Vieng Phou Kha-Luang Namtha: The coldest day so far 10c

Thursday 03, January 2019 63 km – Total so far: 532,5 km

Today when my alarm rang I really felt like sleeping some more, but I got up very quickly because inside the room it was really cold. Only 12°C and outside 10°C.

I left and I started to pedal real fast to get warm. Exceptionally I was happy that the road immediately started to climb because there was a cool mist in the air. These misty mountains looked nice but the cold humid air didn’t feel so cosy.

Yesterday in the evening a guy told me that there would be a market  outside the village. I thought of buying some bananas there, but in the end I didn t see nothing like a market. Maybe I went too fast to have a closer look around.

Sometimes the road was really bad although the climbs were ok. Only one was a little be harder with 14%. Altogether I should climb 550m today.

So the ride was not too exhausting, but there was no possibility to buy any food on the way. I only ate a bag of chips and the Chinese biscuits that were left from yesterday, which was tough enough.

I passed all these small villages – if you want to call them villages – and I saw this  tremendous poorness. If you see how miserable their lives are, sitting around a fire to get warm a little bit you have to face that bitter truth that this world is not fair….

At 11o’clock I reached my destination. A town maybe 500m longer then the village yesterday. What makes the big difference are the plenty of guesthouses and hotels here. Here are quite a lot of tourists because people use it as a base for trekking.

I checked in in the guesthouse called „Amandra Villa“. This time I got a very nice lovely room. Big and warm during the day

I took a shower and I went to eat. Hunger!!! For the first time in Laos I saw a menu card written also in English! After having a wonderful and expensive pizza I walked around and I found a shop where they are selling some cookies and peanuts. Cool. SoI know now where I can buy some stuff before I am leaving.

I decided to stay here some more days to recover and to do some laundry – I really need to wash my bike-uniform. Maybe I will leave on Sunday. We’ll see.

In the evening I loaded up some pictures of today. The internet connection is very slow, even the one from my phone is faster. So I’m learning to be patient here….