The Friendship Bridge. Laos 🇱🇦 meets Thailand
Monday 19th Feb 18
A short day only 159kms, but we have got a border crossing to do and it’s hot, 30c by 10am. We do have time to ride through the centre of town to see the Victory Arch which commemorates the leaving of the French from Laos; so they build The Arc de Triumph Lao style 😊. Nearby was a famous temple, so we called in there also.
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- Arc de Triomphe Laos style
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- The Amigos
Soon we were at the Thai border, the crossing was quite quick compared to coming into Laos. We stopped halfway across the Friendship Bridge, which leads to Thailand across the Mekong to take a photo with the Laos and Thai flags at the cross over point.
Ride the Friendship bridge https://youtu.be/z6O7jMGEUD4
By now it was getting hot, 37c so we stopped for lunch..fried rice again. Somehow we had lost Mark, one of our American buddies, who had a tendency to explore everywhere; we assumed he had just kept on riding.
After lunch it was a 100kms of mostly fast dual carriageway, punctuated by several traffic lights so we could practice our Grand Prix starts 😁 We found Mark at a coffee stop, so all was well.
Great coffee and air con 😎
We arrived at the hotel in Nong Bua Lam Phu, it had a pool so time for a dip and some Chang beer 🍺 A little later we heard a commotion which turned out to be a dragon dance outside as part of Chinese New Year celebrations.. check out the video 👍
And a smaller faster dragon https://youtu.be/lYQTEaia4DA
That night we jumped in the back of our pick up truck and headed into town to an Italian restaurant, which was actually run by a real Italian. I had Spaghetti Bolognese and red wine for dinner as a real change. We then went looking for a bar but the place was dead, so back to the hotel to get ready for an 8am start in the morning
All aboard
Happy guys
Bedtime reading