Back to Thailand

We spent another couple of days in Savannakhet, met briefly Matt, who was cycling around the world and who inspired us to do the same at some point (!). We later looked for him in town to ask him for his blog but failed to find him. Trying to find his blog on the net (unsuccessfully) we came across www.alastairhumphreys.com a most interesting blog of someone who spent 4 years cycling round the world. We also met Jean, a Frenchman living in London, who introduced us to Dr Vongpaseuth, a remarkable lady who spends much of her time educating local people to prevent the spread of AIDS (from construction workers on the various new highways projects which are incidentally funded by developped countries...)

On Tuesday 13th, we had a leisurely breakfast with Jean (he has fallen in love with Laos) who told us more about a project on unexploded ordinance and his trip to Malaysia and Sulawesi. As it turned out Jean was also an old gaffer sailor (he knew Newtown Creek) and after exchanging goodbyes and addresses,we left Savannakhet to cross the bridge over to Thailand. Another foiled plan! Apparently a new law (as from the previous day??) meant that arriving into Thailand by land we were only given a 2 weeks visa: not enough time to last us until our departure 2nd Feb. All this is to tax our brains I think!

Anyway, we knew we were back in Thailand, unfriendly traffic made worse by the fact that the road we were on (north of Mukdahan) was being enlarged and no more sabaidis! Nicole had a cold and was feeling grumpy, there was a freezing headwind, but the road eventually improved, we had a lovely lunch of fried rice and we found Sulami, a friendly lady who was selling coffee and taught us the Thai for beautiful: sooway and delicious: aloy. All the linguistic progress in Laos was not all in vain because some words are fortunately very similar. We arrived in That Phanom, which had an impressive 57m high chedi, whose spire is decorated with 110kg of gold! It was illuminated at night and was particularly resplendissant. There was a choice of guesthouse: an interesting Chinese wooden hotel (but ratty and buggy looking) or a concrete bunk type building (but clean and with hot shower). John kindly conceded to stay in the latter one and Nicole decided to have her first shower for 5 days... we hadn't had a hot shower since Don Khong, nearly 2 weeks ago!