Christmas at Mut Mee

Thanks toTony there is now a picture of the two of us -a very rare occasion as it's otherwise always one or the other. As you can see, evidence from our sober Christmas eve, although we did let go a bit and had a Bailey's at midnight (thanks Tony again).

A lovely night at the Mut Mee guesthouse in Nong Khai, in a garden overlooking the Mekong river. No Santa Claus, mince pies or mulled wine, but a wonderful vegetarian buffet and traditional Thai music and dance, followed by a remarkable Irish band. A lovely evening, and the lovely company of Tony.

update from the Mekong

A reassurance post to let you know we're still here!.. and have been pedaling happily over hills for the past few weeks... powered by copious amounts of nice food.

We've been visiting along the way - not just random Thai towns where we've found a bed for the night... thought there have been plenty of them! We've been in the beautiful ruins of Sukhothai, through beautiful sunrises over the mountains..

The scenery is magnificent and cycling is such a lovely way to visit. We stopped at waterfalls before attacking a BIG climb on the way up from Phitsanulok

And had a few days rest in Phu Ruea where the national park is beautiful and we were lucky enough to meet Tiger the ranger (true!) who put our bikes in the back of his pick up and whisked us up to the peak - a very steep climb, too steep for a 'rest' day! The views were great from up there, and the creep down with the brakes on was worth it!

Here's Sylv chilling out in front of our Chalet - and the view from the top

From Phu Ruea we made it down to the gastronomic centre that is Loei - veg restaurant and lovely tasty night market with puddings to taste (interesting mixtures of beans, rice, onion and sweetness..)! and then pedalled on to the Mekong...

Chiang Khan was a chilled out little village with fancy hens, good soup thanks to Mr Tu and a nice man who cooked up some fab veg food for us :o)

Here we met Carolin - a 'real cyclist' just on her way back to Bangkok after tackling the mountains of Laos (not on the pink bike you'll be glad to hear... ). We shared routes, thoughts and a slap up dinner on a bench at the market... all very nice!

Then it was off for a marathon ride to Sang Khom - village on the Mekong... with a lovely long chat with Elsa and Ollivier from France (literally... they cycled ALL the way!) and a slap up, tear-jerking green papaya salad lunch along the way for Sylv :o)

We finally arrived and we've settled at Mr and Mrs Toy's bungalow heaven... hammock with view over the river, lots of lovely food and laughter and singing.... might leave tomorrow if we can pull ourselves off the veranda!

A map

In yellow: journey on the train - In green: on the bicycles

And here is a map of our journey in Thailand. Might help to locate us...
We started in Bangkok where we took a train to Ayuthaya. From there we cycled in a few stages to Nakkon Sawan. As the roads were quite big and busy, we took a train from there to Chiang Mai.
Then from Chiang Mai back down on the bikes on smaller B roads through some lovely landscape and hills to Sukhothai.
Since then, we're heading East through Phitsanulok towards the North-East of Thailand to reach Nong Khai by Christmas and cycle along the Mekong Thai-Laos border up to Mukdahan where we will finally cross into Laos. At least that's the plan!
Today we're in a little town just before Phu Rua. And it's hilly!!!

Quiz time

What is this woman selling at the night market???

Yes, there are dog's outfit, to keep them warm in the winter. But when we say winter here it's nothing compared to Europe: it's not very cold. And the great thing with these doggy outfits is that they have holes in the right place to allow doggy to do wewe and poopoo without dirtying the nice outfit, as evident from the picture below.