My world walk blog - Laos #6

One 38-kilometre day and I walked most of it in the rain. After only a few hundred metres I left route 13 which hugs the Thai border. I had been walking on it for a week. Turning left I was now walking east on route 8 and into some sawtooth-like mountains. Villages were much further apart. The road was worse, so I only made two rest stops. There wasn't much food at those places either, so a bunch of bananas is always a good idea.

I finished an hour after sundown and it wasn't much fun trying to keep control of Karma on the steep descent which lasted about five-kilometres. That took me to a really nice guest house called Aomsim, six Euro for a lovely big room and a double bed. Out of the rain. Let's hope tomorrow is a dry day. 94 kilometres to Cau Treo, Vietnam.

Another rainy day and with so many stops it was hard to get into my stride. 27km and I found a pretty crappy guesthouse but just to get out of the rain its like a palace. 

On the way, a shepherd was taking his cows back home after a days grazing. They were just in front of me, so I helped out.

Crossing over a bridge I noticed a few so-called bomb boats, which are made out of huge missile-shaped drop tanks that carried fuel for jets operating overhead during the Vietnam war. These boats are now used for tourist canoe type trips on the river.  As I mentioned last week that Laos was bombed by the Americans over a nine-year period, an average of eight bombloads per minute.