Head North Young Men

McWai

Art for sale in Chiang Mai

Learning the art of soybean milk and tofu production at a vegetarian restaurant in Pai, Thailand

Aaron creeping up a long hill that was more hot than steep.

Sunset on Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai

I met my friend Aaron near Bangkok on April 2nd. Our plans, which we devised in Taiwan, were to go west from Bangkok to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and Phom Penh and then head north into Laos or east into Vietnam with China as the final destination. These plans while undoubtedly fun would put us crossing the border into China in like late May. After spending a few days in Pai talking with Taiwanese and Yunnanese people the "must get to China" mantra which has been echoing in my head only strengthened. Luckily, Aaron, who had just come out of a ten day meditation retreat (a fertile ground to create new travel plans), had also conjured up crazy China dreams of his own, so the choice seemed obvious. Head North.

It still took about 50km of riding side by side chatting about what to do through medium traffic toward the Thai-Cambodian border for us to come to the conclusion to skip Cambodia and south Laos and head to China ASAP. Now the plan is to ride to Laos tommorow (we're in Nong Kai, Thailand, just a Mekong crossing and 22km ride from Vientiene) and from there ride north for a week and a half until our Laos visas almost run out. Then we'll head to Thailand to get a China visa in Chiang Mai and take a Chinese barge up the Mekong into southwest Yunnan. It should work.