Day 15 - Oudomxay to Houay Xay

Sabaidee :)

We awoke in Oudomxay to another lovely day in Northern Laos however the clouds looked quite ominous. We headed off to Houay Xay with a stop in Luang Namtha for Lunch. After riding through some roadworks (which everyone else was stuck at) we realised how much time can be saved travelling here if you have the right equipment, i.e. Nobby Tyres and Decent Suspension as we rode over the mountains of dirt at the roadworks whilst everyone cheers us on :)

We hit Route 8 and just as we remembered, this is probably the best road in Laos, it is a perfectly cambered chinese road through the beautiful mountains with some of the most breathtaking scenery we have seen yet.

We arrived in Luang Namtha for lunch and filled up for the next 2hrs to Houay Xay. After about 30mins it began to rain which slowed us down significantly. Whilst the road is perfectly constructed, it is however covered in Oil from the Petrol Tankers, Semi Trailers and Busses that use this road daily, needless to say this made for some interesting and scary cornering :)

About 60kms to Houay Xay, whilst going around a corner, David's rear tire decided to loose traction and he low sided the bike, sliding next to the bike about 15mtrs until he and the bike rested off the side of the road :). Thankfully David was OK thanks to our Safety Gear (Which many laugh at) and the Bark Busters and Top Box took the brunt of the impact. The gear shift level had bent around meaning we ad to pry this back to continue riding. Unforunately in the process of trying to fix the Gear shift level we ended up breaking the gearbox partially. This meant until Houay Xay, David no longer had the use of 1st ad 2nd Gear. (Quite critical gears when you are going up and down mountains with small brakes that Honda put on the bikes).

Shortly before sunset we made it to Houay Xay and checked into the Riverside Hotel where we had stayed the year before. We headed out for some dinner and a well deserved alcoholic beverage which to our surprise, ended up consisting of 5 Laos Whiskey shot's each followed by Two Large Beer Lao chasers :) We met two lovely ladies from France who were heading back down to southern Laos, we told them about our cause and they agreed to take some of the books back down south with them to bring more smiles :) We stumbled back to the Hotel around midnight before crashing for the evening.