We woke up realising we could cover more ground on a bike than we thought (we have tough bottoms!). So the initial plan went out the window, and we headed towards the Laos border. The roads near the border were really impressive, very windy and tight, and the hills were steep. I loved it.
For lunch we picked up some snacks and had a scenic picnic beside a waterfall, amusing ourselves watching kids playing in the water. By early afternoon we were tired (maybe not so tough bottoms) and found a nice place right up in the hills to call home for the night. It also had a great view to the west, although the sunset was rather obscured by the seasonal haze.
Dinner was very interesting. Our waitress couldn’t speak English, and our Thai hadn't really gone past sawadeekrap (hello) and khopkunkrap (thankyou). In the end, with hand signals and laughs, I think we basically asked them to cook whatever they wanted, and we would eat it. She walked back to the kitchen and we heard lots more laughing. We were now a little worried. It could go two ways: on one hand, we could get a disappointingly bland westernised fried rice, on the other hand it could go extreme and we'd get the barbequed rat that we found on the coals yesterday. The meal arrived and we couldn’t be more relieved. It was all we could have asked for, if we knew how to ask - a simple, healthy local meal superbly prepared with a variety of flavours. If only we knew the names of what we were eating; we would have ordered it again.
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