Mayan Prophecy Countdown

I was up early and chewing on some type of pastry, I bought a box last evening, they were OK, better than nothing. It did not take me long to pack, and then I removed the panniers from the bike to make the loading go easier. I tell ya, them builders start early, on the dot of 7am they fired up their first bong!!! They helped with the loading though, so that was nice of them 🙂 It was a lot easier than yesterday, with a slightly taller canopy.

I used my ratchet straps to compress the front end, I am so glad I brought these along, they have helped me so many times now, which is probably a good indication of how much adventure I have been having 😉 The truck ride north was a boring slow ride, and as our combined language skills were bugger all, it was quiet as well! We got into town around 11.30am, first off we stopped at the Villa Lau Guest house where I booked back in and unloaded all the gear that was not needed off the bike. Then we had to go via an ATM so I could grab a few million kip to pay the dudes and have some spending money. Then an hour later we unloaded the bike at Fuark’s shop, where I paid off the boys 🙂 You can see he doesn’t trust me, he’s counting it again, that’s twice now 😉 In actual fact the cost of moving this bike the 250km was quite expensive, compared to the cost of the truck in Mongolia, which took the bikes 650km, the price was a bit higher here, for a 1/3 less distance! But, the bike got here, it had to be done, so alls good 🙂

As it turned out, Fuark was busy, so he said come back tomorrow morning and we will see what we can see, so I headed off in a Tuktuk back to the Guest House, then on down to the Kongkau place for a feed of BBQ Lau style

I lazed around for the arvo, surfing the net, trying to see if anyone else had similar bike problems to me. It seemed to me to be a timing problem, and the one thing I have never done was to get the valve clearances checked. This is not a real big issue I found after doing the study, the main problem not doing that would cause, was lack of power and I never had any of that. That evening I had a couple of beers while down at the same food place, this time it was the stuffed chook wings, this is a very tasty snack 🙂 Even if they do look like goldfish 😉 The actual wing bones and meat have been removed, except for the end bit, which is the handle, the meat is then minced with other stuff like veggies and stuffed back in the loose wing and the whole lot is deep fried. The menu says chook legs, but they found it too hard to make a handle to make it easy to eat, these are just right 🙂

And so a quite night for me, tomorrow is discovery day, I hope, and I really do hope it is not a terminal problem as the cost of leaving the bike here is expensive, but to ship a dead bike back home would also cost heaps 😦 But, always look on the bright side, the motor was still turning, it was not seized, there was no hole in the side letting the oil out, so that is a good thing 🙂

Cheers from Vientiane, again
TravellingStrom