We spent the day walking around Vientiane in the rain and slurping down Pho. For a reprieve from the rain we stopped in a cafe and purchased a watery hot chocolate served next to a display of prepackaged cricket snacks. What I thought was something played up for tourists has turned out to be a reality.
A frenchman selling his motorcycle through expats.com texted me back and we arranged to meet that evening. I took the bike for a test run and he went through the gamut of issues he & the bike faced while on the road together. The 110cc Honda Win sported a red star on the side and won our hearts. We paid $220 through paypal and she was ours.
In celebration of our first vehicular purchase we walked through a night market, snacked on spicy meat & pineapple kebabs, and sipped a cold Beerlao.
The next day we began the hunt for a second helmet. Everyone we asked seemed to have a different direction to point us in, and after two ours of scrambling through the city (and even offering random people cash for the helmets on their heads) we grew tired of the goose chase. We returned to the hotel feeling slightly dejected.
I mime’d to the woman working the front desk that I wanted to buy one of the helmets in the lobby of the hotel. She frantically responded, “no,” and called her boss to act as a translator. He spoke English well, and after hearing about the hunt for the second helmet said he’d be by the hotel momentarily.
An average sized, middle aged Lao man sporting a Golden State Warriors tee shirt approached and introduced himself as “Air”. We hopped in his 11 seater van and he directed the car toward a mechanical shop. While he drove, he explained that his family fled to Hawaii in the 70’s as refugees during the Vietnam war. Air worked previously as an economist for an NGO, but grew tired of the theoretics of economics and recently changed careers to teaching english.
The first store we stopped at sold me a helmet and the second sold us bungee cords for securing our bags to the cycle. I thanked Air profusely and he dropped me back at the hotel.
We loaded up the bike, ate a quick lunch, and took off.
The road gradually dwindled from two lanes to one, and quickly the buildings we passed were replaced by swampy fields. Interestingly, it appears that there are only a handful of roads that connect the towns in Laos. Had we taken a bus south we would’ve traveled on the same road as our rickety 1970’s Franken-bike.
Cows moved ambivalently out of our way as we continued through the greenery. We stopped to stretch twice; once to drink water and fend off an odd drunk lady and once to view another large buddha.
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