We woke up this morning and Sarah’s wrist was still in rough shape. She could wiggle her fingers a little more than yesterday, but she still couldn’t rotate her wrist easily and it hurt a lot to put any pressure on it. On her bike with her right hand incapacitated, she would only be able to use her front brake, so rather than risk another fall, we decided to take a bus the remaining 79 kilometers to Luang Prabang.

We spent the morning waiting for a bus outside our guesthouse and around 11am an open-air minibus pulled up and we secured a ride to Luang Prabang for 80,000 kip (~US$8.00). Our bikes were tied up on top and we were loaded onto the side-facing benches with the other locals. The fact that we were facing the side combined with the twisty mountain road made for an extremely sickening ride. After about 20 minutes, we each took some Dramamine to prevent ourselves from puking. Here is Sarah at one of the stops with her barf-bag ready.

As we neared the city, the road flattened out and we were dropped off at the bus terminal about 5 kilometers outside the city center. While loading up our bikes, we met a couple of Australian bicycle tourists who led us to into the city. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage City which means that the entire city is full of quiet, car-free streets, gorgeous wats, and beautiful French colonial architecture. We found a quiet guesthouse with a secluded courtyard for 70,000 kip (~US$7.00).

We are going to rest here for a couple days at least to gauge how quickly Sarah’s wrist recovers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Laos, Southeast Asia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.