Rubber Trees and a Horrifying first glimpse of Mengla 

The Laos-China border between Boten and Mengla is the top of a mountain ridge. We had started to gradually climb the mountain 30km before the border. At the top of the hill, just as we started shifting up for the descent, we crossed under a simple square bamboo arch marking our entrance into China. The Boten, Laos, border station was one km behind us and the China border station was one km ahead. In no-man's-land we saw hills, trees, some rice fields, water buffalo and even a couple of bamboo houses.

Immediately after crossing under the arch the road surface smoothed out. We had desperately hoped for this. If the Chinese roads had been as bad as the Lao roads of the last few days, we would have caught the next bus.

At the station a Chinese border guard yelled something at Joan. To my surprise Joan kept riding. He yelled again, this time with mean authority. Joan stopped. Another guard mimed that she should get off the bike, so we did. (Joan: I didn't hear the first yell).

I had worried about crossing this border for days. China apparently has vague laws regarding foreign cycle tourists. Foreign tourists are definitely not allowed to drive cars or motorcycles. But it's unclear if you can ride a bike. Back in Boten we heard about a cyclist who had recently crossed this border leaving China. But it's never a problem to LEAVE China on a bike. I was worried that we would be stamped out of Lao and then not permitted into China on the bikes, leaving us stuck in no-man's-land.

We parked the bikes against a curb in front of immigration and walked into a nice new office with big gold lettering everywhere. (Joan: The kind of place that looks hopelessly gaudy in the U.S., but actually looks attractive in these parts of Asia, where most things are pretty run-down). The immigration guys even had computers at their stations. This was a surprise since we hadn't even been to a town with electricity for a couple days. The man who processed us was gruff but business-like. We just filled out the forms and he punched stuff in the computer, stamped our passports, and that was it. He hardly ever looked up.

As we turned around and started putting our passports away, he said "Oh, you're on bikes." I was worried he had changed his mind about stamping us in. He hadn't. He was just curious. I asked him how far to Mengla, now that I knew he spoke English (and also to act nonchalant and confident). "About 60 kilometers," he said. (Joan: we later learned it is--or at least recently was illegal to travel north to Mengla without a special permit, but this guy didn't seem to care about that).

With the border crossing done, things began looking really good. The road, though not glass, was smooth enough that we could actually look up at the view instead of having to constantly steer around potholes, as we had to do in all of northern Laos. The sun had come out after several days of overcast skies. And we had a lot of downhill ahead of us.

First we noticed that the tiny little Chinese border town of Mohan buzzed with activity and had lots of solid buildings and a pleasant town square. Though Mohan doesn't even show up on any of our maps, it felt more like a city than any town in Laos except Vientiane and Luang Prabang.

We passed buildings made of brick. In Laos everything had been concrete or wood.

Outside town, trees lined both sides of the road--sometimes creating a full canopy. Even at mid-day we rode mostly in the shade. We followed a river downstream and occasionally got vistas across wide valleys filled with rice fields. On the lumps and hills behind the fields some sort of shrub was planted in rings reaching high up on the steep hills. But the tops of the highest and steepest hills were covered with trees.

Occasionally we saw someone in the fields working, often alone. In Laos and Thailand people usually worked the rice in groups (though I guess this depends on the cycle the rice is in).

For the first time in a long time, we saw more bicycles than motorcycles. The Chinese use bikes to commute from village to village but also for work. Many many bicycles passed, going the opposite direction, with a bucket of white liquid that looked like milk hanging from both ends of a bamboo pole laid across the rear rack. Other people carried the buckets on foot, using a sort of yolk, except the yolk sat across just one shoulder, so one bucket hung in front of them, and one behind. The yolks were made from a strong thin and flexible wood that bounced slightly as they walked. They also used the old Chinese trick of putting a leaf (or in this case a small leafy branch) on top of the liquid to keep it from spilling.

The people delivered their white loads to various processing buildings. Tanker trucks dripping white liquid also passed, probably carrying the processed product away.

Joan: The way everyone absolutely strained under the weight of the two buckets, we could tell it wasn't milk. Occasionally we'd see a few gooey drops of the stuff dotting a little trail down the road. And we noticed that the birch-like trees around us were being tapped for the white sap. Each tree had a six-inch wide spiral strip of bark removed, with a spout and cup at the bottom of the strip. We found out a month later it was probably rubber. Apparently the trees are from Malaysia.

Eric. The day's ride wasn't hard, especially since we lost about 1,000 feet since the high point at the border.

The Lonely Planet described our night's destination, Mengla, as an uninteresting town that "you'll probably have to go to on your way to or from Laos." That set our expectations low.

At first we thought the LP might be right. Just outside town we saw a large communist-style city planning goof. Three rows of extra tall street lights like you see in mall parking lots, ran down a valley for over a kilometer. They were meant to illuminate a major four-lane road probably along a thriving business district. Instead they hung mostly over cracking concrete and overgrown fields. Only two lanes of the highway were in use. Almost no businesses had set up shop here. Some big, ugly concrete buildings that looked like abused public housing, and two or three empty shop-houses made the place feel post-apocalyptic. Amazingly the locals were in the process of building two or three more shophouses, though it seems no business seemed the least interested in settling here.

I was worried that this was all there was of Mengla. Fortunately, a kilometer later, after climbing a small hill, we descended into the town proper. And we really liked what we found.

Next: Mengla Brewery

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