The small town of Kasi lies in the middle of an awe-inspiring mountain road and near the last holdout of insurgents turned bandits. But the town ain't much.

Kasi is a truck stop, a strip about 300 meters long with dark wood buildings along the road. A couple of the wealthier residents have built neat new concrete homes in the same Chinese style we keep seeing all over the world (square concrete buildings painted white with red tile roofs, wood trim), contrasting sharply with the old, shabby wood buildings in the rest of town.

We stayed at the only guesthouse in town. I was excited to see in the register that Team Swiss had stayed there on June 30. This was July 25 and only two other people had signed the register since then, one from Japan and another I couldn't read. Few tourists stay in Kasi (Lao and maybe Thai people don't have to register) since it's only an hour by car from there to Vang Vieng.

With this in mind, I was surprised that the restaurant had menus in English and the staff was rather unsurprised and uninterested by us. Later we solved the riddle.

The fact that few tourists stay in Kasi made it even more remarkable that we ran into the cycling Dutch. We sat with them over Beerlao while we discussed our trips.

Cok and Ellie, from near Utrecht, Holland, were on a six-week tour. We liked them right off. They had flown into Chiang Mai, in northwestern Thailand had had ridden their bikes to the Mekong river, which they crossed to enter Laos. But they hadn't done much riding in Laos yet. From the border they caught a speedboat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, where they stayed several days before catching a bus to Kasi.

Cok was a gregarious man with thick gray hair. He was in his mid-40s, enthusiastic about everything, laughed at the least comedy, and was lots of fun to be around. Ellie, who was about the same age, looked quite Dutch somehow. She had reddish hair. Both were teachers. They frequently take off six weeks at a time to bicycle in different parts of the world. Once they took off five months to bike on Sulawesi in Indonesia.

Every now and then Cok would be going on about something when Ellie would say something to him in Dutch. Then he would reduce his exaggerations or say something like, "Well anyway ..." They made an excellent team this way.

The main topic was the bandit road between Kasi and Luang Prabang. When the evening started we planned to ride it, despite the U.S. embassy's caution. By the time the evening ended, we had changed our minds.

Cok and Ellie had heard a story of a man and his son murdered on the road about a year ago. They also said that locals in Luang Prabang had pleaded with them not to ride the road alone. I was moved by the story about the man and his son, while Joan was more moved by the warnings of the locals. The guy that ran the guesthouse said a buts to Luang Prabang stopped out front at 10 a.m. the next morning. We decided to take it.

Ellie was careful to prevent Cok from urging us to take the bus. I liked that they simply told us what they had heard.

Actually Cok and Ellie's bus ride sounded somewhat bad. A few hours out of Luang Prabang it broke down. The driver said he could fix it in 20 minutes. Seven hours later they were still stuck. But it sounded like the tourists on the bus made the most of it. People from a nearby village came out and brought them food, and the tourists had a great time making friends with them. But after seven hours Cok and Ellie finally decided to seek their own transport. Cok said he felt bad about leaving the gang. He and Ellie walked with the bikes a few hundred meters down the road and quickly got a ride. I don't know how they did this, considering how light the traffic is on that road, and considering how small most of the cars are.

Then we learned why the restaurant has menus in English. Cok and Ellie's bus finally arrived and all the tourists piled out for dinner, talking like old friends. They were thrilled to see Cok and Ellie again. One Aussie had a huge white beard that made him look like Santa. Apparently a replacement bus arrived an hour after Cok and Ellie got their ride.

They made me wish I had been on the broken down bus with them.

The next morning we had all our stuff ready by 9:15 a.m. in case the bus arrived early, as things often do in Asia.

While we waited out front, a tuk-tuk delivered a middle-aged European man with gray hair. He got out and sat near us. We learned he lived in Luang Prabang and was waiting for the same bus. He spoke Lao and was very familiar with the area.

He scoffed at our fear of the bandit road. He had a very different version from what the U.S. Embassy referred to as an "incident" on the road a year earlier. The murdered man, he told us, was a French expat businessman, suspiciously traveling with $40,000 cash. And not only was he killed, but five (or six, I can never remember). Lao companions were also killed. He was convinced the bandits had not acted randomly.

When we told him the embassy suggested we travel to Luang Prabang by boat on the Mekong, he said, "Now that's really dangerous. Those boats roll over and sink in the mud and you disappear without a trace. I've seen it happen!" Later he recommended several boat trips we should take. His name was Oliver and we got to know him a bit. This was a typical Oliverism.

Around 10 a.m. a fairly full jumbo pulled up. Fortunately Oliver could speak to the bus man and found out this bus was also heading to Luang Prabang.

The bus driver expertly put our bikes in rails that ran along the side of the roof and tied them in with rope. They weren't laying on anything and nothing was laying on them. It was the easiest bus ride the bikes have ever had.

Inside the back of the pickup were two benches facing each other. Eleven or 12 people, about half tourists, half Lao, sat inside. Two or three more stood on the wide back "bumper" (designed to be stood on) and Oliver and I rode on the roof.

I loved riding on the roof. I could see everything. The only trouble was the swaying made me slightly seasick and as we leaned into the turns I kept thinking, "Isn't this pickup a little top-heavy?" The road from Kasi to Luang Prabang goes over four or five mountain ranges and is constantly going up or down and around hairpin curves.

Oliver said the bus would stop shortly before the town of Phu Khun and we would have to sit inside so the police didn't hassle us or the drivers. Apparently it's illegal to ride on top. We didn't stop though. We still sat on top as we rolled into the foggy, cool town, about 1100 meters above sea level. Oliver saw the police and told me not to make eye contact. A few people got on and off and thankfully they unloaded the big sack of coconuts I had leaned on. Unfortunately they didn't get rid of the container of fermented fish until later. Every once in awhile I caught a whiff and it stank.

It turns out we had nothing to worry about. The policeman working that day didn't care if people rode on top and the bus man knew he would be working. We did stop just outside of Luang Prabang for the police, so I spent the last few kilometers of the ride standing on the back bumper. In the rain.

It would have been one hell of a bike ride. When we passed through little towns or when we had great long views I regretted not riding the bike. Sometimes I have wondered if it wouldn't be better to travel with a small backpack and get around on bus and not have all the hassle and physical stress of biking. But when I actually ride the bus, I'm really glad we have the bikes.

Oliver was great company on the roof. He pointed out the Hmong villagers in their traditional clothing, the young teak trees planted all over the place and the scrubby hillsides that are all that remains after slash-and-burn agriculture. He sounded like he felt SOOO strongly about everything. I believe he really did.

He told us about the places we "MUST go" and that we "really MISSED" Indonesia since we didn't see this or that and "you can't really UNDERSTAND Laos unless you..." Normally this would bother me. I'm already a little insecure about my travel savvy so I'm touchy about the subject. But from Oliver I didn't mind. His energy was so high I knew I could never travel like him. Inevitably there would be places he went to and we missed.

He seemed to have traveled just about everywhere on the planet. I thought he must be making this up but every place we talked about I could tell really had been there because of the details he knew. In San Francisco he said he was especially fond of the "fusion" cuisine (called Pacific-Rim in most restaurants now).

Oliver had a theory that most of the prettiest cities in the world are at places where the mountains and sea meet - San Francisco, Capetown, etc.

Next: A day on the Mekong

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