Motorcycling and Hitchhiking in Laos

A Travel Memoir of Self-Transformation through Movement

My friend Evan and I entered Laos after taking on a monastic lifestyle for four days at a forest monastery called Wat Pa Nanchat in Western Thailand. The simple and detached lifestyle of a Monk was fascinating but Buddhist culture was everywhere and we felt anxious to keep moving and experience it from multiple perspectives. With energy and clarity we caught a bus to Southern Laos.

Hitchhiking and a Bus of Rice

We arrived at the bus station in Pakse with every intention of catching a bus north to a crossroads city on the banks of the Mekong River called Savannakhet, and then travel onward to Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

The last bus north had left thirty minutes before we arrived and without really discussing our options we turned to the small Laotian man working at the station and said, “We’ll walk”. As we walked briskly away down the highway, we could hear a group of Laotians chuckling at the crazy, stupid Americans who intended on walking 400 kilometers north to the capital.

Within a few minutes of extended thumbs, a truck pulled over, we hopped in the back, and we were off.

There is only one major highway in Laos (Highway 13) and it stretches from the Cambodian border in the south and runs along the Mekong River north to Vientiane. From there, it veers north through spire-like mountains to the French colonial city of Luang Prabang and onward to the Chinese border.

The hitchhiking on this highway was fantastic.

Just moments after our first short ride, a fruit truck pulled over, and out of a cloud of dust we were moving again.

We sat leaning against a sack of coconuts with our legs stretched out in front, the wind blowing through our hair, and the smell of fruit wafting from the mounds of oranges, bananas, limes, and melons that surrounded us.  We watched the sunset and rambled poems as the vast plains rolled by us in the warm dusk.

Eventually, the fruit truck caught up with the bus we had missed. Our driver nonchalantly flagged the bus down, we jumped out, thanked him and walked over to the bus noticing the heaps of luggage, chickens, pigs, and sacks of rice precariously strapped to the top of the bus. The driver greeted us warmly and as we boarded it became clear why so much cargo was on the roof. The entire aisle was piled three feet high with 50-kilo sacks of rice. We crawled over the rice though the aisle and slid into two vacant seats in the back. There was rice beneath our feet as well forcing our knees up to our chests.

Evan and I were the only foreigners on the bus and everyone around us whispered and pointed as we adjusted to the awkward positions our bodies would be in for the next four hours.

We spent a day in Savannakhet and then moved on deciding that hitchhiking was a far better form of transportation after the bus ride of the previous day.

After taking a taxi to the edge of the city, we began walking and were again picked up almost instantly, by a sharp young man in a brand new black Toyota pick-up truck. It turned out he was a famous Laotian pop star. He took us all the way to the capital, invited us to a private party at a posh hotel, and tried to hook us up with many beautiful Laotian prostitutes to which we politely declined.

We spent five days in Vientiane kicking around, eating delicious food, settling in to the Laotian culture, and planning our motorcycle trip north. We rented two 250 cc dirt bikes for twenty dollars a day. The man took our passports, $280 US cash, and simply asked us if we knew how to ride the bikes. I said yes, even though I had never driven a motorcycle before, and Evan demonstrated for both of us that we knew how to ride them.

The Departure: Vientiane to the Cloud Village

Evan was planning on traveling to India from Southeast Asia and needed to go to the Vientiane airport to buy a plane ticket in advance. He suggested that we ride our newly acquired dirt bikes to the airport to get some practice before our big trip the next day. It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time but what he failed to think of was that it was rush hour, stop-and-go traffic. That ride to the airport was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’m not quite sure how I survived. In the end, it did prove to be great riding practice for the weeklong adventure we were about to have.

Evan and I left early in the morning to avoid traffic and getting out of the city turned out to be easier than expected. We curved our way through many small towns just outside of the city and stopped in a restaurant along the way to take a break from riding and to enjoy a cup of coffee.

I began feeling more comfortable on the bike and by the afternoon, we began rising into the hills, motoring along as the road began to narrow and twist. The scenery in the mountains was breathtaking, making it very difficult to stay focused on the road. We arrived at a small mountain town at the top of a mountain pass just before sunset.

Off of the highway to the left we noticed a small dirt trail hugging the terraced mountainside. We took it and were riding on the loose dirt trail for about 100 yards when it suddenly turned sharply. While breaking urgently, my back tire fishtailed to the left and the bike tipped over landing directly on my right ankle, spraining it slightly. At that moment, I realized how quickly something can go wrong while riding a dirt bike in uncharted territory and how heavy our bikes were. We vowed to each other that this was the last time either of us would lose focus while riding.

The rest of our trip was mishap free, and it ended up being one of the most liberating weeks of my entire life.

We walked up a hill, watched the sunset over the spiraling landscape and decided that we should check into the only small guesthouse in the village below. When we awoke the next morning, the village was engulfed by clouds, making the town even more majestic than when we had arrived. We hopped on our bikes, and began a slow peaceful decent through the clouds with our engines tuned off. This section of our trip, coasting down the mountain as the sun rose was the highlight of my entire stay in Southeast Asia.

Luang Prubang and Mung Noi

We arrived later that day to the historic city of Luang Prabang and settled into a hostel. We spent the next few days exploring everything the city had to offer, great food, French style bakeries, the riverbanks, temples, and markets.

One day, we rode our bikes to Kuang Si Falls, which is a series of turquoise blue waterfalls, and a must see destination if you are in Northern Laos.

We were told of a small river village called Mung Noi that is only accessible by boat three hours north of Luang Prabang, so we decided to ride farther north and go there. We arrived at a small town and paid a storekeeper to let us leave our dirt bikes in his home for a couple of days. We caught a skinny, long motorboat upstream and were dropped off along the muddy banks of Mung Noi.

That night, after eating the most delicious pineapple red curry I have ever tasted, we sat around a fire with five monks; two of them were elderly and the others very young. They spoke no English and we spoke no Lao but it didn’t matter because we communicated with gestures and inflection.

We taught them two words, baboon and bubble, not because they were important, but because of the way they sounded phonetically. We chanted “bubble baboon, bubble baboon, baboon bubble” and laughed at the sounds for what seemed like hours, until one of the elders invited us to his candle-lit home. He showed us a small chest that contained all of his few belongings, one of which was a wristwatch that he attempted to give me. I thanked him but refused his gift.

The Return

Two days later we were on our bikes again returning to Vientiane.

This time however, we opted to take a more scenic and rugged route, a large loop on a single track dirt road that, according to our map, would bring us back to the highway 150 kilometers farther south from where we left it.

We filled up a water bottle with extra fuel and strapped four liters of water to the back of our bikes just in case. We turned off the highway onto gravel and rode for ten minutes before the road narrowed and became dirt. Before long, we were riding our bikes on what was basically a small dirt path though dense jungle.

We passed a couple of small villages and every time we passed, the villagers would run out of the huts to see what all the noise was about.

I remember feeling bad about riding loud and expensive dirt bikes past these peaceful villages, but when we finally stopped at one to say hello, the people greeted us with nothing but smiles.

We spent a few hours skipping rocks on the river with a group of half-naked youngsters who were very excited about showing us their village.

We crossed the river on a well-built bamboo bridge and walked through their village in awe, admiring the simplicity of their homes and the skill in which everything was built and crafted. The homes were made of bamboo, the bowls and cups were made of clay, and the utensils made of wood. I wanted to stay there forever, but we had passports to retrieve and another day and a half ride back to the city. We said farewell, started our dirt bikes, and continued our journey.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell when something changes you as a person until it’s over, but as we pulled into Vientiane after this adventure, it was blatantly clear that I had been transformed. This feeling of transformation is, in a nutshell, the reason why I travel, the reason why I am continually seeking out something greater.

“Travel is like a powerful drug: addictive and lethargic, over-anxious and always slowing. Once we give up destination, purposely losing our way, the line between dream and reality begins to blur. Caught always between an intangible past and an indefinite future, life is condensed into one exact moment that is defined and delineated by an overpowering invasion of sensory experience.”

–Evan Huggins, Laos, 2007