GOOOODMOOORNING VIETNAAAAAAM!!!

This post concerns the time since we've been in Vietnam, so make sure to read miles' entry on the last days of Cambodia too, which should be posted below.

Yesterday we crossed the border from Cambodia into Vietnam, on an old road that left us caked in red mud. I think the border people thought twice about letting two such filthy people into their country, but after taking my temperature and multiple pictures of us at the border, they did indeed let us in. As soon as we crossed into Vietnam, roads were paved, and there were even street signs telling us where to go sometimes, something that Cambodia hasn't figured out yet.

Soon we arrived in Ha Tien, which is quite possibly the friendliest border town anywhere- nobody trying to hastle you or make you buy a way over-priced bus ticket to somewhere you don't want to go. Situated on both a river and the ocean, Ha Tien is a fishing town. There must be a law in this part of the world that you must paint your fishing boat turquoise, because that's about the only color of fishing boat you see. Wierd. At night, all the vendors set up stalls along the waterfront, selling trinkets, clothing, and food (most interesting sandwich: baugette with spicy bbq pork, pineapple, heaped with basil and some other veggies). So far, I would say that Vietnam seems busy- everyone is out doing their thing, selling their palm juice, selling their pate-baugette sandwitches, playing soccer on concrete parking lots, or relaxing on the riverfront with a beer (which can be done even for breakfast, evidently. But then again their beer, especially over ice like they do, is pretty much like drinking water). Yes, in a few words, I would describe Vietnam as both busy and fishy. Fishy, because everything you eat has fish sauce or shrimp in it, and -no joke- it smelled like fish about the entire 60 mile ride today. That may be because we paralelled one of the many canals in the region for most of the ride. Another interesting tidbit was lunch- evidently if you order Foe here that means trip soup with part of a pig's foot.

We're now in Rach Gia, a fairly large city that's loud and chaotic, so i can only imagine what Saigon will be like. Vietnamese people so far seem pretty friendly. We hear you get hastled a little more here than in the other countries, but we'll see. The nice part about riding bikes is that we don't have to deal with many logistics- just point in the right direction, pedal for 5 hours, and you're magically there! Only about 4 or 5 days riding left till the big city and the end of this bike ride. I hear a marching band outside, so that's probably a sign it's time to go check out whatever there is in this city.

All the best to everybody at home,

Evan

Back in the saddle again....

For those of you still with us, I'll try and pick up more or less where we left off, which was recoveing from the flu in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. After spending the morning of the 27th runing around trying to get a Vietnamese Visa (for some reason known only to Vietnamese bureacrats, they dont issue tourist visas at the border, only at the embasy), we decided not to see Ream National Park, because it was on our route for the next day and mostly because we didnt feel like riding 20 miles that afternoon. Instead we went back to the beach, which was really excellent--the kind of beach experience we'de miss out on a little in Thailand--white sand, blue sky, not too many tour-ons once you walked a little ways down the beach. We walked and layed around on the beach most of the afternoon, then finished it off with a couple beers at sunset, along with some BBQd squid and "lobster" (looks more like Mantis Shrimp to me, but it was still hella tasty)--it was pretty idyllic. They really know how to do seafood here and its all very fresh; I think Ive eaten several schools of squid so far on this trip.
I think both Ev and I finally found the "beach time" we were looking for, so much so that we contemplated staying longer, but feeling a little pressed for time and eager to get back on the bikes, we rolled on the next day...

Getting back on the bikes felt good, we were well-rested and felt strong. A little saddle-sore after a couple weeks off, but good all in all. We rolled about 15 miles to Ream National Park early on the morning of the 28th, and got a guide for a short hike up to a waterfall. Nothing too spectacular, but we climbed up on a fairly good hill and could see out over a lot of Cambodian coastline and islands. The big thing with this national park is the mangrove forest, and we both regretted not having the several hours neccesary to explore them by boat---but we still had about 65 miles to go that day and it was already noon. The rest of the ride was really nice; mostly flat and on a good paved road through lots of little fishing villages. The route took us SE right along the coast through lots of mangove forest and tide marshes. Very pretty with lotsa super friendly people. We got to our destination, the city of Kep, at sunset, just in time for a beer overlooking the ocean and the whole coastline we had ridden that day. Found a nice hotel near the beach, had an AMAZING piazza at this restaraunt run by a crazy old Hungarian dude and passed out.

We were both pretty gassed from the big ride the day before, so the next day we slept in late, then checked out the beach town of Kep. Kep seems to be where the Cambodians come on beach holiday, and this time of year (the rainy, off-season) it was pretty sleepy, which was just fine with us. We stuffed our faces with amazing cheap seafood (BBQd fish, fried noodles with shrimp, etc), explored the small (but developing) town and lounged on the mostly empty beach. Unfortunately, the wind blows all the time here this time of year; not enough to be unpleasent when you're chillin on the sand, but enough to get the ocean kicked up and a little turbid so that snorkling is not very good. Both of us were jonesing for some pretty corals and reef fish, but I think we'll have to come back at a different time of year for that one. We are definetly planning our return already.

Allright, Ill leave you in Evan's capable hands for the next installment.
See you soon!
Miles

In Sickness and in Health....

For the amount of random and questionalble stuff we've been easting, we were bound to get sick at somepoint, and we finally did this past week. Evan's birthday-- arival on the Island of Koh Chang, Thailand, complete with Elephant riding, swiming in the ocean, sunshine, Tori Stannard, and some fru-fru drinks went wonderfully, but after that things were a little less awesome. I got ultra-sick for about 24 hours, followed by Evan, then I relapsed, then he relapsed. Basically we were a mess for about 4 days straight. And it rained damn near the whole time (monsoon season on the coast--go figgure). We left Koh Chang (which we both figgured would be a pretty nice place if it were sunny and we felt halfway decent), and made it back to mainland Thailand where a doctor told us we were basically fine, to drink more water and stop being such wusses. It was not much fun, but I consider us lucky that this was our first (and hopefully) only major health issue of the trip. Not counting the 15 species of parasites I prolly have crawling around in me. But we feel good now, so we'll just continue on our merry way as much as our bodies will handle. It will be interesting to see how we respond to a hard ride after more than a week off.

Anyway, we made it back into Cambodia yesterday, where they drive on the Right side of the road (Thai is Left), or anywhere they damn well please, but they will smile and wave and be genuinely happy to see you as they come at you at 40 miles an hour in the wrong lane. We've made it to Sihanoukville today (capital of the beach-bum backpacker scene in Cambodia) and plan to explore Ream National Park (mangroves, rainforests, monkeys, etc.) tomorow before heading east along the coast to Kampot on Tuesday. This will be the start of the last leg of our trip (where in the heck has the time gone?) in which we'll mosey north east across the Mekong Delta towards Saigon. Both of us were gald to have a little down time (albiet enforced by th flu-bug) but I can tell we're both ansy to get on the bikes, roll down the road less traveled, and leave the beach resorts behind.

Hope this finds you all well and happy, looking forward to seeing yall soon,
Miles

Islands in Thailand, plus lots of pictures

Finally made it to the beach! We're now in Ko Chang, Thailand. It's a nice change from the trip so far- just hang out on the beach, drink some tropical drinks, go swim, etc. We met up with Tori and her friend Alissa, who happen to be on vacation from their peace corps jobs for a couple weeks. What a coincidence! Always great to see old friends.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I think this goes down as one of the best ever. This is Tori and me drinking a "bucket" of pina colada on the beach, just after swimming in the ocean.

Elephant riding yesterday as well! They are really cool animals- it was wonderful to see one up close and get a ride through the jungle from atop one of these guys. They like bananas maybe even more than I do!

Sharing a bucket of mojito! Loving the relaxation after all that riding! Phew!

Our meal at the cooking class- Amok (the national dish of Cambodia) which is a coconut milk type curry, steamed in a bananna leaf cup! They have so much fresh stuff available... we made the curry taste from fresh roots and herbs, ground up in a mortar and pestle, no curry powder involved! It was pretty dynomite. The ginger chicken in the middle was delicious too- a couple breasts of chicken and two heaping handfulls of ginger. No messing around with ginger here!

These were the spring rolls as apatizers, with the sweet/sour/hot/peanut sauce.

Mr. Miles the Chef!

At Angkor wat, in front of the main temple.

This was one of the temples at Sambor Prei Kuk, which has been taken over by a strangler fig, or something like it. Most of the temples were free from the jungle so you could actually walk in into them.

Miles is crossing a muddy bridge of sorts, which doubled as the local swimming hole.

We met these monks along the way, who came out to talk to us for a while, and helped us locate ourselves on the map.

Cows pulling a cart! cool...

The local market in Stung Treng, shopping for breakfast.

Kampong Cham to Angkor Wat to Phnom Pehn

Sorry folks, feels like Im getting behind on these postings...I'll try to pick up where Ev left off. After our epick ride from Kratie to Kampong Cham, we woke up the next morning feeling pretty drained, but decided to grind out the 60 miles to Kampong Thom anyway. Seems like 60 miles in a day doesnt sound like much anymore, but like Ev said "you still gotta pedal every single mile". Not a super eventful ride, but we saw for the first time the enourmous rubber tree plantations that are very important to Cambodia's economy. we rode through miles and miles the trees (all differnt sizes--they stop produing after about 50 years, so the plantations are always cutting some and planting others to keep supy up) each one with a little cup attached to it to collect the sap. A nice change from rice fields--pretty, and they also provide shade on the road and block the wind (awesome).

Anyway, we made it to Kampong Thom (kinda a nothing crossroads town) and found a cheap guest house, a coupla beers and a whole lota food. I dont know if the food here is not as complex (rice, rice noddles, etc) as the food Im used too or if my metabolism is in hyper-drive from riding over 1100 miles in 4 weeks, but I cant stop eating. 4 or 5 meals a day, no joke. Fortunately, food here is cheap, plentiful and tasty! Still seem to be loosing some weight, though.

The next day, we rode about 20 miles out to temple in the forest called Sambor Prei Kuhk. Being fairly out of the way and the off-season for tourist, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Three temple complexes originating in the 7th century were dedicated to the Hindu pantheaon-Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. These temples remained active places of worship into the Angkorian period (10th - 12th centuries), although some of the art and focus shifted to Buddhism as Therevada Buddhism replaced Hinduism in Khmer culture (khmer=dominant ethnic group in cambodia). Unfortunately, much of the artwork associated with these temples was destroyed or looted during the Vietnam War(...-1975), the Khmer Rouge era (1975-1979), the Cambodian war with Vietnam ('79-80), and the following Cambodian Civil war (1980-1989). Nevertheess, many of the brick and sandstone temples still stand, more beautiful for the jungle that engulfs them, and enough of the original stonework survives to give a glimps of what must have been an incredible work of arcitecture.

That afternoon, we hightailed it through a massive rainstorm back to town and threw our muddy bikes and muddier selves on a bus to Siem Reap, the home of Angkor Wat. Felt like kinda a cop-out, but it saved us a whole day (90 miles), and time is starting to seem a little more real to us---I cant believe this crazy trip is more than halfway over!! Anyway, we hit Angkor Wat yester, and it did not dissapoint. I wont try to desccribe it all cause I could write a book and still not get the message across. Anyway, we spent all day on bikes and foot cruising around to different temples and didnt see half of what was there. It just goes on forever, each temple is huge--mostly carved sandstone blocks--and so ornately carved that it seems that you could look at one temple all day and keep finding new and amazing sculpture. An interesting collision of Hindu and Buddism, with many temples honoring both sets of gods, it was constructed by the Khmer Angkor civilization at the hight of thier power (10th-13th century) when they dominated most of mainland SE asia. Its an amazing place, and we finished teh day at sunset drinking a beer on top of a temple looking out over the jungle. Then it pissed rain on us for 10 miles back to town--it can REALLY rain here, but after a while you just get into it and its just like jumping in puddles like when we were little kids. Some things never change.

Today, we bused it to the capitol city, Phnom Pehn. Its a crazy alive city, without feeling dangerous (except the traffic). We hit up the National Museum this afternoon where they keep a lot of the statues and artifacts that were recovered from places like Angkor Wat and Sambor Prei Kuhk--sadly, those things have a way of dissapearing when left in thier original places. Tommorow, we've signed up for an all-day cooking class: we'll start with a trip to the market for ingredients, then we'll spend most of the day whiping up traditional Khmer food!!! Sweet! Get ready for some serious curry action when we get home!

On Deck: Next few day should find us heading south to the Cambodian and Thai coast. We may swing into Thailand for a couple of days of beach time and hopefully rendezvous with the long lost Ms. Victoria Stannard, who is currently on vacation from saving the world in Yap. Still ironing out the details, but it sounds like a go.

Alright, I love you all and hope this finds you well.
Miles

p.s. Steve, Im wicked jealous of you catching all those Tuna!!!!!

Mekong maddness and beyond!

Hi all-
So much has happened in the last several days I can hardly recall it all, but we'll do our best. First we rode the (extremely) rural route from Kratie to Kampong Cham along the Mekong, then we saw a temple complex near Kampong Thom, and today was spend visiting Anchor Wat and the myriad of surrounding temples.

Total biking distance so far.... about 1100 miles.

Kratie to Kampong Cham
This was one of the coolest rides, and possibly even days traveling, that we have ever had. Leaving Kratie, we knew there was a long day ahead of us, as we heard the road south following the river was dirt and very rural. In reality, the road quality ranged from dirt to mud-pit. Many different things culminated on this ride to make it an unforgettable day- from scenery, to people and their culture, and a fun bike ride to boot.

About 2 hours into the ride, we hit the first of a series of Muslim villages. Ringing out over the jungle and little town a call to prayer could be heard (we're assuming that's what it was, never having actually heard one before), and many people congregating in several spots in town. We didn't see the praying, so maybe we weren't there at exactly the right time. These muslim villages were very interesting to ride through, as their culture is very different from the Buddhist villages found everywhere else. I'll break things up into several categories-

The Reactions
What planet did you come from? We get this sometimes from kids, classified by the unblinking stare as we go bye.
How you doin? Not surprisingly, we get a lot of attention from girls, especially teenagers.
The laugh. Sometimes people just laugh at us, kids and grown ups. I think we must look funny.
The knowing elder. Old men and women will greet us with a knowing "hello", and then a lot of times they laugh.

People and clothing
In general, you are supposed to cover most of your skin in these countries. People say wearing no shirt is a bad thing. (damn!) That may be true in the cities, but in the rural areas we've been in, that rule certainly does not apply. Even today, going through both Muslim and Buddhist villages, you see a lot of guys wearing only the typical red and white checkered scarf you see everywhere, but they wear it around their waist. It's kind of like guys wearing only boxers, and evidently that's acceptable even for grown guys to wear all day.

In some muslum villages, the guys would wear loose-fitting clothing, many times white but sometimes colorful, and the little shallow hats. Even the little kids were dressed in the colorful robes sometimes, so cute!

Women generally wear brilliant colored robes or dresses, with flowers or designs on them. Many wore some kind of headscarf, but we saw only two women wearing the entire black headscarf with nothing showing but the eyes. That must be hot!!!

Animals
This area has the tallest cows we've ever seen! They're huge... I proably look them straight in the eye. They're the white ones with a big hump behind the neck. They use them to haul around carts, plow their fields, and of course eating.
As big as the cows were, the horses were small! We've seen not a single horse so far on this trip, till this day when there were all these miniature horses everywhere pulling carts.
Dogs here are nice! Only one dog-bike chase scene yet. I think mostly they're too lazy.


Fun Locals and the crazy finish
A little before lunch, we stopped at a Buddhist wat to see where we were on the map, and a couple of monks came out to chat with us. They were eager to practice their english and of course were very curious as to what we were doing out in the boonies in cambodia.

Back on the road, we found a local guy also riding his bike, who spoke a little english, and soon we were following him to the market to eat some lunch- rice plus dried then fried beef. It's always fun to meet local people as they show you how it's really done. And, it can be kind of awkward trying to order food when you speak almost no Khamer.

A little later on, it was time for a water stop. No sooner had we stopped than about 15 men materialized and were soon trying on our helmets and sunglasses and trying to ride our bikes. The seats are usually about a foot too high for the locals, so watching them try to ride our bikes is always entertaining, both for them and us. After that, a pitcher of palm wine came out. Local custom is to take a shot (believe it or not, palm wine is no Cabernet...) of the alcohol, and then you chase it with a piece of pickled herring! What a shot! I think we need to introduce this into the states. It seems like a lot of times you find a bunch of men in the afternoon just sitting around bullshitting and drinking... i wonder how they get anything done.

Though the whole ride was pretty rural, there were houses along most of the road- the houses are along the road and all the fields are behind the houses. This means we pass a whole lot of families, and in every family there are about 5 cambodian children, cute as can be. In Lao, they all yelled "Subaidee"to us, but in Cambodia eveyone knows and shouts "Hello" to us. Every little kid is just thrilled to see you, and will wave excitedly and shout to you until you say hello back. We must look crazy to them- on bicycles, covered in dust and mud, bags on our bikes, way out in the middle of nowhere. The parents will show us to their children and make them wave to us.

As the day wore on, the weather started to turn. First came the wind, then the rain and a little lightning. Soaked to the bone, there's nothing to do but keep riding through it, with dark a few hours away. The road turned from dirt into mud, and the riding became slow and slippery. In the last 15 miles before Kampong Cham, our road dissappeared entirely, replaced by a maze of winding singletrack paths leading through pastures, bamboo groves, and little villages. Knowing that Kampong Cham was south of us and on the Mekong, we knew if we just headed south on all these paths, we'd eventually run into a highway that would take us to the town. Any time our spirits sunk low, some bunch of little kids would run out of a house and then people would be yelling for us, saying hello and cheering us on. It felt as if we were one the last leg of a race, and these were our fans, propelling us to the finish.

Somewhere between the intense rain and wind, being covered in mud, seeing the crazy animals, meeting monks, drinking palm wine, saying at least 500 'hellos', and whitnessing the interesting blend of both Muslim and Buddhist cultures, I realized that this day was one of the best ever. I guess you could say we were high on life.

More Pictures

Miles relaxing in Don Det (4000 islands)

Our friend Say (on the right holding up a baggie of Lao's finest whiskey, "Lao Lao")

And me gilnetting for catfish on the Mekong in Say's boat.

Champasak, 4000 islands, and into Cambodia

Hello! The last 4 days have been pretty interesting and very nice. After the last post, we continued riding another 20 miles to Champasak, another Mekong river town. The last 25 km down a dirt road along the Mekong through rice fields at sunse was stunnig. Here we stayed over a day to see the Wat Phu Champasak, and old Hindu temple built near the river. The temple complex was built to impress someone approaching from the river- as you come from river side, the pillars, temples, and stone carvings become more and more impressive, culminating in the main temple which is situated part way up the mountain, so the king would have had a pretty sweet view. That day was the first of several days festival that marked the begining of the new year, and the sart of a period (kinda like Lent) where some Buddhist folks give up alcohol and killing animals for a period of 3 months. So everybody was out to have a good time, with a lot of folks coming to this important temple from all over Lao, Cambodia and Thailand.

The next day, we rode about 85 miles south to an area called 4000 Islands. We stayed at a particular island called Don Det--very pretty spot in the middle of the Mekong, and also very much a backpacker hangout. We arived in time to watch a spectactular sunset/lightning storm over the Mekong from the hammocks on our bungalow's porch. Nice. The next day we bycicled around the island, saw a really spectacular waterfall (the Whole Mekong drops over a big series of Falls/rapids), and then got some old dude and his son to take us fishing in the afternoon. We didnt exactly rope (I had one fish on the whole time), but we still had a sweet riverside BBQ--Catfish, rice, vegies, and Lao Lao--with our guide, who tuned out to be a pretty interesting and funny old dude. It was a good typical Lao meal--eaten sitting on the ground around a comunal bowl of food and bottle of whisky--and a good way to leave this wonderful country.

The next day we headed south again, towards the Cambodian border. We met up with a dude (Abrahim) from Turkey who was also biking south that day. We rode with him about 50 miles through the border and to Sung Treng, and it makes a big diference to have three folks pulling instead of two. First impressions of Cambodia: some dude at the border tried to tell us that we couldnt ride our bikes through the border and had to get a bus istead. We pretty much just laughed at him, but it was a reality check because I dont feel like anybody tried to scam us even once in our three weeks in Lao. But border crossings and border towns are just like that, though. Sung Treng was nothing special, and we decided to bus the (reportedly) hot flat and boring 90 miles to Kratie. Feels like kinda a cop-out, but its nice to have a good rest day, and Kratie is actually pretty cool--big crazy market, nice riverfront, etc. Seems more laid-back than Sung Treng, and if there's one thing I like, its being laid-back. Reportedly, you can see the endangered Irrawaday river dolphins here, so we might try to hire a boat for a couple hours this evening. And its always cool just to get out on the HUGE river.

Alright, Im off to forage for some lunch. Apparently, they have eally good curry here. Tommorow, were headed off on a long ride to Campong Cham--on a little road that runs right along the Mekong. Not sure about the quality of the road, but were going to see about 100 km of it. Should get us off the main line and into some smaller towns, which yall know is more to my taste than big cities.

Alright, thanks for tuning in. Miss yall, we'll post as soon as we can.

Savannakhet to 4000 Islands... and lots of chicken

Phew! We've been hitting the road pretty hard lately, to have 700 miles behind us by the end of the day. Leaving Savannakhet, we headed to a little roadside town called Paxsong. Not a whole lot to see, but more typical Lao small town feel: Houses on stilts to keep from flooding, markets with every kind of meat and fruit (I did see whole squirrels at a meat stall), goats and water buffalo roaming the streets, and people zipping every which-way on motor bikes. Most towns have their own Wat, with Buddist statues, intricately decorated buildings covered in gold paint, and monks everywhere in their bright orange robes. Local restaurants here are an interesting thing- in america there is a definite distinction between restaurant and house. Here, there is a spectrum of places- every restaurant owned by a family also has a house attached to it, so it's hard to know how much of a restaurant and how much of a residence it is. We usually go by the rule- if it looks more than 50% restaurant, we'll go for it. The other problem in these little towns is we can't read a menu, since we can't read the Lao script. That, and we can't even say them right if they're written phonetically in English. So we end up getting Foe (pronounced like "Fuu", with a very throaty "ugh" sound, as I was corrected yesterday at lunch. Evidently it's hilarious if you say Foe and don't use a throaty sound) and fried rice. In Paxsong, tired of both of these dishes, we successfully mimed our waiter to make us some fried chicken (I do a good chicken impersonation.... ask me for it sometime) which hit the spot.

Yesterday's ride, from Paksong to Khon Xe Dong was a thilling ride. First stop was the market- let me recound our breakfast: Fried chicken, 4 doughnuts each, some unidentified tropical fruit, poundcake, and dumplings filled with eggs, sausage and possibly pate. As we hit the road, Miles proclaimed it was going to be a hot one.... and consequently it dumped buckets of water on us all day! 70 miles through a downpoar/lightning storm! First I was a little unthrilled, but once we accepted the fact that we would be completely soaked for the next 5 hours of riding, we had a great time. Arriving at Khon Xe Dong, we found out this place is (locally) famous for it's grilled chicken, which we devoured, sopping wet, in a roadside stand. After retreating to a guestouse for a few hours, we came back and each ate another whole chicken each. A girl name Noy worked at the chicken restaurant, and she turned out to speak english pretty well. She was pretty cool, about our age, and we ended up hanging out talking long after the restaurant finished serving. We're always happy when we meet Lao people our age who we can actually communicate with, so we can learn about Lao and their culture.

We're in Pakse now, on our way to Champasak, where we hear the Wat Phu Chapasak is a pretty cool old Wat from way back. The terrain lately has been still in the Mekong river valley. Rice fields are everywhere, and being the start of the rainy season the patties are all filling up with water and everyone is planting the rice.

bye 4 now!

Trekking!!!!

Alright, so this is definetly out of order. This post concerns June 30 and July 1st. On the 30th, we set out for our trekking/homestay adventure in Nam Thuen National Park. We left our bikes at the Tuk-tuk (taxi) driver's house (sketchy? little bit, but everything feels so safe here) and set out with our guide/interpreter Say for a very bumpy taxi ride to the trail head. We took just the essentials, plus food: several pounds of rice, veggies, various meat products and several live catfish in a plastic bag full of water. We hiked a couple muddy kilometers to a small village were we met up with a local guide and headed off through the jungle. It has been raining pretty good here for a couple weeks, so it was pretty wet and all the rivers were up and muddy. We waded several swamps, crossed multiple jungle rivers in canoes of extreemly questionable integrity and forded a one river up to chest deep. SO AWSOME!! We stopped for lunch: Dried BBQed beef, some kind of garlic/pork sausage thing that was cured (not cooked) by aging it for several months in bannana leaves, BBQd pork skins and pork liver, steamed mustard greens, and sticky rice. All layed out on Bannana leaves on the jungle floor and eaten with your bare hands. So tasty. Dont forget the whole raw Thai chillies that you eat strait; it wouldnt be a Lao meal if your face wasnt on fire afterwards. Continuing through the jungle, we came to a cave entrance where a rive flowed full-fledged from the limestone cave mouth, and later to a large cave that we had to canoe through in a boat that leaked almost as fast as you could bail. On the other side of the cave, we went swimming and started collecting the large water-snails that were everywhere in the flooded fields we were walking through. After another 5km or so, we arived at the village we would spend the night at, with about 2 lbs of snails in a plastic bag. These we took over to one of Say's friends house and cooked them up--steamed and dipped in a mix of fresh chillies, cilantro and fish sause (about as spicy as the surface of the sun), they were really quite good..along with a couple of Beer Lao and sticky rice to put out the fire. Then we went back to our home-stay place where they cooked up the catfish we had been packing around all day. I dont know how they did it, but it involved a lot of garlic and lemon grass and it was the best catfish Ive ever had bar none. Several guys from the village, Say, Evan and I, all sat around cross-legged on the floor and ate with our hands out of a couple communal pots of catfish, steamed veggies, sticky rice. So legit. After that, we went over to another person's house (it turned out that he would be our local guide the next day) and sat on his porch and passed around a bottle of Lao Lao (Lao moonshine--about as smooth as warm Old Crow). People there were eating micelaneous water buffaloe entrails cooked in a sauce that incorporated the juice you get from squeezing the contents of the ruemen (basically water-buffalo dung). Even if we hadnt already eaten two huge and delicious dinners, Im not sure I would have partaken because it smelled--not surprisingly--like cow shit.

The next day we woke up around 7, had a huge bowl of (basically) top ramen for breakfast served with (you guessed it) sticky rice. We then set off through the jungle again, climbing steadily for about15 km. It was interesting to see the change from lowland floodplain forest (pretty open with lots of big hardwood trees) to the thick bamboo jungle at slightly higher elevation. Not much in the way of birds or critters--even though its a national park, I think the local villages hunt this area pretty hard and pretty much anything is fair game for the stew-pot. As we walked through a small village, we saw several guys with rifles and our guide explained that they were hunters. They were packing AKs and other automatic rifles, but I guess you make do with what you have.

In the afternoon, we went swimming in a huge spring. It a couple hundred yards across during the wet season, a spot wherea big river flows straight up to the surface out of a limestone tube. Very neat. After that, we jumped a ride on a rickety old tractor/rice cultivator and bumped and choked on diesle fumes for about 10 km till the road became too steep and deeply rutted. We hiked about 3km more, and made it to the main road where a tuk-tuk was waiting to take us back to Thakek. It was a great experience all around--we'de been hoping to get out into the jungle but not able to do it on our own what with things like landmines, and geting lost, etc. It was just Evan and I on the trek, and our guides were all about our age and very friendly and knowlegeable about the area. Super fun.

Take care, yall. We'll be in touch as much as possible.

Hey Friends!!! Thanks for tuning in again! These post may be a little out of order, but this one concerns July 2nd and 3rd.

Yesterday was pretty much awsome. We ran into this young Lao dude named Say (pronounced "sigh") at the tourism office in Thakek. A really nice guy who spoke pretty good english and we really hit it off. As mentioned before, we went on a great trekking adventure with him and in the course of hiking like 40 km through the jungle with this guy it came up that he works in the tourism office part time and fishes comercially on the Mekong the rest of the time. Long story short, he invited him to come fishing with him yesterday and Evan and I being who we are naturally jumped at the chance.

We fished out of his motorized canoe for most of the morning, first pulling a small trawl net allong the bottom (caught a bunch of small catfish and ciprinids (minnows)) and then we set his gill-net....all 1.5 km of it. Basically, we motored all the way to the Thailand side of the river, and then Say simultaineously rowed and payed out the gill-net all the way back to the Lao side. We didnt anchor the net, just kinda drifted down the river, fishing probably 3/4 of the channel. We drifed down about half a mile, then pulled the net, but only got one catfish that was about 15 inches. There we many other boats doing the same thing, plus other people fishing in just about any way you could imagine (trot lines, traps, pots, wiers, hook and line, castnet, etc)--to say this river gets some fishing pressure would be putting it mildly. The diversity of catfish is amazing, we caught 7-10 differnt species in a couple of net sets. After that we sat on the bank with a bunch of Say's friends and family (some of who actually speak english pretty well) and BBQed all the fish (even down to the minnows) and ate them with chilli sause and sticky rice, and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Beer Lao and Lao Lao (Lao moonshine whiskey--not for wimps) on the bank of the Mekong. Pretty much a perfect day in my book.

Today we rode 85 miles from Thakek to Savannaket. That puts us around 520 miles total for the trip. Fortunately, we were well rested after a few days off our bikes and it was a good and mostly flat road. Still, it was a hot day and kind of a push. But we arrived in good shape and went out for an exellent meal of sweet and sour chicken, spicy green papaya salad, and fried frog in red curry topped off with a couple of beers and a bannana split (the bannanas here are excellent). Savannahket is the bigest city we've been in since Vientiane--it was the capital of southern Lao during French rule and you can tell theres still a lot of $$ in this town (relative to other places we've been) along with a lot of run-down French architecture. I think we'll head south again tomorrow towards the city of Pakxe--its about 150 milesaway so it may take us 2 or even 3 days to get there, but we have it on the authority of the folks in the tourism office in Savannaket that there are plenty of guest-houses between here and there. They better not be screwing me around either because I spent half an our helping them re-write an ecotourism grant proposal this afternoon. You get some odd requests when you are one of the few native english speakers in town...