Far too much excitement

Well blog followers, in my last blog I was lamenting the fact that I really want to get home and don’t want any more excitement, in the last three months I have had so many experiences my poor head can’t take anymore (Jep Hua as they say here). I said goodbye to my lady in Udon Thani and put her on the bus back to Vientiane, it was a bit sad because it could be a while before I see her again. In a previous blog I reported about passing through immigration at the ‘Friendship bridge’ I can report that was smooth as silk compared to my further 3 trips through the same point. On Tuesday, I had further hassles at the bizarrely named ‘friendship bridge’, but nothing of the magnitude of what I experienced in the last week. Vene decided to come with me as then we can have a last day together and also to help me with any further problems I may have at the customs post, she has been a treasure and I wouldn’t have managed without her.
So I was on the bike again and heading to Bangkok, unfortunately most of Northern Thailand is flooded and only 30 Km out of Udon the heavens opened, south of Koen Kaen the roads were flooded, no seriously at first but each flooded patch seemed to be worse than the last. Then I hit a very bad patch were the water was sweeping across the road, the water was well over the top of my boots. For the first time I realised I was in real trouble, the force of the water was making it very difficult to keep the bike upright. At this point I had a savoir, A driver of a fuel truck pulled alongside me and indicated that I should stay in the lei of the double axles keeping the major part of the water away from me, and we crawled along together for what seemed like an eternity, I don’t know how far we crawled like that it might only have a been a kilometre but it seemed much much further. Any way never got to thank the man but the driver of fuel tanker truck S-19, with the truck number 70-5257 I will forever be in your debt. I got to the town of Phon completely exhausted and decided that I would get a hotel although I hadn’t even covered a half of the K’s I wanted to. I pulled in at a hotel which to be honest I didn’t like the look of, so I thought I’d try a bit further down the road. I don’t know why but at the major intersection I was inspired by the thought that the road was OK from now, the rain was ebbing so I thought I’d continue. It turned out to be the right call. I would like to say that it was worth the drama for the hilarity I caused when I removed my boots and water proofs at the next servo, I have never ever been that wet on a bike and there was an easy ½ litre of water in each boot. So the best medicine for the blues just loads and loads of laughter.
I managed to find a really good hotel in Nakhon Racthasima, it is a brand new hotel, I can still smell the paint so nearly everything works. There is a basketball convention on here at the moment so it’s a bit like land of the giants.
I’ll be in Bangkok in the afternoon and I plan to store the bike with Terry from Asiabikes.com who will take care of the sale etc etc. I am very grateful for his help.

Heading Home

1. Master Kompaun with patient with acute
personalty disorder
2. The remote hospital with no name
3. The lake looks beautiful but leeches make it
impossible to swim in
4. 3 Angels
5. Lake fishing method 1
6. Diesel shed ( caterpillar eat your heart out)
7. Smart hire car
8. Hotel pool complete with safety fence
9.The bumpy road to the remote hospital
(taken from the back of Kompua 'Purple nasty')
10. Would you try this service ?
11. Night market at Udan Thani
12. Noi with Somkid generic hotel baby
13. Vene with Eddie
14. Why would you want to live anywhere else
15. Fishing method 2

Just a quick note to tell you I've started heading home, I am posting this blog from a hotel in Udon Thani and I hope to be back in Bangkok by Wednesday afternoon.
To be honest I have journied out and just want to get back home to my own bed, my own TV, guitar, bike, music, my own currency Furong sanitation and of course my friends who I have missed very much. I just want to go to my fridge and make a bacon Sandwich. It really has been one hell of a journey and I plan to return to Vientiane next year.

I haven't posted a blog for about a week this was due to several reasons some good some not so good. I have had a lot of problems getting the bike back into Laos after a short trip to Udon Thani in Thailand, this escalated into further problems when I was given 3 hours to get the bike out of Laos otherwise it was going to confiscated, I am not totally convinced that was going to happen, but do you chance it. This has been the downside, on the upside, not only has the EWB stuff been very succesful and enjoyable, but as most of you have gathered there is a new lady in my life by the name of Vene. We are still at 'early stages' but she is an absolute treasure. I am very sad to leave her but I have run out of steam on my journey and just want to get home. So Vene is another reason why I will return to VT.

My next blog should have more detials on the bike tribulations, the good news is I was re united with Eddie this afternoon and I am now in a nice clean hotel and about to go and get some ice cream.

Keep the rubber side down

G

Laos - throw away the rule book

1. Sunny & Master K show some skin
2. Ssshhhh genious at work
3. The bizzare discotech at kilometer 48
4. Hotel delivery Laos style
5. I have to get it installed before the grand final
6. Stop for lunch in Hong Phon with Ven
7. Doug's Roller, probabaly the only one in Laos
8. Doug's compound in Dogphone
9. The irrepressable Doug
10.Villa Sisavad
11. Beta testing the atmospheric control unit
12. Get a diesel engine to run on 100% propane, no problem

I know it has been a long time between blogs (I’m sure there should be an appropriate cyber expression, how about ‘blogout’ or ‘blogage’ could work). The truth is I have just realised I have been in VT (Vientiane) for almost 2 weeks now. I should explain that my trip was more about the adventure of doing something new and interesting and not about covering thousands of K’s on a motorbike, if I find something interesting to do I will stay. I did have a funny feeling this would happen in Laos as I had contacts for the projects here with EWB (Engineers without borders). I have found the work I have been doing here professionally the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I have many trials and tribulations in my years as a professional engineer, I have worked with and for some good people but to be honest I have struggled with most professional relationships as I have serious problems with the corporate bullshit thing. I don’t mind mentioning by name the people I worked with at Festo were just plain unpleasant. It was interesting that myself and Sunny were talking about some of the absurdities of corporate mentality and I mentioned that Festo had copyrighted the font for the logo and Sunny say “Why would you ever want to work for a company that copyrights fonts?” Which just encapsulates perfectly my sentiments. Anyhoo back to the story, in terms of covering ground and visiting different countries, the journey has stalled in Vientiane, however in terms of my personal journey I have covered more uncharted territory in the last few weeks than I have in most of my life. The appeal of Laos is very hard to define; it is certainly not the traffic which is scary. We have given nicknames to local traffic junctions when we give directions to each other and amongst them the ‘no rule roundabout’ and the ‘no looky, no stopy junction’ seriously if you stop and look you will cause an accident. The people are just terrific and always friendly and smiling, but there is something else here which is impossible to define, perhaps a simpler way of life or maybe the contradictions they have in their culture which is a constant source of education and amusement.

The biogas project at the RTC is ‘progressing’ but as always with everything here it is never straight forward, there are a few teething problems and trying to educate the locals in the art of controlling input variables, is difficult if they spoke English, as they don’t it all has to be done in gestures and hand signals, as the principle power source is cow poo it’s just too ‘carryonesque’. I made a very good contact a guy by the name of Doug Handisides, I had his contact through EWB and Sunny knows him quite well. He is quite an extraordinary technical/ entrepreneurial tinkerer with a huge compound on the outskirts of VT which is an Allidins cave of engineering stuff. We said we are trying to get an old diesel generator to run on biogas/ diesel duel fuel. He said he had an old Kubota diesel that he has been running on a mixture of all sorts of bio crops, if we came back the next day we will get it running on propane (ends in ‘..ane’ near enough). Sure enough after a lot of huffing and puffing it started and we had it running on 100% propane, admittedly it made a lot of noise without the diesel fuel but it did run and it did start.

We asked Master Khampuen if there is one item which would really help the hospital what it would be, he said that a cooling fan for some of the patients would be a good idea. So we have been trying to set up a system where we charge batteries using the diesel generator and storing the power in batteries. We then pass the 12V DC through and invertor to power a number of small fans. We found a very useful and helpful electrical shop in VT who, quite correctly, insisted in testing everything before it left the shop, we even had a roadside beta test, see photo.

We left the RTC very late one night and decided we all needed a cold drink and looked out for somewhere in the darkness that might still be open. We arrived at a place known only as Kilometre 48, so small it does not even have a proper name; we saw some flashing lights which normally indicate that beer is being sold. Turns out to be a discotech and it was heaving also had what was actually a pretty decent live band, this place is in the middle of nowhere (Bob’s country Bunker stuff). The band started playing some Laos folk songs so the girls were up and doing a traditional Laos dance on the suddenly crowded dance floor. I am so glad that I don’t do drugs or drink, this was difficult to handle on fresh air, welcome to Laos.

I am now in early September and I do need to be back in Oz to open up Erawan by the end of this month, so I have to start thinking of finding somewhere to leave the bike. My original plan was Chiang Mai although Doug compound in VT sounds like a better bet, there could be complications with the bike passport as it could be considered an import. If I go back to Chiang Mai I will have to think about heading there in the next week. So there is no Vietnam, Cambodia of Phuket on this trip. Yes it is a cop out on my trip but I just don’t care. If any of you have read Ted Simons ‘Jupiter’s travels’ he had the same problems and eventually took him 5 years to circumnavigate the globe on a Triumph Tiger.

Laos would not be to everybody’s taste, the people are great but you will not get the luxuries that you can get even in the remotest parts of Thailand. But if you want to go somewhere to give your mind body and spirit a bit of R&R, I would highly recommend it.

The Remote Hospital

1.Arrival at RTC ( smart hire car)

2. Sunny & Me on a big pile of poo

3. Khampuan holds court at lunch

4. Some patients wathcing French movie on Chris's laptop

(No I am not making that up)

5. Irish spot the ball

6. Chris, Souly & Sunny attampting to re activate my spell checker

7. I have no idea apart from 125 cc Honda

8. I'm sorry your morning swim is cancelled

9. first SEDA/EWB meeting

10. Chris with Noi & Ven

It’s been a busy couple of days so I haven’t had time to blog. But it is Monday morning and I have a bit of me time so I’d thought I’d try to get a few words up into the ether. I have met up with what could loosely be described as the ‘team’ which is Sunny, a really cool dude from Canberra, and was instrumental in the instigation of the RTC biogas project, and Chris nationality indeterminant but it is somewhere between French/Swedish and American, although at the current time it is definitely Laos. Permits organised and a hire car found (Souly had a meeting to go to so we had to make our own way up there). When the phrase ‘hire car’ was banded round and images of Getz, Barrina and excel’s come to mind, completely forgetting what the access roads are like to the hospital, so I was pleasantly surprised when a Ford Ranger got delivered. As I’m the only one with the international licence, I had to drive. So the four of us set off, that is myself Chris, Sunny and Somkid from SEDA who was there to ‘keep an eye’ on us and act as interpreter. The trip is a lot more unpleasant than it sounds, I have got used to the VT traffic on a bike (a lot more scarier than anywhere I have been so far), and all of a sudden I’m in a huge 4 wheeled drive, left hand drive with manual gearbox with about a zillion different drive options, instruction book is in French. No problems I can do this. The hospital or RTC as it is known is not far from VT, a left turn at KM 52 on the way to Louanphrabang, the turn off is not marked at all. Then about 10 or 15 Km of some desperately bad road, the Ranger or its ilk are the only tool for the job.
We were welcomed by Master Khampuen and his wife (wife# 5 or 7 we haven’t quit deciphered that yet, seems although being a remarkable doctor, personal relationships are not his strong suit), he is an unbelievable young looking 78 year old and exists on a diet of hard work, Lao beer and local brand of cigarettes called ‘double lucky’, you may be surprised to learn that they do not have a health warning. I have heard a good deal about Khampuen from Souly, Sunny & Chris and was keen to see for myself the work which was being done there, the only diagnostic tool he has is a blood pressure measure kit and some remarkable claims were being made about his abilities. I will state for the record that he is medically trained, he uses a combination of western medicine knowhow and traditional medicine and his own diagnostic abilities, I will come to that later. My personal interest is not in the medical aspects of the centre but the biogas and electricity generation side. But the fact that the place exists is a tribute to local guile, ingenuity and support from donations and of course the work of Master Khampuen. It is a true collective built with next to zero finance. The good doc was in consultations until 2:00PM when we would have lunch together so this gave me ad Sunny some time to shoot the video about the Biogas project. There was a problem with the system as the pressure was down, either there was a leak in the distribution or there was a problem with the fermentation chamber, after some discussion we concluded that the first and obvious thing to do was to put a pressure gauge on the outlet of the fermentation tank to see if the problem is up stream or downstream. I could prattle on about the workings of the biogas system and its construction but that would take forever. The most important thing to know is that every morning 100 kg of cow poo and 100 litres of water are poured into the fermentation chamber and as it breaks down it produces methane, the shape of the fermentation chamber is such that a pressure build up in the dome forces the gas through the outlet and into the distribution system which are then used in a number of burners for cooking and gas lamps, the idea is to convert their small diesel 11.5 hp to run on a mixture of the biogas and diesel as well.
It was a very hot and humid day so lunch was a nice diversion. Khampuen speaks very little English so we worked a lot through Somkid and Sunny who speaks a little Laos, my Thai was useless. We had been chatting and eating for about 30 minutes and Khampuen turned to me and grabbed his right knee. Somkid said “he says you have broken right knee”. I thought I’d seen enough in the world not to be too surprised anymore but I admit to being genuinely surprised on how he would know this. I was wearing tracky dax so you could not see the scar, I do not have a limp at all and I have not told anybody in Laos about my unfortunate drinking injury sustained at the Belgium Eurodemo in ’96, there is no way this man could have been told this. I did a mental double check to see if there is any conceivable way that he could have been told this and again negative. Khampuen pointed to my right eye and said he could see the injury there. Without trying to offend anyone I am not at all spiritual at all and have a severe problem with Runes, Voodoo, hex’s etc etc. This does not include what could be classed as ‘alternative medicines’, the Chinese have been using them for over 5000 years and if they didn’t work they wouldn’t still be using them. So I don’t believe there was any ‘magic’ in his ability and I understand that there is a branch of medicine where the eyes reveal a good deal about your health (name escapes me) but top Kudos to Khampuen for being unbelievable good at it. I still am wary about the claims of some of his work, he has patients recovering from Cancer, diabetes, HIV and the effects of Agent Orange, but I will keep an open mind, especially having had personal experience of his diagnostic abilities.

Looks like the team are turning up, we are making a simple water filter today from clay, coffee grinds and cow poo, what is with the cow poo. Next blog more on poo powered things.

Laos - Sleepy hollow

First of all I’d like to thank all of you who have made comments about my blog, yes I have turned my spell checker off, but I hope that’s not deterring anybody from it, also I have been requested if the link to the blog can be passed on to other people, please go ahead the more the merrier.

I met with Souly from SEDA-Laos (www.SEDA-Laos.org) last night, a very committed and determined young lady. I now have a much better idea of what I’m getting involved with. The EWB member from Melbourne who has been the project leader on the RTC Biogas project will be arriving on Thursday along with another member of the team and we plan to meet later in the day and head up north to the site which is only 50 Km away on the Friday. As I understand it, it is not as straight forward as you might think being a NGO project there is plethora of paperwork and permits. A couple of days spare to take in the local sites and do some research, so this morning I thought I’d take Eddie out for a run and have a look at the local country side. There are not many roads in Laos (and no road signs out of the city) I thought I’d have a spin out to Muang Pakxan about 150 Km away along the Mekong Valley. It is one of the possible routes to Hanoi so I was keen to check out the road conditions. The local maps showing routes out of the city are useless and as I said before, there are virtually no signposts, having learnt lessons about asking directions leaving only the compass and gut feeling to go on. I headed off in what I believed was the right road which went under the Thai-Loa friendship bridge and skirts along the banks the Mekong. About 20 Km’s down the road it became clear that this was a bad decision, the road deteriorated quite dramatically (see photo), I stuck with it for about 5 Km to see if it would improve but it only got worse, the recent flooding tuning the red soil into patches of quagmire. Now along with the not camping thing I’m am not on an ‘off road’ trip either. I understand why people get the buzz from the off road thing and it would be a great adventure but Eddie at getting onto 450 Kg is not the machine I would be wanted to pick up on a regular basis. It was time to head back, and the contemplation of re organising my journey if this is the general standard of the Laos roads. A wrong turn turned out to fortuitous, not only did it put me on the road I wanted by accident but it gave me a chance to see Laos police corruption first hand. I was pulled over for a spot check and told I was to pay a 50000 kip ‘on the spot’ fine, the reason for the fine was unclear, I think it was just a generic ‘on the spot’ fine, I remembered to smile and apologies for my misdemeanour whatever it was, unfortunately I forgot the protocol of not overtly handing over the money and they were very keen to show me it has to be done discreetly. 50000 kip lighter (about $AUD6.50) I set off in the direction of Pakxan. I must admit I did not feel very comfortable on the road at this point. The road was narrow and had numerous lumbering trucks crawling along at 30 Km/h belching out acrid black smoke. The complications came from the other road users antics to get round these trucks which very much relied on you getting out of their way, the weapon of choice of the ‘well-heeled’ Laotian is the ‘Toyota Hilux’, apparently makes you invincible. The road was bumpy and undulated quite badly and there was the odd small pot hole but nothing suspension threatening. About 30 Km out of town I threw off the last remnants of the city traffic and pretty much had the road to myself. The route to Pakxan is a succession of small villages about 10 Km apart, these were a real eye opener. Only ½ hour journey but seemed to have stepped a good 50 years back in time. The overall impression was of a third world or as we correctly say a ‘developing country’. I am acutely aware of making mistakes on first impressions and trundling through on a motorbike only gives you a general feel for a town, village or a city.

But the living conditions could only described as primitive. There were many small towns and villages in Thailand who would be primitive compared to Europe, US or Australia, but this seemed to be taken to new heights (or depths). I must stress that although the conditions are primitive it is not poverty, I’m sure life in these small villages is hard and they would not have the access to healthcare and education we are privileged to have in the west but paradoxically everyone you see looks very healthy (active lifestyle and a proper diet would I’m sure be contributory factors). I rode for about an hour through a succession of these villages, the other thing I noticed was I was really off the tourist trail as I seemed to be the centre of attention for everyone in the village, which can be a bit unnerving at first but if I smiled and waved at anyone it was almost without fail returned with a big beaming smile and a wave or a thumbs up. It did seem that I was something of a celebrity, I was not the first furongse to travel this way but I think the bike was unique, this is a novel experience for me but I warmed to it quite quickly, the only time I’m the centre of attention in Australia is usually after somebody has yelled ‘officer arrest that man’.

The weather ahead looked like it was going to get rough so I thought I’d thought I’d grab a bite to eat and then head back. I’d gathered the information I needed that the roads were fine and there were plenty of small guest houses along the route, to continue to Pakxan would have been surplus especially as it looked like I would have to ride there and back in the rain. I stopped in the town of Ban Tabok which straddled a river. I filled up petrol & noodle soup and was instantly surrounded by a group of smiling, giggling kids. I was not to keen to give them any money, I was still struggling with a currency where anything below 1000 had no value whatsoever, and knew that I would have to give them all the same amount which I’m sure didn’t have also I could have a micro riot on my hands. To be fair they didn’t appear to be begging they were just happy to giggle amongst themselves and stare at this strange apparition that had descended on their town.

The next day I headed in the opposite direction towards the world heritage site of Louangphrabang, this is about 200 Km so was impossible to get there and back in a day, so a similar sort of plan to yesterday was in order, ride until I find something interesting and then turn back, the town of Phon Hong looked like a good spot for refuel and feed so that was my plan. This may sound a bit of an odd way of doing things but it suites my journey the best. If there were more roads I’d take a different way back plus the fact that Laos is a totally new experience for me so there is something new and different around every corner. I have found a short ride then with a few stops, buy some fruit, attempt to converse with the locals and take in the surrounds rather than covering long distances have been more rewarding. The difference in the villages and townships was quite marked from yesterday’s journey, there certainly seemed to be more affluent, there were a smattering of houses which looked like people with money and a number of fairly new looking factories. Numerous signs pointed to construction works and building projects, so clearly money was coming into the area in some form. There was a little more traffic although the road conditions were about the same, a lot more Toyota Hilux’s ‘ metallic silver being the colour of choice, there were so many of these I was beginning to think it was the same one, certainly the driver seemed to be on a mission to hit something with as much impact as possible. I got to Phon Hong and refuelled, and thought I’d get a noodle soup to eat. In the centre of town there was a small market which I thought was worth a check out and to buy some fruit, I’m not normally a fan of markets but this was defiantly in the bizarre and exotic, I could have spent hours their sampling all the weird and wonderful foods they had of offer. I was accosted by a young lady with a small barrow with a strange selection of goods, including digital watches. I mentioned previously that I was in need of watch so I thought a bit of haggling might be fun. Now before haggling it is important to a. understand the currency and b. understand the language. The currency as I’ve said I still have a problem with, parting with 100,000 of anything seems excessive but it will only get you bowl of soup, the notes don’t have the value clearly marked and in some cases, as with the 20000 have different numbers of them. Also the Thai language and therefore I am taking an educated guess the Laotian language has different words for 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000. Not a problem in Thailand where the numbers are realistic but when every single transaction is 6 or 7 figures it becomes a bit of a handful. Very important points in the haggling game, needless to say I think I got a raw deal from this very smooth operator who is destined for big things, I paid over $AUD15 for a watch I could have got for less than $10 in Springvale. Hey I’m not complaining $5 for the experience is worth it and I now have a watch which is bang on time twice a day. On my journey back into Vientiane I stopped to take pictures of the new national stadium under construction, by far the largest civic construction project ever undertaken in Laos. This should give you an idea of this remarkable country, there is nothing spectacular to look at,( I haven't been to Laungphrabang yet) there are the numerous temples as there are all over the Buddhist world, all beautiful and ornate in their own right, but unremarkable when put into context. It is a sleepy backwater of the Asian subcontinent but with a vibrancy and appeal which is distinctly Laotian.

Thought for the day.

Before setting off on my trip much vaunting was made of the perils of such a journey. This journey was supposed to be an adventure and with all adventures there is an element of danger and a good deal of inconvenience. If you can’t accept that you might as well stay at home or go on a cruise. The dangers can be spilt easily into two, there are the road hazards and there are people hazards. Riding a motorbike anywhere is potentially dangerous; the thrill of the ride is its main attraction. There are parts of Melbourne, particularly around St. Kilda where you do feel you are taking your life in your hands. Riding round Bangkok and Chiang Mai is just plain hairy, however on reflection the speeds are pretty low so unless it is a freakish accident, a dink would most likely be limited to superficial damage to the bike and the odd bruise. The open roads offer new dangers with stray fauna which in Laos tend to be either dogs, cattle, water buffalo or goats, of which the dogs are the most dangerous, you would tend to slow down if there is a heard of buffalo near the road, they are big and stupid but would normally be facing the direction of the road before stepping onto it, the goats you would only find in the surrounds and in the villages, as you would generally slow down going through a village even if it is just to have a look, you would be able to brake in time. The dogs could run out from anywhere and there are quite a few out in the countryside. There are a few pot holes but nothing so far that could be a real problem, riding within the limits of the machine, the limits of your ability and the limits of the road conditions are the wise words indeed.

The people problems are the most unpredictable, I have not been anywhere that I felt threatened in anyway, and on the contrary everyone I have met has been friendly and courteous and has been enthralled by the futile attempts of a furongse to speak their language.

Being a furongse, especially on a large motorcycle, you are an oddity and therefore by default something of a potential target for any loon in the vicinity, also it wouldn’t take a genius to figure you are probably carrying more money than they could earn in a month, even if you are not you would certainly give that impression. To conclude the ‘people danger’ is no worse than in the west in fact there are good arguments that would suggest that it is a good deal less, it is the fact you stand out raises your profile. Following basic safety procedures and instinctively being aware that you are the centre of somebody’s attention and its potential hazards are just common sense.

What I have found from the people I have met on my trip is that even living in what are essentially several notches down the standard of living ladder, their welcome is always warm, the smiles are genuine and the laughter spontaneous. Perhaps with all the luxury trappings with become accustomed to in our lifestyles we have forgotten the basics, perhaps these Laotian villagers can teach us something.

1. Stop for a cold drink

2. Cattle Hazzard

3. Next year I'll be bigger than Ratners

4. Nipping down to the shops

5. Cow in transit

6. Bizzare Bizzare

7. The New National Stadium

8. Vientiane Victory monument 1

9. Vientiane Victory monument 2

10. Caution kitchenware in transit

11. Fruit & Veg

12. Fruit & Veg

13. The Town of Ban Thebok

14. The new trike

15. Lunch audiance

16. Fresh Bacon

17. The Wrong road

18. Lunch break

19 Lunch break