“The Long Way Laos” – Motorcycle Adventure Travel in Laos

| October 20th, 2009 | Travel Articles

Here for your enjoyment is our article “The Long Way Laos” in full, as featured in the online travel magazine HipCompass Escapes. It’s about our 550km motorcycle trip from Vang Vieng through one of the most stunning countries I’ve ever seen, to Luang Probang and back again…

Adventure travel has always been one of those things that seems to be on my list of things I said I’d do tomorrow, its not for lack of trying but more a lack of having the balls to ignore the negative practicalities and get on with it, but that’s exactly the attitude you need for it… Less thinking and more doing!

A few months ago while traveling through Laos that was exactly what I did, we were staying in the small and stunning town of Vang Vieng, over shadowed by the towering limestone peaks and blinded by the natural beauty around every corner something in me burst to the surface. Every traveler’s done it – during a long but air-conditioned bus ride to some picture postcard beach, pulled out their adventure travel book from their bag for a spot of inspiration on an otherwise uninspiring journey… Been duly inspired but never taken it further. But this time I was determined to do it, my inspiration came in the form of two monstrous looking dirt bikes, the mental image of the bikes sat inside my head rattling around for a few days as I got down to some serious tubing (if you’ve ever been to Vang Vieng you will know exactly what I mean by that and if not… Go see!) Then out of the blue during a rare moment of sobriety the idea, the adventure was born…
To my left the dirt bikes… To my right cloud-topped limestone peaks leading off northwards over mountains and hills and on to Luang Probang.

A day’s planning had informed me we would be looking at 135 km each way and we had a time frame of two days in which to do it…
Our party consisted of three – myself, my fiancee Georgie and our good friend Toby. Toby owned his own dirt bike back in the UK and was no stranger to off-road biking,  Georgie was a very eager passenger which just left me – with limited motor-biking experience, but what’s an adventure without a challenge? The sun was blazing down on the sleepy streets of Vang Vieng and it seemed to be roasting us alive so we bought a map, saddled up and set off with a roar.

We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.

The journey wound up mountains and back down again, we stayed a night in a tiny town called Phou Khoun far away from anywhere. We woke at 5 am and drove through clouds and we stopped at countless villages along the way. I could write about the hard bits, about the miles, the hills and sore bums but it doesn’t really seem fair. Not when we passed so many warm and friendly people who desperately wanted to go out of their way to make us feel welcome, who call that terrain home and who’s everyday lives make our adventure seem like a walk in the park. The hardships that made it an “adventure” were also the things that pushed us on when we were exhausted. The funny thing is Vang Vieng to Luang Probang is a road well travelled, except mostly on a bus behind glass, reading books as they go – but we really “traveled” it, we felt every mile and every bump and the people we met and the places we stopped at would’ve been missed if we’d taken the bus. A motorbike has the power to connect you to your environment and you have to work with the road not in spite of it… Laos is the most charming country we’ve ever been to, the people and landscape are truly beautiful and those few days were some of the most interesting, fun, hard and rewarding of our whole travels. What it taught me was – the only thing that ever stands between a person and an adventure is the person themselves.

Below is a full length video of the trip so you can pretend you were right there with us, Mucho Mucho Love… Come Join In.

[vimeo]6648238[/vimeo]