"Guess what the cooked animal is" prize draw!

So it has been 4 days on the road and what started off as a bit on the monotonous side has day by day become a pretty amazing experience. The journey started from Vientiane along the Mekong, pretty flat and dull but good to get into the swing of riding a bike 5 times smaller than mine on a foreign road. So far it has done really well, though I have a really tender backside at the end of each day which requires massage. Honest.

It is the last couple of days that have had the best riding. Only being able to make about a couple of hundred KMs a day because the road conditions mean an average speed of about 35km/h results in you getting to take in everything around. The most amazing parts have been making the bike climb from the Mekong where most days seem to end, up over the hills that can go over 2000m. Up there are numbers of hill tribes that do not get much passing traffic - I only passed one car today - and when I pulled up everyone comes out to look, very curious. They quickly hide when you pull out a camera. But if you are riding through and wave and shout Sabai de (Hello) they will wave back. There is no public transport in these hills, as remote as it is, so you see people walking everywhere, unless they own a tractor (not like ours), a scooter, car or elephant.

However there is a significant amount of work going into sealing the roads, making them all weather. The implications of this are huge. Many of these roads traditionally have been unpassable in the wet and it will make access to facilities easier as well as bring more tourists off the Mekong and into the hills that are really only accesible by 4wd, truck or motorbike at the moment. But it should also help health issues. The trucks and cars that pass along the roads cover everything in dust which would have a major impact on the locals respitary systems as their houses are alongside the roads. To give some indication as to how bad it is, below is a photo of me in my riding suit after just a day. And don't ask what it looked like after blowing my nose! If anyone else is thinking of doing a trip like this, I can highly recomend an Ortlieb bag as not only is it waterproof and touch, but it keeps all the dust out.

So I am currently on the Northern border with Thailand in a town called Heung Xai (though each town has about six different names). Tomorrow I head north, riding along the border with Myanmar before heading to the very north where it meets with China. But for now I need food and I saw this tasty looking morsel at the local market. I will award  a prize for anyone who can work out what it is, and then whether you think that I will actually eat one.