We left Ban Muang for Nong Khai first heading for Ubolratana Dam. Of course first stop was breakfast... But the dam site was interesting. Hadyn got in a photo standing on a chair.
But then on to Nong Khai. Its a very long boring road, a dual carriageway. But like all journeys some bits are good some really interesting. And we had the boring bit to do first. We did have some excitement. The front steering started to get very wobbly... We stopped and sure enough we had lost the tread on our front wheel. So changed the wheel and carried on. About 500 meters further along we cam e across a tyre shop. New tyre and old one returned to spare. Off we went getting to Nong Khai early evening. The market was just closing so we had a coffee and watched the sun go down. The land on the other side of the river is Laos. We booked into a small hotel called the Pantawee. Fine and it had WIFI and full satellite TV. But even more interesting it had not only WIFI but free use of the room computer. Wanna had her IPhone working on WIFI, I checked my email on the hotel system while watch The World Snooker competition in China... Oh yes and we had thunder storms knockout out the electricity for about 15 minutes.
We all slept well and had a few moments looking around the streets, before setting off for coffee and breakfast.
The plan was to follow the river side as far as we could towards Chiang Khan, a popular tourist destination. Interesting road lots of pot holes and some stunning views. But first stop was to a waterfall but its been so dry there was only a puddle of water and no fall.....On we go.....
As we went along the river seemed to dry up. Leaving a very rough bed which looked almost impassable even in small boats. Probably explains why the Mekong River has never fully developed for trade except in discrete sections.
And the tyre we put on yesterday was doing well. The road surface was certainly good practice for a new tyre. And on to Chiang Khan.
We did lunch on the river and then headed for Phu Rua
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