Boten, Laos - The Chinese ghost town

[KTMphil]

3 of us did a quick trip into Laos from Thailand & were curious to see the happenings in Boten, Laos at the Chinese border.........




A beautiful young girl along the way
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Maybe we can ride this?
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[KTMphil]

Bit of a rainy start leaving Thailand, lets hope its not like this for the whole of the trip. Adrian needed to do a visa run, so he rented a versys for a few days, Ian came on his KTM 950 SE


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Planned to head out of Thailand at the Houay Khon, Nan international border crossing with Laos, that way you get to ride R 1148 if you're coming from Chiang Mai

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Views from R 1148

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Starting to dry out a bit now

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[KTMphil]

Then finally dry enough to get rid of the chicken strips on the new tires

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Down to the Houay Khon, Nan, Thailand / Muan Nguen, Laos, internation border crossing, and as Auke posted a few months ago, all change here. The Thai border checkpoint buildings have all been demolished, so that the huge trucks going to the Hongsa Power construction site can get through easily.




Looking NE towards Laos at the Thai border crossing - Thai immigration is in the portacabin down on the left
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[KTMphil]

This is now the temporary Thai Customs office

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The border is officially called "Thungchang" not Houay Khon, might be useful to know


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[KTMphil]

Through the Thai formalities quite quickly, then the 1km ride in no-mans-land to the Laos border checkpoint, as usual, the Laos soldiers all very excited on your arrival at the barrier

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The Laos soldiers are still making you leave your bike at the checkpoint barrier at Muan Nguen, Laos and walk the 100 meters to the border building

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[KTMphil]

New fancy offices inside the Muan Nguen, Laos border checkpoint building, here the immigration visa processing office


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37km from the border checkpoint, vehicles involved in the Hongsa Power, Thai, coal fired generating plant are everywhere.

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The road from the Muan Nguen, Laos border, is now tarmac ALL the way SE to Xayabouri. Here we're approaching the Hongsa Power construction zone, about 37km from the Thai border

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Pretty wild seeing this pop up in the middle of nowhere

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Adrian

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[KTMphil]

Into Hongsa, Laos for the night, luckily the Souphaphone GH had some rooms 100,000 kip (400 Bht) a night


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Hongsa market always has some characters


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Trotters anyone

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I thought this was honey, but turned out to be grubs

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[KTMphil]

New place that was packed for dinner in Hongsa was the Namfon restaurant


Its down the street , 1 back, that runs parallel to the main street


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The Hongkham restaurant is an old favorite of the locals and seems to do well with all the construction workers


Its almost next to the Namfon restaurant

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Our current favorite is across the street, the Nouker restaurant


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[KTMphil]

13km east of Hongsa, on route 4A that runs SE to Xayabouri, is the turn off for the dirt road "4B", that runs NE to Luang Prabang. This 120km dirt is a handfull in the dry season, with several steep hills, in the middle of rainy season? Not the best idea, but would be interesting to try, Adrian was up for it on the Versys with road tires, so what the hell


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[KTMphil]

Just as you make the turn off for the dirt road to LPQ, there is you're first river crossing


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There is a brand spanking new concrete bridge there now so no more getting in the river here

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Ian going the old way


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[2wheels]

Welcome back Phil.
Beautiful portrait of the little girl.



Looking forward to the next bit!

 

[The Bigfella]

Yes.... it got interesting up that road. Here's that little bridge on the way back. Hope I didn't let the cat out of the bag there...

[video=youtube_share;80aXPR_OVGs]http://youtu.be/80aXPR_OVGs[/video]

Not just grubs for sale at the Hongsa market. Lots of nice things too

We found some mud

and some very, very greasy clay

A local had fallen on that corner, so I was going easy when Adrian and Phil caught me up at a rate of knots. Oops. It was so slippery that engine braking was making the back wheel slide out.

Amazingly, Adrian got to here on street tyres...

..... and I slid backwards from about 20 metres past here...

 

[alexuk]

"The Laos soldiers are still making you leave your bike at the checkpoint barrier at Muan Nguen, Laos and walk the 100 meters to the border building"
OK. Last time I was there, nobody was at the checkpoint and the barrier was down.
So I went around it, and the women in the customs office was surprised to see me.
It took about half an hour for her to find someone to do the paperwork for me, they were all playing football or something

 

[2wheels]

'Onya Bigfella.
Impressive about the Versys' effort.
Looks like CRF territory to me.
Keep it coming guys; very enjoyable.

 

[KTMphil]

Then as Ian just pointed out things got sloppy, looks like we just missed some heavy rain ahead


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Adrian let the tire pressures down on the versys which should help a little

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It then got a little dryer, so maybe we'd get through to Luang Prabang

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Adrian doing a fantastic job on the versys with street tires


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[KTMphil]

Ian had no option but to stop on an ice like hill, i ended up in the ditch to avoid him


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This section was really nasty about 30km in from the tarmac 4A

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We get to the first river crossing, a little deeper than usual after some rain

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The versys coming across with the exhaust under the bike

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[KTMphil]

Then it got really nasty, slick red clay, we made the decision to turn back, there was still 90km to go to LPQ, it was the wise thing to do


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This is what the smart locals were using

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This is what we were using

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Headed back west to R 4A - great views

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Managed to take the tarmac (4A) SE to Xayabouri for lunch on the river ar the Saynam restaurant

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It has spectacular views

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Just north of Xayabouri on R 4 , this looked like the road to where the hydro dam was being built


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[KTMphil]

To the Mekong River ferry crossing, just north of Xayabouri, the new bridge being built in the background

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Locals said the bridge will be finished in about 1 year

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[KTMphil]

After about 20 minutes the ferry comes


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then another 30 minute wait for more ferry customers, this might have been the better option


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[KTMphil]

Ian in the meantime, keeping the ladies on the ferry amused


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Ferry prices painted on the side of the bridge

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Bus comes on the ferry loaded with passengers

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One of the female bus passengers needs to spend a penny, her friend stands shotgun as there's no door on the ferry toilet
\



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[KTMphil]

A full bus gets on the ferry with us

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One of the female bus passengers needs to spend a penny in the nasty ferry hongnam, with no door, her friend stands guard

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North of the ferry, R4 is mostly a broken dirt road

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We check into the Philalak Gh in LPQ down the lane next to Joma, then sunset beers on the Mekong

 

[KTMphil]

A very civilized dinner at L'Elephant in LPQ


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Oyster lasagne

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Next day north towards Boten at the Chinese border.


Here surveying a flood swept bridge north of LPQ

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[KTMphil]

The usual breathtaking views in Laos

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Just in time for lunch in pakmong

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Cooked bu a really cute Chinese lady

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[KTMphil]

Taking the wild pig home for dinner


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[KTMphil]

.......More to come

 

[mactbkk]

Phil

Any WORD on when (or if??) Rt 4 from M Nan on up to Xieng Nguen will be upgraded? Seems like in its present condition, it defeats the whole purpose of the Phou Khoun Bypass, Kassy to M Nan, which will be finished one day.

Mac

 

[KTMphil]

Phil

Any WORD on when (or if??) Rt 4 from M Nan on up to Xieng Nguen will be upgraded? Seems like in its present condition, it defeats the whole purpose of the Phou Khoun Bypass, Kassy to M Nan, which will be finished one day.

Mac

Mac - it looked like sections towards the north end of LPQ were starting to be worked on.

 

[KTMphil]

Laos kids playing, making a camp out of fern leaves


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Beautiful kids

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The hand

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The wild pig

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[KTMphil]

Further up the road the "butchers shop"


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We'd heard that there maybe some landslides around the Oudomxai area, but were told it had all been cleared, it hadn't

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Scurrying past the digger

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[KTMphil]

North of Oudomxai, the road is good again and the curves and views are great


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Drink stop in a small village, grandpa taking care

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The kids in this village all had a really happy look in their eyes


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[harrygps]

Ver nice pictures, Phil. This can not be the country to which I said "Good bye for everytime" in 1996.

 

[KTMphil]

The main Laos Customs checkpoint, about 4km south of Boten at the Laos/ Chinese border is shut, we manage to sneak around it and get right up to the Chinese border, the monument over the road is now finished in bright gold


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[KTMphil]

The Laos side checkpoint is still pretty grubby

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[KTMphil]

500 meters south of the border crossing is the town of Boten, Laos - it's one of the weirdest towns you'll "currently" ever come across, almost like a movie set as its so quiet.


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All these new building, some with marble floors and fancy lighting and all completely empty, its a spooky place

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One day everything just stopped here, the demolition of the old shop houses only half done etc.....


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Big, brightly painted building just sitting there doing nothing


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[KTMphil]

Ian driving out of one of the big new buildings


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The story seems to be that there had been an agreement by the Laos government, for the Chinese to build casino's in this Laos duty free zone, there were 2 in operation until a few months ago. The whispers are that the Chinese government were unhappy that it was so easy for the Chinese gamblers to get across the border into Laos to gamble & changed the immigration visa requirements for the Chinese at the border, making it much harder for them to get to the casino's. This turned off a lot of the Chinese gamblers and they stopped coming, suddenly the business models didn't work any more and EVERYTHING shut down.


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[KTMphil]

Getting late in the day, it was looking like there was nowhere to stay in the new Boten ghost town, everything shut, maybe we'll have to head west to Luang Namtha. Over the back we see one hotel, the Jingland Hotel which has some cars around it, we go check it out.

Jingland Hotel co-ords

N21.18482

E101.67069

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Pretty fancy looking place

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[KTMphil]

They actually have rooms 60 Chinese RMB, they don't take Laos kip which is amusing, it works out to be about 75,000 kip/ 380 Bht! amazing room for the money, might be the best value hotel room ive ever stayed in.


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No squat toilet here

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[KTMphil]

They let us bring our bikes into the hotel reception for the night

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Across the road from the hotel is a supermarket and a very dodgy Chinese massage, Justin would love it
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There are 2 Chinese restaurants and 1 Laos restaurant in the "new zone". We tried one of the Chinese restaurants and it was excellent


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[KTMphil]

There seems to be a lot going on in the new Boten town.


We were told that the owners of the Jingland Hotel, have bought the entire free zone (new town area) & are going to develop into a fancy duty free area for Chinese "tourists". Below building is going to be a jewelry shop, many more like this coming to sell luxury duty free goods, might work.



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Up and off in the morning, quite amusing seeing these big bikes inside such a fancy hotel

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Interesting Chinese delicacies for sale at the Boten border with China


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[marcusb]

great report and pics. Oudomxai and north to Boten is the strangest part of Laos I have seen. The big vacant buildings, all the expansion based on speculation, the gigantic Chinese influence. Also the total crap condition of all the Laos highways, then you get to the 50k stretch from Odoumxai to Boten and I don't think there is even a ripple, it's a beautiful perfectly smooth highway.

I stayed in Odoumxai for 3 nights while I explored the area, this guesthouse was great with good wi fi, decent price, and they locked my bike up in the Goodyear tire shop every night. One night they squeezed 8 250cc bikes in there.
It is located on the main strip as your riding through town.