Motorcycling in Laos and trying to avoid nails…

Riding our motorcycle in Laos has been a lot of fun. Even though we were expecting the condition of the roads to be bad, we were positively surprised to find a lot of asphalt. Throughout Laos, we found beautiful roads (off & on roads), spectacular mountain views, gorgeous Buddhist temples and stunning river vistas.

On top of all of this, we also got to witness the remote and authentic village life, where we were welcomed by joyful Lao kids, who would often lead to other beautiful encounters and secret places…

But some things can also be tricky! Specially, the one or the other ‘touchy’ ferry crossing or the quirky wooden bridges – beautiful but hiding some dangers… That’s right, some of these bridges come with a major risk… NAILS!

It was probably in one of these wooden bridges that we got a very long nail in our rear tyre. Once we found it, we drove with it in the tyre for a couple of days more, since we didn’t know if it was a big piece or a small piece. After monitoring the tyre a few days later, we noticed that the nail was going deeper into the tyre and that’s when we decided to remove it.

Jorge took the Leatherman and tried to remove it a couple of times, until it came out in one piece – a very long piece! Fortunately, the tyre did not deflate. We were very lucky about that. Or who knows, perhaps, it wasn’t just a stroke of luck. A few days earlier we had found something special on our motorbike…

One of our neighbours had left marigold flowers in the exhaust of our motorbike. Lao usually have these flowers blessed in the Buddhist temples and then keep them in their homes, cars or mopeds as a kind of protection. Perhaps this protection worked just fine for us and for that reason our tyre behaved well and did not deflate…

‘Khop Chai’ [thank you in Lao] dear Lao neighbour!

• Are you curious about our motorcycle journey through Laos, you can pre-order the Laos magazine now.
• Check our video about our lockdown in Luang Prabang.