At this point I am thinking that this has been the best day of the adventure. The weather was beautiful. We biked about 50 miles on a good road without having difficult climbs. We passed through friendly villages. The children almost always waved and greeted us. We biked through a very rural area. These people are very poor but they don’t seem to be miserable. We see a lot of construction going on and many of the houses are doing things to improve their structures. It’s not all gloom, doom and abject poverty. That’s not to say that the typical household is anywhere near middle class status but it’s not an overall depressing experience to see the lifestyle.
Tonight and tomorrow night we are staying at a small, newly constructed hotel, the Phanxang Lodge, that is located at a spot that is breathtaking. There is a shear mountain cliff on the other side of the road. The hotel is on a river and on the other side of the river is a mountain that rises out of nothing. The place is a slice of heaven.
No photos can do this place justice. The mountains are too high and too close for a camera to capture the perspective.
A shot of some of the hotel rooms.
A shot of the river that runs by the hotel.
I’ll include one more picture. This is of rice noodles drying in the sun:
Oops, one more:
As I said, we are in a very rural area. Our guides set up a rest stop on the side of the road for us.
Looking good Ray… Keep on pedalling!