Breakfast at the Villa guesthouse was excellent. We had home grown Chikus which were delicious. Dont see this fruit very much in Singapore nowadays.
Todays plan: ride to the Chinese border, and see how far in to China we can ride in to!
People's complain box in Luang Namtha: for u to tell on your neighbours if u suspect they are anti-communists
cool eh?
Chikus! very tasty
Freshly made Baguette, some thing Laos is famous for since they were once a French protectorate
Village Kids
Village ladies
Nearing the China border...
We did it!
Laos- China Customs Checkpoint
Some beautiful buildings at the border town of Boten.
Gambling is illegal in China, hence the chinese businessmen are building a casino town at the Laos - China border.
The gamblers are mainly mainland Chinese....... and a couple of Bochapoldmen.
We went in to the little town, and were really really hungry. Unfortunately all the restaurants around would not take any currency except RMB...of which we have none.
And there weren't any money changer, or banks around....
So we had to look around for some RMB..
The casino was the ONLY place we could find some Chinese currency... they would let us in if we had USD
So we had NO CHOICE but to play a few boring games of Bacarrat...
Every one in the Casino were staring at us...who are these heavily armoured stinky creatures??
Not bad...20 USD quickly became 60 USD( RMB 390). Enough for lunch :)
Time to cash out and leave...
We Bochapoldmen do not condone gambling...we simply had no choice.
A very very good chinese restuarant, where we feasted with our earnings...
The portions were HUGE! I think Chinamen have 4 stomaches...like cows.
Right, now time to sneak in to China... slowly slowly we crept to wards the gold pagoda...ignoring the "STOP" sign...
no one has seen us yet...
Suddenly a chinese guard appeared outta no where and gestured to us angrily. Uh oh.... there was only one thing to do. RUN!
Youngman had to heave his 350kg machine round the "Stop Sign" before making a quick escape.
Since we can't go in to China, the next nearest town is Oudomxai..about 5 hours down south.
Youngman stumbled upon a village school where the students were midway through class.
One kid spotted the BMW and before we knew it, the WHOLE CLASS ran out and swarmed around youngman.
Well, at least they learnt a new word today.."Motorcycle"
Go back go back to class...
Youngman rode on, and met the 2 older folks who were standing on a storm drain...admiring the beautiful scenery..
Laoation landscape
"Holy" ground
Amused village kids.
Roadworks - repairing the Friendship Highway.
While approaching Oudomxai...it stormed like mad! We sought shelter in a petrol kiosk. Too late...we were drenched and lost.
A friendly police officer came to our aid..
Oudomxai is quite a boring town...not many acceptable guesthouses here. Food aint that good... scenery aint that nice. The hotel was soooo crappy we did not bother to take a photograph of it, or remember its name.
Food in this town also takes a long long time to come...
waiting....
still waiting....
nope food's not here yet..still waiting.........
At last! Food's not that nice, but at least the portions are huge.
And that made us fat..
Hopefully Luang Prabang will be better...thats where we're heading tomorrow.
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