze with us for an hour or two. The breeze was shot by him constantly suggesting Kyle and Charlie learn thai and then get some hot Thai wives. I found this to be pretty enlightened advice. "I" offered to find a couple of spouses for Charlie and Kyle, but both of them opted for the warmth of their friendship over the "Thai wife option." We arose right after the cock crowed, and wouldn't stop crowing for anything, donned our matching 7-11 cycling caps and hit the road to Chiang Rai. Next Time:Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong and Laos.

Solving Problems and Looking Strikingly Handsome While Doing It.

For me, and this is Spencer writing (the handsomest part of the Breckan/Spencer duo), one of the most exciting parts of travel is finding solutions to previously unsolvable or even inconceivable problems. Doing this in third world countries where everyone is so freaking handy, makes this even more fun (i.e. ask me about my grilled cheese sandwich in backwater-end-of-the-earth Indonesia).

Besides our plethora of visa problems, besides my astoundingly poor cycling physique, besides everyone being convinced this trip will send us to certain death (but not the good 32 virgins in heaven death), Breckan and I faced two pretty huge problems the day or two before we started this multi-country jaunt. I will put these two problems in sequential order so it will be easier for you to read them.

PROBLEM NUMBER ONE (and this seemed like it might be a real doozy): Thai Customs officials. We ordered our bikes from TR Bikes in Singapore; the single greatest bike shop in the world,. Not thinking about customs, we had them shipped up to us in Bangkok and then went out and ate pizza. Several days later we stopped by the post office and I inquired about our bikes. "Oh," the postmaster said, "your bikes are probably stuck in customs. That is very, very bad luck and that is going to be very, very expensive!' That is actually a direct quote, except he said it in Thai and shook his head a lot. Since I automatically don't believe people when they tell me bad news, I went to look for myself on the internet ( much more reliable source). Sure enough, Breckan and I were looking at about $800 in customs duties for our bikes. Very, very bad luck and very, very expensive. However, this was Thailand and... well you know.

I called the customs office and told the man who answered the phone our predicament. The predicament being we didn't want to pay $800 and the law demanded we pay $800. In the states I have run into this predicament quite often and never has anyone said, "We probably can work something out."

"We probably can work something out," the Thai customs official said.

So down we went to the customs office with two crisp 1000 baht ($55) dollars in my pocket. The office was about a billion years old and tucked up against some railroad depot. We took the elevator up to the third floor, walked past our bike boxes in a giant open air warehouse and into our new friends office. I once again explained our situation but threw in the "fact" that we had come to Thailand to help little Thai children and that we were but two poor Americans suffering from the mismanagement of the US economy.

"I see. Oh, I see. Yes, yes this is a huge problem. You are lucky you came here first. We are much nicer than the office we were about to send your bikes to. Here we like to help nice people like you two," our new friend said.

"Well Great! I'll be taking our bikes now!" as I got up to leave.

"No. No. you will have to pay some kind of tax." As he scratched his chin and decided how much the two boxes were worth.

"Remember we are just poor school teachers who love orphans and puppies"

"Yes. I can remember. These two boxes will be 2000 baht."

I pulled out my 2000 baht and he politely refused it. Apparently this wasn't your run of the mill greasing the chains that set us free. This time I'd get a receipt. For the next 20 minutes three guys tried to calculate backward so that the 40% custom duty would add up to 2000 baht. Much math and calculators and arguing was involved before our price settled. 1972 baht.

We were brought into an office full of pictures of bathing suit clad Korean pop stars and were given a seat. The one official began filling out forms in the nicest handwriting we had ever seen. I asked, "why do you have such nice handwriting?"

"I was a monk for 12 years"

And back he went to filling out our forms. I'm still not sure how that was answer to my question, but I didn't want to seem like an idiot. "He was a monk for 12 years," I told breckan and then acted like she was an idiot for not knowing how that related to him having nice handwriting. That made me feel better.

About 45 minutes later and 212 forms later- seriously, Thai customs might own the rights to my first born and 3 toes on my left foot- we gave the nice man our 2000 baht. He pulled our change out of his wallet. We all wai'd, some tremendously fat guy helped carry our bikes down the stairs, and out of the building we went. We packed the bikes into a tuk-tuk, since a taxi could never fit them and drove to the nearest bike shop. Breck went home with her bike and I dropped my bike off at pro-bikes to be assembled. The next day we would discover BIG PROBLEM NUMBER TWO. Since this has run on far to long, that will have to wait until our next blog. I'll give you a hint though. It has to do with Breckan's extended prison stay a couple years ago.

Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai - 180 K

An afternoon, a full day, and a morning ride has brought us to Chiang Rai.

bikes... check.

we finally have our bikes in our possession. bikes which were manufactured in the u s of a, purchased in singapore, shipped to bangkok, picked up after paying a small bribe to customs, then tetris-style stacked into a tuk tuk that brought them safely to our snug little home. we're glad they made it and we're glad we didn't have to pay $800 to customs.

we purchased our train tickets today. the four of us depart out of laksi train station on sunday, march 29th, and travel overnight to chiang mai where we will begin our bicycle touring through central asia. woot woot!