A Twerp goes to Antwerp (II)

Antwerp itself is a pretty town. I had planned to spend a day there, but because the ride there was far longer than I expected, I only had an hour before I had to start cycling again.













Heading back up through Holland, I stopped to take a photo of this horse trap passing me.



As I did so, I noticed that one of my panniers was hanging off the bike at a crazy angle. One of the bolts had pulled loose.



Luckily, the bolt was still sitting in the housing and I was able to reattach it.

On the ride, I saw more tulips in the wild than I did on my previous trip to the tulip district around Keukenhof.



So, that was a great ride. I did over 400 kms in 4 and a half days.

This was my favourite part of the trip. Some genius in the marketing department decided to name their chain of petrol stations "Firezone"

A Twerp goes to Antwerp (i)

Over the May Bank Holiday, I once again went cycling in Benelux: this was my fifth trip now and I'm not sick of it. I tried to catch the evening train from Cambridge to Harwich, but because the rail companies are terrible, we were dumped at Ipswich. I had to scramble to catch several extra trains - with a fully loaded bike - and just made it to the ferry before the office closed.

On the Ferry, Waiting to Roll Out

I took the North Sea Route and headed south down the coast. It was the same route that I rode on my first trip in 2009. I made good progress on the first day (120 kms) and made it down to the bottom of Holland, camping a little north of Middelburg.



The camping ground had a nice restaurant, but I couldn't make out a word of the menu so I ordered the house specialty, which turned out to be king prawns in a butter soup. It was nice, although I'm not sure of its nutritional value (actually, I am - not good).



In the morning, I turned east and headed towards Antwerp. There was a headwind and my progress was slow. I had also misjudged the distance. What I expected to be 60 kms turned out to be another day above 100 kms. While I had a detailed map of Holland, it petered out around the Belgian border and it took me a long, confusing stretch of cycling through an industrial zone before I got to the town centre.

On the way, I encountered my second Benelux cycle race.







Despite the bottle of sunscreen in the photo, I didn't bother to apply any and I now have the outline of my lycra shorts burned into my legs. It's 1 inch lower than the bottom of my rugby shorts, meaning I have a 1 inch white stripe around my legs when I play touch.

I cycled through Antwerp, looking for a bridge across the river to the camping ground. I was exhausted, and the kilometer count continued to mount. I couldn't work out why there wasn't a bridge. (Antwerp actually has escalators that carry you down below the river, and then you cycle under the river before climbing up again.)

Slow boat to Laos

My time in Chiang Mai was fantastic. I was taken to the best restaurants, chauffeured around, helped with Thai language and bargaining - generally treated like a king. It couldn't have been better. But living the life of Riley isn't entirely what this is all about. I needed to challenge myself to cope alone. Let's try a several-day boat trip along the Mekong River to Luang Prabang in Laos. And throw in a ropey tum on the morning of departure and a flood to make it interesting. Deal with that, independence boy.

On the first day, we spent 5 hours in a minivan travelling to the Thai/Laos border. It was crammed, and fairly unpleasant. The town where we stayed was pretty rough. After dinner, I went to a pub with an Italian lady and a British guy. I must say, there was a good international mix on the trip.

First view of Mekong river, at dusk

You can travel up the river by slow boat or fast boat. The slow boat takes 2 days. The fast boat is a small speed boat. On it, you crouch down wearing a crash helmet, because they have a record of frequently flipping and killing tourists. I opted for the slow boat.

The next morning, we were ferried across the river to Laos, and went through immigration. This took hours. They then gave us the hard sell about how much better it would be to take the bus than the boat. It would only take 10 hours, and then we would be in Luang Prabang by midnight. It turned out that they had sold too many tickets and there were too many people for one boat. They kept hounding us to take the bus until one of the Americans got angry and shouted at them. Then they backed down. This was excellent, because they squished nearly everyone onto the first boat, and those of us on the second boat had heaps of space to ourselves.

A Wat along the river

A riverside village

The other slow boat

The other slow boat again

A small boat

Incidentally, two guys from our group chose to take the bus, to get to Luang Prabang quicker. Instead of taking 10 hours, it took them 24 hours and was reportedly "torture".