::: 4 Nation ride - Vietnam - Cambodia - Laos - Thailand

[Viethorse]

During we having lunch near the waterfall, the other team, just around 30-40km away still playing with the tire.

My friend got the bike from middle of nowhere to this area by a passing by truck:

And it was the time for the pain ***:

Wazz up?:

Looked like they were chasing a mouse...

Dang.. That's a tire job!!!...

Oh ****, that's the tube!!!!

So,... What's gonna be next!?

 

[Viethorse]

The next group finally reached the Waterfall. They had very hurry lunch and we all headed out to the street to find stuff to fix the bike on truck. All our attempts for fixing bike tire was failed.

The CB1000 tire looked like this:

And the Africa Twin made really pain in the ***.
Bike was on truck, but without wire, rope to secure...

A little fun to make the life happier:

It's complimentary to the owner of the broken Africa twin - we brought the disc from the restaurant above:

Well, than both bike were on truck.
We had no more choice rather than staying in Pakse, the town was around 100km ahead.

Gas for bikes and drinks for guys:

Another little rest after a really good road and speed.

Recalled Radioman ride the world, know how his usually jump

:

Near to Pakse, more traffic coming up. Not only human, but dogs, cats and cows. Dang, that's stress ride.
Reached hotel Champasak Grand around 5:30PM, just beside Mekong river:

We were all there:

When the truck arrived, both broken bike were downloaded:

...

 

[Viethorse]

That night, we have really great dinner in Pakse. Drank a lot of beer Laos and river fish, on a floating boat-restaurant on Mekong.
Again, too hungry so I did not take any pix.
We already arranged two tires to be shipped from Thailand to the next border (Laos - Thailand), around 09:00AM tomorrow. It's around 50km away from our hotel.
Things seemed going together at that point. All were happy with the plan.
We did some slow riding around Pakse to see things.
Slept like dead man that night, again.

 

[Viethorse]

Day #3 ~ 420km from Pakse (Laos) thru Ubon (Thailand) to Preah Vihear (Cambodia).

Saturday morning, woke up and realized that it was heavy rain last night. Dang, not a good thing to ride in the rain in Laos.
Well, lucky us, rain stopped by the sunlight. And the truck also arrived to pick up two broken bikes:

A morning adventure to find tires...

Great road from Pakse town to Pakse checkpoint, approx 50km. First time saw Laos traffic police around 10km from the hotel. Slowed down and waived to them. Feeling much better than seeing Vietnam traffic police.

.
Checkpoint, easy procedure, easy time, and wait for the tires to come from Thai side:

Wait a bit for Passport stamp:

My tires are great:

...

 

[SilverBullet]

Loving this thread Viethorse, keep it going! You are making me so homesick though. Yes, I do consider Asia more home than I do Texas or anywhere else in the US. I will return there after my youngest finishes college to retire, die and keep riding up until the day I die.

Actually those are used only for serving and keeping the sticky rice warm. It is cooked with a setup like this.

...These are the tool they used to cook sticky rice - almost same as what we have in Vietnam:

...

 

[Viethorse]

You must have great memories and experiences in this area, SilverBullet. Wish you could make your plan come true very soon.
And who knows, we may cross path somewhere in Asia, beside Beer Laos and sticky rice.

 

[Viethorse]

While the other side of the Check point, work was still going on:

Those tires were delivered, finally, from Thai border:

Our guys took care of the tire machines, shop owners just looked standing:

I seemed a hard work:

Almost done for the Africa twin:

Nice tire for the CB1K:

__________________

 

[Viethorse]

Done the tire job, we all gathered at the Thailand check point for the immigration and bike import processes:

New tire looked cool:

Welcome to Thailand:

We learned the procedures along the ride:

Purely paperwork - lots of photocopy job for passport, bike title, etc...

Well, time out, of all the paperwork hassle:

It was just 100m to the great riding road...

...

 

[Viethorse]

Whilst doing immigration, I have contacted a friend in Ubon, he said he will escort us when arriving Ubon.
Noon time, we have everything were settled. Hit the Thailand roads.
Great roads from the Checkpoint to Ubon. We reached 2xx km/h without any issue.

My GS also went almost 200km/h and then gotta slowdown to 18x as I did not believe much in the bike with lots of wind. However, that's great feeling, totally different from previous days, crazy with bad roads and buddies' broken bikes.
Reached Ubon, we met James with his KTM950 Adventure in front of the Kawasaki dealer shop. We took some times to see the bikes there. Then James guided us to the lunch place, good parking area, good food.

James may though "why those guys talk a lot"

:

After lunch, James brought us to KTM/Triumph showroom. A friend of mine changed his rear tire there:

Loạt Boneville:

...

 

[Viethorse]

Multistrada is going to have new shoe:

Oh ****, is it called Adventure? No way:

Let's my GS be dirty until I safely homed. Who cares.

Big THANKs to James:

Hope to see you again soon:

We headed to Chong Sangam checkpoint (Thai - Cambodia border) right after that!

 

[Viethorse]

We were in hurry to reach the Checkpoint before 5PM as we was informed that the office there would be closed then.
My gosh, that time was really rush. It was almost 4PM, and there is only around 180km to the border gate!!. D@mn.
Not only that, we hit a rain on the way, really heavy rain. Gotta stopped for wearing rain coats. At least 3 minutes wasted as we came into the LPG station instead of the Gasoline station

.
Rain was heavier and heavier... The road surface more slippery... Speed suck. Heart beat like ****....
Our plan was going thru the border, ride around 150km more deeply into Cambodia land, where called Preah Vihear.
If that plan went well, we could nicely done one-day-three-nations.

As near to the check point, the rain stopped. Nice and twisty road made us more excited. Tried to lean my bike on every corner, as we had no chance since departure.

Reached checkpoint. It was ~ 5:30PM.
D@mn,.... Office closed!??

Now what??!

 

[Viethorse]

Luckily, both sides of the checkpoints they did overtime that day.
We were the last people who crossed the line in the day.
When we 've done with the Thai side, doing for Cambodia immigration:

Passport and Custom control of Cambodia:

THAT is Preah Vihear - where we wanted to go:

Looked fine:

Oh lah lah...

Oh yeah:

Bingo...

 

[Viethorse]

So, our plan of riding thru 3 countries within a day has been materialized.

.
Great achievement, so far.
It was quite long way from the checkpoint to the hotel that night, almost 100km in the night time.
If there was no conflict between Cam and Thai, we could cross the Preah Vihear checkpoint, save almost that 100km.
Not so many choices of Hotel around Preah Vihear. We stayed at a Hotel that my friend said it should be 5 star hotel of that area. Good one, but in general, it should be around 1.5 star maximum.

We had dinner in the hotel. Food even not enough, but beers.

What I had after 2.5 days riding - total 1000km:

3rd night, slept like a dead man.

 

[Viethorse]

Day #4 ~ 600km from Preah Vihear (Cambodia) to Hồ Chí Minh City (Việt Nam).

As planned, morning of the 4th day, the Africa-Twin rider guided us to the Preah Vihear temple. It's a temple right at the border of Thailand and Cambodia. There were several times in the past Thailand claimed that's their property. At the time we visited, full of soldiers standing by at both sides.

Early morning, we already saw the army vehicle in the Hotel's front yard. ****, did they come for us!? Dang....

They came for breakfast, but we still think they came for checking on us.

We started to leave the hotel:

Stopped to buy some gifts for the temple guards:

Really nice road toward the temple. Free cows on road. They looked not so healthy:

We arrived the Check-point. Cigarette is our gift:

First time in life we need Passport control for visiting a temple!

Preah Vihear temple (Cambodia) is on the right hill. The left hill was occupied by Thailand army:

Thrilling...

 

[Viethorse]

Nearer to the temple, we felt more thrilling....
We saw several Cambodia soldiers along the roadside... I tried to sweep away the thinking of a battle during our visit...

More twisty road from around elevation of 300m. Not good road then.

Reached the parking area, many soldiers showed up, as well as kids.

So happy to be there:

It seemed they have some sort of services for tourist around this place:

Done the bikes parking, we walked to the temple.
It was around 9AM, still foggy all around...

Thrilling, 2nd episode....

 

[Tourmeister]

By the way, dead men don't wake up in the morning...

Looks like you are REALLY enjoying the GS. It is perfect for this kind of riding.

I hope the Africa Twin rider got a spare tube after getting the first one replaced?! When I ride my KTM, I always carry a spare front and rear tube, including a patch kit. It is a bit of a pain on a bike with VERY limited carrying capacity, but it can be a real ride saver

That bike shop looked HUGE!! Are the bigger bikes started to become more common over there? I was under the impression (perhaps a wrong one) that big bikes were the exception and smaller bikes were FAR more common (smaller being 250cc or less).

 

[Viethorse]

By the way, dead men don't wake up in the morning...

Looks like you are REALLY enjoying the GS. It is perfect for this kind of riding.

I hope the Africa Twin rider got a spare tube after getting the first one replaced?! When I ride my KTM, I always carry a spare front and rear tube, including a patch kit. It is a bit of a pain on a bike with VERY limited carrying capacity, but it can be a real ride saver

That bike shop looked HUGE!! Are the bigger bikes started to become more common over there? I was under the impression (perhaps a wrong one) that big bikes were the exception and smaller bikes were FAR more common (smaller being 250cc or less).

Yeah, I really like the GS, especially for such trip, thru all kind of terrain...
As said, the Africa Twin was not the choice of him for the trip. That's a accidental choice as we changed the route not going thru Phnompenh for his GSA.

Though you already have correct imagination about big bikes in this area as seeing all my threads. Yes, big bikes are now quite familiar, even though the scooters, less than 175cc, are now still the main transportation means.

 

[Viethorse]

We started our Preah Vihear temple discovery:

Looked like the whole temple sitting on a real big rock.

Found a soldier there, he can speak Vietnamese quite well, we asked him to show us around:

More than 100m from the bike parking, still not seeing any sign of the temple:

Got further inside, we saw the flags:

And the temple gate:

Easily noticed lots of guards and soldiers in normal casual:

A tower is under repair:

 

[Viethorse]

You can simply do a search about Preah Vihear temple history. There are lot of information about it.
Continue with the temple, where not everyone can visit:

In the below photo, it's the gate from Thailand side to the temple.
Previously, this way had been opened for both side to visit.
Currently, the gate at the border line was closed, none is allowed to pass thru. People say that they will get shoot if trying to pass the gate.

We can see the Thailand hill still in the fog:

We don't want to get shoot:

We back to inside of the temple:

The 2nd gate is in front of us:

 

[Tourmeister]

Wow... I just Googled for images of the temple. Pretty incredible place with a very volatile history.

 

[Viethorse]

Wow... I just Googled for images of the temple. Pretty incredible place with a very volatile history.

"Cambodia, the land of wonder" - no wonder about that statement, Scott.

 

[Viethorse]

The remained bunker built by Vietnamese soldiers during the time fighting with Khmer Rogue. People said that it still function well:

2nd gate layer of the Temple:

This area sounds to be the place for important events in the past. You can easily notice 12 holes was made on the rock base.
A bit right of the below photo, there was a man-made pond, around 100m2. I have no idea how they can have water on this mount.

Recalled Tomb rider movie:

The 2nd gate layer, looking from inside:

Kept walking:

An interesting creature - a tree hold up the tower:

This is the military medic center, built by Vietnamese soldiers:

 

[Viethorse]

Inside:

Vestige of time:

Another sign of Vietnamese soldiers, when they fought Khmer Rogue - this is the tool made on the rock to make powder from rice:

Inside a bell tower. The bell was removed by Thailand army's helicopter.
Come inside, and punch in your chest - you can hear the incredible echo sound... What an architecture.

This area looked like the main temple:

Don't know what made this moulder, human or nature:

 

[Viethorse]

To the back of the temple, we found a straight cliff. It was really foggy when we reached. It was almost 11:00AM.

It was called death cliff - elevation 500m - was the place the Khmer Rouge push Cambodian from the top to the ground. Thousand of people was killed that way.

What a feeling...

OOPS...

 

[Tourmeister]

The fog gives the place a really surreal look to it, almost haunting... It would have been quite the site to see when it was in its prime!