Sa Bai Dee
The cycle from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong wasn’t particularly memorable. I’m sure that I enjoyed it at the time, but a week later I can’t remember much. I do remember stopping at a bike shop in Fang and I regret not buying a cycling jersey from the local cycling club. Other than that, I don’t remember much. Chiang Khong was a bit of a dump, a proper dusty frontier town, but we didn’t stay there long and we driven up a hill (that several of us would have loved to have cycled) to a Hmong and Lahu hill tribe village. The place we stayed was spectacular. A series of “bungalows” each with four two-person rooms and a shared balcony the size of my flat looking out across the Mekong into Laos. After dinner, we were treated to a performance of traditional music by villagers dressed up in their traditional dress. The first act could most favourably be described as ‘interesting’. It all went downhill from there. The finale involved two men and two women walking an odd square shaped ‘dance’ of sorts around the stage area, as the men played instruments which basically made a dull ‘Om’ sound once every couple of seconds. By this stage we had drunk the hotel out of beer and were onto the wine, and when Alan mentioned Simon Cowell, Carl started giggling uncontrollably. This set me off and very soon we were all struggling to keep straight faces. Jokes about the ‘Om’ dance became a recurring feature of the rest of the tour. As did drinking places out of our favourite drinks…Leaving Chiang Khong the next day, we took a small boat across the Mekong and into Laos at Huay Xai. After passing through immigration, and laughing at the two young children who were helping out in the very bureaucratic office passing passports and visa application forms around, we transferred to a bigger boat and headed slowly downstream to Pak Beng. The scenery was spectacular, but after a while, most of us settled down to read or to doze our way through the eight hour journey. Others, especially Aum (our former Thai guide who was joining us in Laos as a tourist) hit the local beer, Beer Lao.
Our cycling in Laos started from Pak Beng the next day with a mamouth 145km / 90 mile ride to Udom Xai. Laos is a mountainous country, but the route was relatively flat, especially in the morning when the gently undulating road passed through corn fields and rice paddies. The journey was on a good tarmac road and, knowing that there was a long way to go, we maintained a pretty high speed. Our Laotian tour guide, Choy, was a less accomplished cyclist than either Aum or Ant and struggled to keep up with the fastest amongst us and once we realised that there wouldn’t be a single turn until the very end of the day, about half of us overtook him and cycled off into the distance.
After lunch the route was more hilly, and Choy soon joined Diana, Eileen and a few of the others in the support van. The largest hill came right at the end of the day. It was a tough climb and I hit the (figurative) wall about midway up. I have been through the wall before, during the Berlin marathon, and started to talk myself through it. Help came from an unusual source: I heard a scooter spluttering behind me and, thinking that it was struggling to overtake me on the steep hill, I decide to race it to the top of the hill. The burst of speed made me completely forget how drained I had felt only seconds before. As I pedaled faster and faster, the driver laughed and pulled up along side me. His bike hadn’t been struggling at all, he had just been trying to draw level for a chat. In broken English, he asked how many of us there were, where we were going and where we had come from. He was pretty shocked that we had cycled from as far away as Pak Beng. After a few brief exchanges, he pulled away, disappearing over the crest of the hill, where he was soon followed by Carl and Emily who overtook me at full speed.
I had been told about the Lao peoples’ friendliness before I left England, but wasn’t really prepared for it. Every time we rode through a village, we would be greeted by cries of ”Sa bai dee”. It means “Hello”, or so we’re told (see below). Young children would run up to the side of the road, waving wildly and shouting “Sa bai dee! Sa bai dee!” or, slightly confusedly “Good bye! Good bye!”. In some villages, the children would spill out onto the road, holding their hands out to high five us as we went passed. The friendliness was infectious and very soon we were all waving back, our own cries of “Sa bai dee!” being greeted with peals of laughter and yet more shouts of “Sa bai dee!”
Living in London, I am really not used to such friendliness and the cynic in me didn’t trust it. Given the laughter that greeted our responses, I kept wondering whether “sa bai dee!” meant something rude when subtly mis-pronounced or whether there was some kind of national competition with a points system based on foreigners’ response: one for a wave, two for a “sa bai dee!” and five for a high five perhaps.
The happiness was infectious and I really enjoyed every moment of cycling in Laos. I had had a great time in Thailand, but Laos was really special.
