Asphalt? Who Needs Asphalt?

December 9, 2025

Luang Prabang to Xayaburi

It was a short stay in Luang Prabang, one of my favorite places in Asia, but that's what we had intended all along. We wanted to see the things we loved from previous visits and that's what we did. It was a bit of a splurge for us since Luang Prabang is quite a bit more expensive than where we normally travel. But it was a lot of fun to be able to visit there once again. No matter what the price, it truly is a special place and always worth a bit of a splurge. We feel lucky to have been able to visit Luang Prabang again as well as to have been able to travel there by the slow boat one, possibly, last time.

One final delicious breakfast provided at Villa Ouis Nam Khan Riverside Hotel.

Our room was on the upper right corner. A great place to stay with a view of the Nam Khan River.

They will be working on shoring up the Nam Khan River all winter long.

As we rode towards the bus station we passed Pomachan's coffee place one last time and it was again bustling.

We rode to the bus station and got there exactly when we had been told. I went to the ticket window and the woman told me there was no big bus to Xayaburi. What! The ticket guy who had told us that the day before was apparently not working so I couldn't question him. I couldn't believe it. We walked around and read all the signs where vehicles were going and the vehicles that were in front of those town names were certainly not big buses. There were a couple minivans and the rest were trucks with two rows of benches in the back. We considered taking one of those part way to Xayaburi, to a town called Muang Nan, and seeing if we could go further once there. But it looked impossibly full of people and stuff. The minivan, (we always try to avoid minivans because the drivers all drive too fast) that was going to Xayaburi was also too full.

Back to the window. I found out there was another minivan at 2PM we could take. That was a wait of 6 hours! My heart sank. I became a bit despondent. This is Laos! You never get the right information. I'm used to believing people when they tell me information but there is something about the Lao people that is off. It's always been that way and I should know better but what can a person do but believe the guy at the ticket counter. I mean, he should know!

We waited and waited. A dripping wet minivan pulled up in front of the slot for Xayaburi and the driver jumped out with a rag and started wiping it dry. I went back to the ticket counter and bought tickets. I didn't ask the price for the bikes because I had already learned that the ticket sellers had no idea. I had figured out that the driver set the price for baggage and bikes were always something they scratched their chins about and sized us up and down, and finally gave us a price that has always seemed too much. This time was no different except this time the driver told us a price for the bikes that was double our ticket price! We couldn't argue, we were trapped. $10 for each bike to go about 65 miles was exorbitant. The whole thing was depressing because if it took 6 hours that would mean we would get there trying to find a hotel in the dark. We try to never ride in the dark.

We waited and waited and watched very little going on at the rundown bus station. How could beautiful Luang Prabang have such a decrepit bus station, I wondered. I also kept wondering about a big sign in the middle of the waiting area seats that had little photos of different raw meats and prices. I wasn't talking. Andrea knew how irritated I was about the no big bus in existence. She eventually said, "Aren't you going to take any photos?" Because I wasn't taking photos she knew I had hit rock bottom. I said, "Well, there is this large sign with different raw meat photos on it in the middle of the waiting area of the bus station!" I took a photo.

What is this raw meat sign doing here? You see big buses in the background but they looked like they have been there for a year. They say, "Special Bus" on them, whatever that means.

Then we waited and waited. Two rather rough looking people arrived and before they could nab seats near the front of the minivan I grabbed our helmets and placed them on two seats. We waited some more. The waiting area was filthy. A sweet dog came wagging her tail asking if we had anything to eat. We didn't. She came back several times to see if things had changed. Nope. Nothing had changed for us either. Then a jolly looking man in a green pith helmet arrived. He wandered all over the place like the dog was doing. I kept Andrea abreast as to where "Pith Helmet" was at all times. The dog returned wagging her tail and then laid down by us. I suppose I could have referred to Pith Helmet as Green Pith Helmet but decided that was too long a name. I liked Pith Helmet because he seemed like a happy person and I was glad he was going to be in the minivan with us. I wasn't as happy about the rough couple because at one point they went in the minivan to wait and they threw our helmets on the floor and were about to take over our seats. Andrea straightened them out about that!

There have been lots of ways the Lao spell Xayaburi.

After waiting for hours the driver wanted our panniers to go under the seats. I was happy about that because I didn't want them falling off the roof. The bikes were going on the roof though and I dreaded how they were going to be secured. I handed the bikes up to the driver on the roof and he decided to put them upright. I didn't know how he was going to secure them, especially because we had heard the road was a bumpy mess. I watched him closely as he tied them. He had three nice long ropes and he thought very carefully how he was going to tie them. I tried to reassure Andrea that they did that in Burma once but then added, "But the Burmese are really good at stuff like that." I blew it. No reassurance was imparted to Andrea.

At the Luang Prabang southern bus station.

As I watched the driver I realized that he knew knots. He was making a certain kind of knot that when he cinched it down with another rope through a certain loop it really cinched the bikes down. I was gaining confidence that the driver knew what he was doing. And he was taking a long time. Pith Helmet had taken up a seat in the waiting area to watch the driver and he kept calling up to him, "Baw dai" = Impossible. The driver ignored him. I tried to laugh. Repeatedly Pith Helmet called out, "Baw dai," but the driver kept ignoring him, kept on cinching. The bikes were looking more and more stable all the time. The driver acted very confident in his knowledge of how to stabilize the bikes and my stress was abating. With the bikes standing up they would not be bangiing around on the roof rack so I was all for what the driver was doing. Pith Helmet kept on but was ignored completely.

Our minivan driver spent a long time securing out bikes.

Our driver seems pretty proud of his work securing our bikes upright, as well he should.

Finally it was 2PM and we left. The van was by no means full like full usually means in Laos. We were happy about that. All windows were locked tight and immediately the minivan was engulfed in dust. Not much came inside. The asphalt was gone in a lot of areas as were the shocks of the minivan. Each hole the tires hit, and it was unavoidable to miss most of them, was a metal on metal jarringly awful thing that made us wince each time. It was something most of you readers have never experienced, I'm quite certain. I don't know how the van was going to hold together. I thought that if I were to walk alongside the road I'd find all sorts of bolts, screws, small pieces of engines, sheared off bolts, etc. My stress about the bikes returned. How on earth were they going to remain upright! Hitting the holes was so jarring that I had to keep my mouth slightly open so that my teeth didn't smash against each other. I imagined if I did keep my teeth together all the points would soon be broken off. There was only a short amount of time where I could see the shadow of the bikes in the dirt alongside the minivan but most of our route went more to the west than south and the shadow quickly disappeared. When we stopped the first time I took a good look at the bikes and they seemed fine. Pith Helmet had been wrong.

The asphalt had originally been laid to only an inch or two thickness because the Lao do things like that the cheapest way possible and never think ahead to consequences. With thousands of enormously heavy overloaded Chinese trucks pounding over the thin asphalt it didn't take much time for it to disintegrate. Most of the asphalt was gone but actually the road would have been slightly less bumpy if the asphalt had been completely gone. Then it maybe could be graded or some sort of small gravel laid over the stones. There were a lot of stones where the asphalt had disappeared. There were lots of those huge Chinese trucks and lots of times when there was only dust visible when I looked out the front windshield. The driver passed each and every one of those trucks mostly at blind curves. It was the worst ride I have ever experienced. The driver drove way too fast on that disaster of a road but if he had gone slowly it would have taken 6 hours! We were zipping along and the ticket guy the day before was totally wrong about the 6 hours it would take to Xayabouli. I thought, well, it's awful but if he drives really fast the awfulness will be gone sooner, if we lived.

Sometimes in these photos you may question that the road doesn't look that bad but sometimes photos lie.

We pulled into what might be called a bus station on the far outskirts of Xayaburi around 5:15. We were thrilled. The bikes were as stable as when we had started the awful trip. Unbelievable! The driver had to take a long time untying our bikes because he had done such a great job of tying them. As he handed them down to me I thanked him but once we had our panniers on and were ready to ride off I made sure I went over to the driver and thanked him again including a wai. That is always something drivers very much appreciate. It means you really mean it. As we rode off he gave us a big smile and a thumbs up.

Andrea had a guest house picked out that she wanted to stay in because it was so close to that station and she thought that was where we would need to be in the morning for the second horrible ride of our lives, to Pak Lai. It was not close to town but that was no big deal. It could be a Clif Bar dinner.

We rode to that nearby guest house. It was a huge thing on top of a very steep hill. It reeked of being a Chinese money-laundering hotel. It looked abandoned but as we pulled our bikes over the overgrown driveway to the front door two teenagers in the corner of the property quit doing whatever they were doing and came to cautiously greet us. We got the impression they never had foreigners as guests or guests at all, ever. They went to the front desk and we negotiated the price for a room. We used Google Translate for some questions we had and they became very helpful and kind. They even were the first of our trip to help carry all our panniers to the second floor room.

The room was enormous and stuffy as if nobody had been there in a long time. There was mold in the bathroom and broken stuff. The glass door for the shower was long gone. When I opened the refrigerator to put our water bottles in I shut it as quickly as I could and told Andrea, "Whatever you do DO NOT open the refrigerator. It was filled with mold! I wondered why the teenagers had decided to put us in that room but that thought immediately led to wondering what the other rooms might be like. The place wasn't that old but without maintenance (which the Lao are terrible at), things really go downhill quickly.

A screenshot of the translated menu in our room.

But it was fine. The beds were actually very nice. It was just so eerie that nobody else was staying there. I mentioned that it felt like the film The Shining and Andrea told me, "NO," which I have recently been told is a complete sentence. It was just good knowing that we were halfway, almost. We knew there was no way we could ride the road to Pak Lai on our bikes because we had seen a video from earlier in the year of what the road was like. The road to Pak Lai might be worse than what we just experienced. No, that was impossible.

lovebruce

It doesn't say anything about stealing glasses. And, "If found," I'd only have to pay ten times the cost of the glass which couldn't be more than nothing because the Beer Lao company surely gave the glasses to the hotel for advertising their product.

Today's ride: 4 miles (6 km)
Total: 418 miles (673 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	9
Comment on this entry	Comment	2

Charlotte FloryThat day of travel where it’s pretty stressful and joyless and a waste, but it has to be done! We’ve probably all had that. And a cliffbar dinner.

But that ride! It sounds like it was awful. I’m hopeful the next leg will be less horrible. Fingers crossed!
Reply to this comment
1 week ago

Bruce LellmanTo Charlotte FloryAdventure means there will be days like this. And then there will be the opposite days. It's hard but then it's a joy. But it's all in an adventure.
Reply to this comment
6 days ago