I write this post from... China! So yes, we've got in, meaning we have left Laos meanwhile. Before talking about China, first the last Lao day. We rode 50km and until Nateuy (which was about 30km) it was still really nice, with little traffic. The road was slightly hilly, climbing for maybe 20km but ever so gently. There were beautiful hills, with a lot of pure natural scenery - it had been a while since we had seen such nice nature!
The descent towards Nateuy was of the ideal kind, enough to pick up speed, without the need for constant braking. We had some heavy vehicles on our way though, and with no road shoulder it was not always pleasant - especially not if they had to cross each other right where you were cycling.
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| What a beautiful location for a (long) coffee break again! |
As we had a relatively short cycling day, we took an extra long coffee break and found a great place for that, and after that once in Nateuy we had lunch - the last Laotian pho. Surprising, even though we hadn't seen tourists for quite a while meanwhile, 4 farangs (French, with a guide) stepped into the small restaurant where we had our lunch!
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| Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees... |
Nateuy is the turnoff junction towards Luang Namtha, and further on to Thailand. We stuck to our plan to go directly to Boten, ready to cross into China from there. From this junction onwards the road became much less pleasant, lots of heavy trucks, dust, excavation works, huge parking lots filled with trucks, some industry, ... The beautiful nature was still there as well, but you had to do some effort to look beyond the ugliness to see it.
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| Just after the customs check point |
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| More road impressions |
A good 5km before Boten was a first long queue with trucks, to pass the customs check point (which we just cycled through). After that it was really an annoying ride but not long anymore though. There was a whole lot of excavation works going on, at first I thought it was just earth moving but later on it seemed that there is some plan at work, for a major highway or train line (of which I did read something, a plan for a high speed train line between Kunming and Vientiane I believe). Impressive, awful, ugly...
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| Excavation works - there was a lot like this. They did save a tree however, look for it in the back. |
We arrived in Boten mid afternoon, and started to look for a guesthouse. That might sound easy, but the reality is that Boten is more Chinese than Laotian: everything and everyone is Chinese, and there is very little information to be found. Luckily maps.me still showed some places to stay, Boten is also very small, and we soon found a good place to stay. A real hotel, rather than a guesthouse, at a very affordable rate, with a big room, good bed, and one of the best showers we have had in ages (which we needed after all that dust)!
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| Lorries queuing for the border crossing in Boten |
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| Our hotel room in Boten, complete with bicycles inside. 12 EUR please. |
Boten is a very weird place. It was built as a mini Las Vegas, to attract Chinese gamblers. At some point a few years ago this led to all kinds of gambling related problems, and the Chinese demanded the casinos to be shut. Boten became a bit of a ghost town, and most businesses and people disappeared. Compared to pictures I saw from other bloggers, from the past years, it seems the place is on the rebound now, there's more going on again. We saw some maquette and images of a big plan, it looks like they're now building an entire new modern city at this location, like only the Chinese can! There's also a duty free shopping which we checked out, but we came out empty handed. In the evening we did have a very nice Chinese meal though! Ready for the next chapter of our trip... China!!!