Roadtrip

Back in Nong Khai, suffering from a slight post-beach depression and missing some of my friends who'd left Thailand at the end of our trip, it was nice to hear about the plans some of the others had of renting scooters and taking a little roadtrip along the Mekong. I didn't have any plans that weekend and hanging out by the pool seemed a little bit...pointless. So, initially it was me and seven others who went looking for a place crazy enough to rent scooters to a bunch of farangs embarking on a 150km drive to the sleepy little town of Chiang Khan. It turned out to be a lot harder than we'd thought, and as we kept walking around to different places asking the same questions, getting the same answers ("no, crazy farang! you only drive in city!"), more and more people dropped out and eventually there were only three of us left. Finally we found a british guy who had just bought a bar down by the Chinese Market and who couldn't care less how far we were going as long as we brought the bikes back in decent shape. Just what we thought too, so on a Saturday around noon, Yvette, Sophia and I took off heading for Chiang Khan and some supposedly beautiful waterfalls along the way. The roads were surprisingly good and traffic wasn't bad either which made the drive a very pleasant experience. Relaxing, with some beautiful scenery along the way and a comfortable temperature as long as you weren't going too slow. The first waterfall wasn't that exciting, since it didn't meet the most important criteria of a waterfall. It had no water. The second one was a major improvement, even though it wasn't exactly the Niagara Falls, we were excited to just see water running, and it still had its charm and felt like a place you could spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing at. We still had more than a few hours to drive so we wasted no time, except for a quick swim in the water, and got back on the road again. About an hour or so from Chiang Khan in the middle of nowhere, Murphy showed his ugly face and Yvette & Sophia had a flat tire leaving us standing on the side of the road with only a short time till sunset. Since we hadn't seen much traffic for a while and the only passing vehicles were other scooters, we didn't have much hope for a happy ending. Sometimes it feels great to be wrong though, and we were extremely grateful for the help we got from a guy with a pick-up who stopped and gave the girls and the bike a ride while I drove ahead trying to get to Chiang Khan before it was completely dark outside. It required some unsafe driving at speeds not intended on those roads, and a severe amount of swallowed bugs, mosquitos and whatever else flying around, but it was worth getting there and getting the bike fixed before it was too late.

Chiang Khan was an old-fashioned, quiet and traditional little village/town by the Mekong with basically only two streets with a few guesthouses, restaurants and shops. A short walk around town, dinner, and then a few beers by the river and we were pretty much done for that day. The next morning we continued our drive out west and went up to a big buddha statue on a viewpoint overlooking the river. Great view but unfortunately too cloudy that day. We didn't have any specific plans but instead we started our drive back towards Nong Khai and figured we could stop by the waterfall again and maybe stay a while longer this time. It actually turned out to be more than a few stops along the way and when we finally got to the waterfall we realized that we weren't going to make it to any guesthouse before dark. No problem though, we just needed some food and drink and then we could always sleep outside in the jungle next to the waterfall. We couldn't find any food but with plenty of beer, crackers, cookies and anything else eatable that we could find in a little shop a bit further away we had our dinner. Bamboo doesn't provide the best firewood though, so after about an hour in front of the fire there was only the stars and the moon left to light up our campingplace. It's pretty cool how dark and silent it gets in the jungle and sleeping on the ground wasn't a big deal at all, except for all the rocks where we'd decided to make our bambooleaf bed. No mosquitos either and we were so excited that we wanted to go back some other time but then bring sleepingbags, proper food and try to get a real fire going. Three days on the road and a night under the stars was great, and definitely one of the highlights of the time in Thailand.