I can't remember being more exhausted on this trip than I was when we arrived in Maung Xai. I didn't realize how bad it was until I sat down and realized I had no intention of getting up again.

It was hard finding a place to stay that night. The first two we looked at cost only about one dollar, but weren't worth even that. The rooms were bare cells with hard and sorry looking beds that were probably full of bugs. The fixtures, floors and walls of the bathrooms were stained, scratched, peeling, cracked, and/or broken.

We were starting to get on each other's nerves so we decided to find food before continuing our search. After dinner we ended up at the nicest hotel in town, splurging, at US$8 a night. It's hard to believe but we almost didn't stay there because of the "high" price. In a fairly typical Lao transaction, we paid in a combination of Thai Baht and US$ and got change in Lao Kip.

This place was neat, clean, well painted, comfy. Our only complaint was the staff with the master key didn't always remember to knock before barging into the room, and many fellow guests repeatedly banged on our door late at night and early in the morning thinking it was their friends' room.

We took the next day off to rest.

Maung Xai didn't have great restaurants but it did have a great day market. A huge variety of people and produce gathered under tarps and around rows of wood tables.

The market looked ancient. The tables looked ancient. The ropes holding up the tarps were frayed and weather worn. When it rained the water drained from the tarps to all the right places. No water collected in pockets on the tarps, or poured into the middle of an aisle. It looked temporary, but like it had been temporary for a really long time.

The market was organized by product. Eggs in one place, fruit in another, veggies, raw meat, etc. A row of restaurant food stalls lined the back. It had rained hard the night before, and it rained again while we walked around, so the aisles were slick and shiny with mud. It reminded me of a county fair on a rainy day.

A more permanent concrete building had a few rooms of stalls selling packaged foods (like noodles, canned goods, hard candies), hardware (buckets, nails, hinges, padlocks), clothes, and some electronics (tape players and tapes mostly).

We bought eggs and vegetables and cooked some awesome omelets in our hotel bathroom using the camp stove. The only thing we couldn't find was salt. The "spice dealers" in the market had lots of large and small bags of different colored powder, but all the white ones turned out to be sugar.

From Maung Xai we rode to Na Mo. The hills didn't climb nearly as high as they did on the way into town but the road was in awful shape. The road had once been paved but years of no maintenance left just chunks of pavement separated by the boulders of the road bed. If we looked up long enough to see the sights, we invariably smashed into a hole. But we were lucky. At least these roads were passable. Many of the roads in northern Laos are just dirt tracks and are impossible to use in wet weather.

All day was cloudy and damp. Occasionally a light rain fell. Low gray clouds clung to the hills in the distance. At the tops of hills we rode through fog. It was one of those days where everything was gritty. Brown water filled the potholes. Bits of black grit stuck to everything. First thing in the morning, I thought, This is flat tire weather.

We've had relatively few flats in Southeast Asia. Good tires and good pressure seem to be the key. We usually check the tires every morning to make sure the pressure is high. Also I've learned to tell by the way my seat feels over bumps if either tire needs air.

When we do get flats in SE Asia, it's always on a rainy, gritty day. It had happened like that on Sumatra, in south Thailand, and the Philippines. And sure enough, it happened again that day in Laos.

I got my flat when a rock broke off a knobby from my tire and left a thin spot. Unfortunately that was my "good" tire. (My last Conti tire. I had bought it in NZ and it had about 8,000km on it when it died. If you're riding from East to West through SE Asia, get your Contis in NZ or Australia. They are not to be found anywhere in Asia). I had to put on my spare, which is not great.

Cok, the Dutchman we had met in Kasi, said he had a tire gauge and hasn't had a flat in an incredibly long time. I told him we just measure with our thumbs. He said the thumb turns out to be pretty unreliable. I think he's right. I tested the new tire with my thumb and it felt fine. But when I started riding, my seat immediately could tell it didn't have enough air because it felt like I was riding on worms. The seat is more sensitive than the thumb.

For the next 10km I was on pins and needles that something would go wrong with the spare tire or the tube, but it didn't.

Not too many people live in the hills here. We passed through a few small Hmong villages, causing a ruckus every time. The kids went nuts, screaming and yelling and waving. Even in the wet, relatively cool weather, many of the kids still ran around stark naked. Some ran around with a shirt and no pants, while others ran around with pants and no shirt. Some dressed completely in Hmong clothing.

Around here was the first time I saw a few children with badly swollen stomachs.

We often skirted herds of cattle on the road. Water buffalo stood or sat in pools of water beside the road and collected in much smaller groups than the cows. We confused the chickens, which never seem to figure out which way to cross the road in front of us. All the towns seemed to have lots of little black-haired piglets running around and at least one giant black-haired sow. Some of the sows were so big we thought they were small water buffalo from a distance.

Not so much agriculture in these hills. Mostly dry rice and small gardens.

Na Mo was no more than a 500-meter strip of wooden buildings. Fortunately it had a guest house in a concrete building at the edge of town. We had only gone 50km but the roads were so bad it took five hours in the saddle. In the evening we bought a pineapple to have for breakfast and I tried to buy some salt but the shop woman deliberately lied and sold me sugar instead (for all of 15 cents). After tasting it we gave the sugar back to her but she didn't refund our money. Surprise, surprise.

The town had no electricity so we had a candle lit dinner served to us by a very nice woman. We ate Foe, a noodle soup, and the most readily available, consistently good meal in northern Laos.

The next morning, the roads were bad, but other than that it was a nice ride. The clouds gradually broke up and things started drying out. We bought pineapples and bananas and ate them at a pretty bridge over a raging creek. We threw the banana peels and pineapple parts into the current and watched them get swept away.

We went around some impressive black and white limestone cliffs, remnants of Karst topography, but the road didn't get too too steep.

We had Foe and green tea for lunch at a truckstop. I was a hit with the horn. We turned north here, towards the little Lao town of Boten, right next to the China border.

The sun came out. The last 18km gradual climb to Boten was pretty, even though the road remained awful. We climbed stair-like from plateau to plateau. Rice paddies filled each plateau. Between the plateaus we climbed through thick forests covered with a distinctly Chinese looking vine. The vines laid over the trees like a green pearly necklace where each pearl was a leafy ball.

Boten sat in such a plateau, surrounded by rice paddies. Boten exists primarily for the border guards to have a place to stay. The border seems to employ a large number of people.

There's no electricity in Boten. Other than the "highway" it has one dirt street with about 12 or 15 ramshackle wooden houses on each side and one nice narrow new concrete Chinese-style shophouse with one shop and one home. Amazingly, Boten also has a duty free store. In addition to alcohol and cigarettes you can get film and candy. We didn't buy anything. Here they accept Lao Kip, US$, Thai Baht and Chinese Yuan.

We stayed in a wooden restaurant that had three rooms on one side for guests to sleep in. We arrived about 3 p.m. and Joan went directly to bed to rest her back. I sat on the porch to read and watch Boten life walk by on the dirt road.

Pretty soon an English speaking border guard entered the restaurant for a meal and invited me to join him and his friends. His name was Phon. He studied English at the Police school in Vientiane and probably came by at least partly to practice English with me. He said he doesn't get many chances to use it. He spoke quite well. He said to practice he teaches the other guards for an hour after work everyday.

Later another English speaking Lao came by. She was a business woman from southern Lao on her way to China to pick up some goods for resale. She was quite sharp. I had split many large beer Laos with Phon and his friends and was not at all sharp when I met her. I kept forgetting her name and she would scold me (I still forget) and she tried to teach me to count to ten in Chinese and I kept forgetting that too.

She was a good teacher though, because she was not afraid to scold me. I really tried to concentrate and remember these things.

We showed everyone our small photo album and they took a keen interest. They look at pictures of the land behind my parent's house and asked about property taxes. Pretty soon I was trying to explain zoning. They also asked if it was true that in America couples sometimes live together before getting married.

At first I was surprised to find these English speakers in the tiny town of Boten but it sort of makes sense. The border station would probably want at least one person fluent in English.

The next morning we rode past a half dozen heavy trucks covered with canvas, their drivers sitting or standing outside smoking cigarettes. We reached a big steel pole across the road. Above the gate in a concrete booth a couple border guards stood watch.

"Eric! You may pass," one of the guards yelled down. My drinking buddy Phon happened to be on duty.

Next: China

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