Sabai Dee!

The grass really isn't greener. Not always. The past 3 days have been some of the hardest cycling yet in the lost mountain ranges of N Laos. I wouldn't change any of it for a second. Riding up STEEP hills that go on forever with sweat stinging in my eyes? Love it. Coming around a bend in the road only to see the asphalt snaking up the side of the clear-cut, burned out hillsides and disappearing into the smoky distance? Love it a little less. Making eye contact with some tourist, half my age, looking bored out of her mind as her bus passes? Priceless. As hard as the last few days of hot and humid riding have been, I feel like a million dollars just sitting here in this internet cafe. I am alive. I am tired. I have just accomplished something that was worth doing. And my ass is killing me.
The road from Luang Prabang to the capitol city, Vientiane is the major highway running north-south in this part of the country. Occasionally a car passes. It is no wider than a country road and no passing lanes, that is what the blind curves are for. On the steeper downhill sections I found this out by passing trucks and cars on these blind curves as the diesel spew gets nauseating on the long descents. Even though the people in the back of the truck (and there are always people in the back of a truck) are smiling and waving and giving me the thumbs up, I still want to pass them as it is the rare chance a cyclist gets to pass a motor vehicle. It is so satisfying...like lane splitting in Bangkok. There is some psychic connection that one has with blind curves the longer one drives over here. It is the only explanation for the ability to pass blindly yet knowing you will survive. Sure you may have to hit the brakes as hard as you can a few times. Sure you might have to force the car you're passing to cram on his brakes a few times but in the end everyone survives and speeds off to the next curve. I think I've mastered it after watching enough cars try it...although I have been wearing my helmet religiously just in case.
As soon as Luang Prabang was in the rear view mirror the hills started with a gentle warning. Eight hours later, and the warnings gone unheeded, I was at the summit of a hill dripping in salty sweat and "over it" as my niece Juelianna would say. The previous three hours and 20km had been spent on one solid climb. No little downhill sections, at all. No little spots to coast and let the blood back into my thighs. No spots to relax and spin gently so the lubricant in my knee joints could circulate. Just a continuous UP in my lowest gear. In those three hours I think I experienced four of the five stages of grief researched by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Hour one found me in denial that a mountain could actually go on like this for 20 km. This rapidly moved into anger that a mountain could go on like this for 20 km. The second hour found me in the stage of bargaining with myself, god, the imagined truck driver that might stop and ask if I wanted a ride...anyone or anything that would listen. As no one stopped, and god seemed preoccupied, and I got sick of whining (yes it's possible), I started to move into the fourth stage...depression. But the amazing thing about riding through Laos is that it won't let me get depressed. The scenery is just so beautiful. Even if it is deforested, and a lot of the hillsides are baren and black from slash and burn aggriculture, and the smoke is so thick from all the burning that you can barely see the next ridge (as well as having bronchial pain from deep breathing it all day), Loas is still a beauty. I wanted to ponder the destruction of the earth and how we are all on a one way trip to environmental suicide (because we all know how helpful and useful those thoughts are!) but the damn kids kept interruping me and kept me smiling. Small villages lined the way up the mountain and every time I rode through one all the kids would shout as loud as they could, "Sabai Dee!!!!" A village here is defined as a row of wooden structures on stilts with palm leaf roofs lining either side of the road. No side streets in these towns as the structures were precariously perched over steep drop offs. Under the houses were pigs and chickens and lots of dirt. And even gasping for air I couldn't help but shout back a sabaidee. From dark doorways kids would appear and always waving and shouting hello. From unseen places a shout of sabaidee was frequently heard. The bigger kids, from 4 to 10 years old, would run out to the side of the road and give high fives as I passed. It was a great feeling and so encouraging to have all these little guys rooting for me. I could imagine what it must be like to be famous like Lance Armstrong or Julia Roberts for a day! OK, maybe not, but those are the kind of messed up thoughts that passed through my mind as the electrolyte imbalance got more critical.
The last hour of the ascent felt steeper yet and I moved into the fifth stage of grief...acceptance. Breathe in for 3 pedal strokes; breathe out for 3 pedal strokes. Repeat. The breathing took over the thinking and it just became an exercise of stubborn will. Just keep pedalling and you will get there. And as I did pull into town and found a guest house, I felt like a rock star. Mick Jagger maybe, or one of the other dinosaurs who should have quit long ago... but still, a rock star. And the guest house up there? Let's be nice and say it wasn't a 5 star resort. It didn't have running water and the beds looked eerily similar to the bedbug infested things that I've "slept" in before. The dank shower room consisted of a 50 gallon oil barrel (Shell Oil logo still visible) full of cold water. There was an small empty bucket outside and I took it towel clad into the back kitchen (and you really don't want to know what is in a back kitchen in Laos...let alone the front kitchen). There the bucket was filled with boiling water from a huge pot being heated by a log fire. Mixed with the water from the oil drum, that bucket bath was better than most showers I've ever had. Washing away the funk that had accumulated on my body was all that mattered and it reminded me once again of all the crazy little things we not only take for granted, but get so upset about in our daily "struggles". Yet another reminder that travelling is such a great teacher. It can show us our craziness by stripping from us our familiar expectations...and replacing them with that cultures' crazy expectations.
I awoke bite free and ready to do it all over again and that's exactly what I did...for the next two days. Each day the power in my legs decreased. I rolled into Vang Vieng last night vowing that now I will take a day off and play in the river here and drink lots of Lao coffee. The sludge that just a few days ago I complained about is now a favorite staple and drug of choice. Super sweet, thick and chewy! Unfortunately this town is all about other drugs of choice and is a hot spot on the backpacker loop. But that is for tomorrows blog.