Day 78 – Erawan, Loei to Mueang Loei
4th day of cycling in a row without a break. It has been hard. It’s been 350kms, and that’s more than I like to do in 4 days of riding… I really don’t like 4 days in row. 3 and 1 seems like a much more civilized ratio.
We rode 55km into the provincial capital of Loei where we were greeted by a small group of cyclists who joined us on our trip to the TAT office, post office, local bicycle shop, and finally, our hotel. Unlike so many other towns this one was nice and compact, with not too many cars. I guess it’s kind of a little end-of-the-line place since the country of Laos is only 50km away to the North, and a mountain range hedges it in on the West.
The town looks lovely, and since we didn’t see a lot of it upon our arrival we plan to head out later this evening to have a look around once it’s a little bit cooler. The group of cyclists that met us consisted of a teacher, a couple of artists, a salesman and a policeman… this is the usual kind of cyclists mix that have met us in other places along our trip, along with many businessmen. I’m guessing this is because these are the kind of people who can get time off on odd days.
The TAT office was helpful, they had several brochures on ‘green tourism,’ which I will have a look at this evening. They promote cycling and appear to be very active in the local community. There is a massive difference in the quality of TAT offices around the country. To me they don’t look like a national business, but a loosely related group.
Anyway, I had a nice conversation with Tom, one of the cyclists that met us in Loei. He was very chatty. He spoke some Thai and used to work in Bangkok, but now lives in Loei. I think he likes it here as he cycles 70kms per day to work and back, something he could never do when he lived in Bangkok. He likes bicycles, stating that he has 4 or 5, including a vintage racer which he lovingly restored. He showed me plenty of photos of his beloved restoration job and it did look nice!
Loei looks like a place that needs discovering. One thing I have noticed on this bicycle trip is that sometimes it’s just not fast/easy enough to visit certain attractions in and around towns, and we forgo some locations because of extreme hills or because there is nowhere to safely leave our fully loaded bicycle. I guess that there are some benefits to having something that is fully lockable.
Maybe if we had not planned 77 provinces in 5 months it would have been better, but than we’d need more saving money and more time. Maybe 2 weeks per province to really visit them all. But really, who has 3 years and the A$50,000 you’d need to keep cycling along like we currently are?
Setting up this Every Province Challenge to visit every Amphoe Mueang has certainly affected how we travel in a major way. If we said we were going to visit one major or unique tourist attraction in each of the provinces, than I think our stories would be different, our trip would be different. BUT having completed over 60% of the trip, we will not be changing our plan… we’ll just plan it differently next time.
