Paths diverge

I was quietly proud of my good friend Hannah.  Three months on a bike, living on a miniscule budget and having cycled the length of Thailand, Hannah decided to continue riding solo into China.  She’d hardly ridden a bike prior and now, after 3500 km from Malaysia to Laos, was ready to take on the world.  She’d also conquered her own doubts, hung in there when it got tough and, despite butting heads a few times, managed to put up with my sometimes stubborn independence.  But what I found most inspiring was how she’d learnt to say yes to it all and, in doing so, discovered her own appetite for adventure, deciding to go it alone.

We were both heading north to the Mekong and Laos and from there our paths would diverge.  The cycling from Chiang Mai to the Laos border was beautiful.  Northern Thailand was dry and a world away from the commerce that is modern Thailand.  We rode north along rivers, past green rice paddies, stayed at a community organic farm one night and in temples the others.  It took about a week to arrive at the banks of the Mekong.  I was full of awe which Hannah couldn’t quite understand.  I’d never seen the Mekong before, with such a history, a connection of cultures and peoples to one of the world’s biggest rivers.  But when I gazed upon it, all I saw was a sand mining operation on the Laos side and a steep concrete bank some 20 metres below where the water line could have been.  We asked around for Hannah’s boat but, with the lack of water, there were none going to China.  Looked like we would be spending some more time together after all.

While I continued on with my original plan to cycle through Laos, Hannah reverted to Plan B and decided to cycle to China.  I’d heard that Laos was in a rapid state of flux.  China, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam (just to name a few) were all investing there and the place was changing very quickly.  Hannah pointed out that if I wanted to see Laos I should spend some time there now because, on the way home, it would be a totally different place. I decided to head to Luang Prabang, while Hannah followed the Mekong into China.

We rode down the sandy shoreline of the Mekong, loaded our bikes onto a longtail boat and whizzed across to the other shore.  The border post on the other side was full of people, mainly westerners queueing, standing around and basically not knowing what to do.  There were two small offices manned by a bunch of staff, but nothing seemed to have a system to it.  I liked it instantly.  It reminded me of what travelling must have been like years ago, when paper ruled and it took a long time to get anything done.  Being in a port city on the Mekong just added to it all, as did the two forms we had to fill out, the $30 US we had to pay for our visa, and the old fashioned looking visa sticker that was stuck in my passport.  With that, we pushed our bikes up the bank to the main road discovering that we needed to start riding on the opposite side of the road. Surprisingly this didn’t take long to get used to, apart from my mirror being on the other side.

The three cyclists were headed in three different directions.  Hannah was headed for China, Vincent for Vietnam and I was headed for Luang Prabang.