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Reunion with the Mighty Mekong

Meanwhile, we have arrived in Laos, several days have past since my last post. Let's start by continuing with where we were first! Eum... where were we again...? From Preah Vihear to Stung Treng was too long to cover in 1 day of cycling; it's about 140km, which is a lot on the heavy touring bikes in the hot climate. In fact, in all these years of tour cycling, I don't think we have ever done 140km in 1 day. So, we split it up in 2 days of riding. However, there is very little option to do so; the only place with some accommodation on that stretch is Chhaeb (the name of this town differs every time you see it written, but the most common is this way). Not that there is anything else to do in this town, but it has a guest house: Mey Mey Guest House. Very basic, badly maintained, but it does the job. They clearly abuse the situation that they're the only place in the region. We paid 15USD for a basic room, which is a lot to Cambodian standards for what you get. But again,

Deep Into Isaan

After cycling several days along the Mekong, it was now time to leave this attractive river and travel more inland; deep into Isaan, indeed. Isaan is still the poorest region of Thailand, and we saw that clearly. It's all agriculture, small scale, often probably just enough for people to sustain themselves. There is no "in your face" poverty, hard to tell when just passing through though. You could also see that people were living in much more basic conditions, sometimes more shacks than houses. You'll notice from the photos as well. Nevertheless, this is the "true" Isaan, very remote, very desolate at times. Breakfast at our charming "Mediterranean style" guesthouse in Nakhon Phanom From Nakhon Phanom we started by following the incredible dedicated cycling lane for 13km, all the way until the Thai Lao Friendship Bridge (this is bridge number 3 of 4 - remember the Mukdahan bridge in my previous post ). After that pleasant, comfortable part of cyc

Down Under

It's time for a next episode of our blog! As I'm writing, I'm sitting in our tent, in a remote corner of... Tasmania! Well, to be honest, almost everywhere is remote in Tasmania - or Tassie as it's being called in Australia. Tasmania is south east, down below Australia; it really is Down Under relative to Australia... Just a few nuts and bolts to fix, and we're good to go! We came to Australia first via Melbourne, to visit Sander for a couple of days. For this occasion we used AirAsia, and to be honest it's a perfectly fine flight - although we did upgrade ourselves to hot seats which makes a difference. We chose AirAsia because it's straightforward to take your bicycles; you pay an extra charge for them - which is not too much - but then you're also sure it won't be a problem to take the bicycles. We did have a bad experience with AirAsia however, and as they are not solving this I'd want to share it here. A beautiful ride near Melbour

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