July 14th, 2012
WE DID IT! We were those people…..
…..who rent bikes!! And toodle around Town : ))))))
I loved it so much I mIght do it again in Vang Vieng!
After a VERY slow start (or maybe I can say it was because I was blogging) we went to the Scandinavian Bakery around 12:30 for a sandwich. Have to say it was twice as expensive and only half as good as the sandwich we got from the street the day before…lesson learned! And we will be loyal to street sandwiches from here on out….
Then we went in search of bikes….everyone rents them…restaurants, travel places, money exchangers, guest houses, Wats…not hard to find bikes around here! They seem to range in price from 20,000 to 40,000 kip per bike per day. So why would I pay 40 when I could pay 20? Right? That is either $2.50 or $5! So we go to the place we scoped yesterday and they say I have to leave my passport with them. So even IF I had my passport on me (which I didn’t) not sure I would just leave that with some kids at a bike rental place. I am not quite that trusting yet. So we try another place…same thing…sigh! Looks like that is the standard policy here. They must have found that tourists will abandon the bikes on the roadside if they don’t have a good reason to bring them back?? So I decide to offer my drivers license….but we did have to come all the way back to room to get it….not sure how many folks actually carry those things around….but I sure don’t!
Anyway…knew right away I was gonna love this mode of transportation. It is very flat here some small inclines every so often…but nothing we couldn’t handle. So we went all over the place and it was awesome. Saw so much more than we would have on foot. Today was “save the feet and abuse the tush” day though : )). Been a while since we rode a bike for that long….plus they weren’t exactly posh seats…they must have the safe philosophy on making bike seats as they do for making mattresses ; )
Troy took pictures of me and I took pictures of him….so I will get pix from him and put them up to prove I was biking too ; )
My bike even had a basket…it was too cute for words!
There was this one place where we crossed a bridge that was for 2 wheel traffic only. And probably foot traffic I suppose as walking seems to be a very common way to get around this place. Anyway….it was cool. I tried to get pictures….they are a little blurry as I was trying to take the pix and stay on my little track too ; )
We stoppped and picked up some banana chips on our travels. My persoanl favourite! I am in fact sitting here eating them as I blog. All things considered, today was the best day so far to have rented the bikes. It is still very warm and humid, but it is a bit cloudy and it tried to rain on us….but did not quite succeed. If we had tried to do this in the blazing sun….it would have been an entirely different experience!
