Back to Nambok by Bicycle

From Luang Prabang, visiting Sam's uncle again in Nambok was a perfect test ride for our new bicycles because a) the road was crummy enough to justify the nice bikes we had bought and b) the bus ride was so dang unpleasant a bicycle trip could hardly be worse. (For those who haven't memorized every posting, it was by a 2-way, which is the covered back of a pickup truck with bench seats, and was packed with people and freezing cold.) Plus, we knew we couldn't make the whole trip in a day so we didn't have to push ourselves: we could just throw our bikes on the 2-way when we got tired. The only drawback (and becoming the theme of our trip) was I was once again sick and had to run into the bushes after every uphill push! Oh well at least we got to stop a lot and look at the scenery.

The scenery up there is quite beautiful - steep sided limestone karsts and mountains, trees, rice fields, and small rivers with wooden boats being poled through the calm waters. The roadside also provided some entertainment, including more of the tok tok (tractor motor) cars travelling at 5 mph, 2-ways containing goats, 2-ways containing water buffalo - well one buffalo per 2-way, and that was enough to cause the tires to nearly rub the frame! Also live and dead wildlife for sale, including ocelot-like wildcats and some kind of chinchilla-like groundhog. We saw an unhappy goat being tied up and weighed on a grocery-store size scale...all very pastoral!

We rode for about 4 hours and 50 k (there was a lot of up and down hill, and the, umm, stops) and then eventually hailed a 2-way to Nambok. We arrived at uncle's icicles as usual, but they were kind enough to start a fire and heat us water. They were very happy to see us again and fed us plenty of sticky rice. FYI: you don't need immodium in Laos, sticky rice works better. In fact it works too well!

We spent the next day around Nambok and rode the bikes down to Sam's cousin's house who runs a mechanic shop at the rode split a few kilometers away. They were having a ceremony for a family member who was also getting over stomache trouble (they're not immune either!) It was funny how after drinking all night and eating a big meal, they quite competently got out their welding gear and went right outside to work on a huge bus that arrived late at night with a broken wheel.

We had our own ceremony the next day in Nambok. The ceremony they do is a standard celebration for many occasions - weddings, leaving on travels, getting over sickness, etc. They create a banana leaf origami centerpiece and tie white strings to it and arrange small money and food around it (usually a freshly killed and cooked chicken, sticky rice, and various packaged treats.) Everyone holds a string and someone leads a prayer, then there is another prayer while the recipient(s) of the ceremony hold some food and drink some rice whisky. The whisky and food grease is also rubbed on the head, for hair gel I guess because my hair was a mess, also the head is a sacred part of the body so maybe there is some ceremonial purpose. Maybe not though. Then everyone takes a string and ties it around the wrist of the recipient(s) of the ceremony while speaking well-wishes to them. All people are supposed to be composed of many spirits which may wander, and the idea is to gather the spirits back to the person using the string. Finally, everyone eats the food and the recipients keep the lucky money.

From the road split, we went to visit another of Sam's cousins down the road and saw pictures of part of the family which lives in New Zealand (sweet, hopefully we can stay with them later!) Then the trip took a very bizarre turn, i.e. we had good luck with a bus! In trying to hail a 2-way, we instead caught a guy with a minivan and no bus permit poaching passengers. We got him to drive us all the way back to our hotel, pick up our big bags, and take us to the Luang Prabang southern bus station where we caught the overnight "express" to Vientiane. We were impressed that it even had assigned seats and everything, but a few kilometers outside of town, out came the stools in the aisles, and in came all the unofficial passengers and stops. We still arrived by Grandma's road pretty fast (4am) and so had to ride the bikes in the dark the 7k or so to Grandma's. Here I discovered that the dogs have a vampire thing where they turn into rabid beasts by night, though they leave you alone during the day. Luckily going that way it was downhill and they couldn't keep up with us, or else the moon came out of the clouds, or something. Anyway we survived and made it to Grandma's for Christmas.