After a sleepless night listening to the trucks thunder past the guest house we set off to Vieng Xai and the prospect of an nice Indian meal to look forward to.
The road across to Sam Neua has little changed since last year, it would appear the contractors are concentrating on the 3204 heading to Vietnam.
A cloudy day as we ascended into the mist.
As we had time on our hands we stopped at a small Hmong village hoping the mist would burn off.
So many fair haired kid’s here.
Mist drifting across like smoke.
Deserted construction camp appearing in the mist.
Only evidence of any construction work was the occasional backhoe clearing landslides.
Still no signs of the mist lifting it was clear today was not to be a picture day.
We hung around for an hour around 5 km from Lima 85 hoping for some improvement, but no change so we made it to the village of Houayma.
All the local guy’s had assembled for the cock fight although they would not give me a show.
I did get attacked by the local Turkey, much to the amusement of the guy’s.
We stopped a little further in the village all eyes on us.
The route ahead looked nice and clear, or so we thought.
The best view we could get of Lima 85 on the day, and little point riding up to the ladder to see nothing.
For a moment it looked like we may see something.
But the rolling mist had other plans.
Back into the mist again, it wall almost like rain and bloody cold as we made it past this landslide easily.
But not this one.
With no other way around we had a long cold almost five hour wait for this to be cleared.
Another machine rolled up to help speed things up.
Many of the locals armed with AK47’s made a fire for the long wait.
Slow progress.
Some locals had arranged for other transport and off they went.
Finally a trail being made so we could cross.
Pushed on to Vieng Xai in the dark and checked into the Chichareane GH and stuffed ourselves silly at the Indian restaurant.
Next day after a nice lay in, did a tour around the town for Des.
Love this monument and the defiant stance on the USA bomb.
It is a beautiful place to chill out.
Looks like the cave disco in the Vieng Xai 1 hotel is no more.
Since we had missed the cave tour i blagged my way to view one of the caves no longer on the tour, this was the meeting cave.
Don’t know why this place has been allowed to overgrow.
We went over to the artillery cave but didn’t go inside as the tour was in progress.
Got as close as i could to the old military vehicles.
Killing time and keeping warm a nice cup of Vietnamese coffee.
We decided to push on to Sam Neua and stopped close to where the remnants of the old French hospital remain.
Handing out sweets along the way.
Interesting place on the edge of town.
Checked into the Keochinda Hotel.
Big new wing in the rear boasting rooms for 300k kip with bathtubs.
We spent the evening at a great pork and sticky rice place whilst consuming a good deal of beer laos, Tomorrow a cruise down to Phonsavan with Long Cheng in our reach or so we thought.
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