Channeling my inner Steve McQueen

Good news everybody! No footworms. But after that excruciating day of barefoot hiking, I thought my feet deserved a day off: so today became my official first full motorcycle day. $10 for a Honda Dream and a hot pink helmet and I was off on I-13 North toward the China border. (sorry mom, this is all dad's fault, he passed on the DNA).

Looking back on it, Motorcycle Safety School prepared me extremely well for SE Asia motorbiking: I ran over obstacles and handled dirt roads like a pro, and even remembered (and successfully executed!) the technique we practiced for dealing with dog attacks. The only material not covered was 1. Water buffalo - a twofold problem. If sprawled in the middle of the road, veer around it; if a herd crossing, stop motorbike and let them pass. 2. Chicken and elephant right-of-way - the opposite of what you might think. Elephants demurely yield, whereas chickens determinedly run headlong in front of you. This results in them being the squirrels of the SE Asia roadways: splattered twitching feather remains are not uncommon. 3. Goat herds! Okay, so I only encountered one goat herd my whole trip, but I was so thrilled and so busy staring at the goats (my favorite animal! so cute!) that I forgot I needed a strategy for driving through the middle of them until near impact. Happily we all panicked at the same moment, and scattered, intact, in our various appropriate directions.

I'd like to say that motorbiking northern Lao is super badass, but the truth is that animal obstacles aside, it is extremely easy, even on the dirtroads. In retrospect we did vastly harder drills on the Bronx obstacle course for hours on end; whereas driving here in Laos at a consistent speed, on lightly curving open roads, with no other vehicular traffic save the occasional slow moving pickup truck lugging a cow, is no problem at all.

I biked for seven hours to get as deep into northern Laos as I could in a day, following some of the trails I read about on the Biking the Golden Triangle message board. It was a mix of paved and dirt roads, through the beautiful Lao mountains, hugging the curves of muddy rivers, and through all kinds of tiny villages. I see why bikers are so crazy about it - you see, feel, and smell so much more - the hibiscus bushes, the coal fires, the buffalo poop, the laundry soap, the fish grilling on a flame.

I stopped at the Nam Ou caves, where broken images of the Buddha are disposed of from wats all over Lao in ghostly riverside caves, and at a village famous for its Lao Lao Whiskey - they float dead scorpions in it, for flavor or dramatic effect I'm not sure, but the flavor and the effect are equally frightening. Low on gas somewhere deep in the mountains I began to panic having, well, NEVER seen a single gas station here, but eventually figured out that the local village stores sell not only water, grilled fish, and cigarettes, but also buckets of gas. I filled up for $2 and was back on my way.

The only part of driving my bike that was a challenge was, embarassingly, getting it started. Unlike the bikes we drove at Motorcycle School, this had a pump-kick start that I couldn't master for the life of me. So each time I stopped (for water buffalo herds, bathroom, vistas, town visits) I had to flag down a local to restart my bike, much to their amusement. Or maybe it was just a farang in a hot pink helmet making them laugh. Each time I studied what they were doing until finally by mid-afternoon I had it down - shift into neutral, pump the kicklever, give it a little throttle at the sweet moment AND a slight push forward, and, vrooom! It was a relief to not have stopping create such a scene anymore.

Tomorrow: biking to find Henri Mouhot's grave. He died in Luang Prabang when he was only 35 years old, and is buried somewhere outside town. Also by the way thank you everyone who is reading and commenting! It is really nice to feel your presence and support over here on the other side of the planet.