Ghost Town of Thoeng

Bridge:  We had an incredible breakfast spread back at Viong Yonok next door with Jim and her husband Ian.  Eggs, bacon, sausies, tomatoes, you name it!  They really were a fantastic couple and really went out of their way to help us and make us feel welcome.  It started raining so we threw the black plastic bin liners over our day packs and strapped them to the bikes.  We spent the whole day riding through the mountains on winding roads and were trying to reach Phayao - on th elake, but at 5pm we still had 200km to go!  So we decided to ride into the next town, Thoeng, to find somewhere to stay.

Quint:  Arriving at Thoeng tired and sun burnt we were willing to crash anywhere for the  night.  However reality hit began to creep in as we realised what we had found ourselves was a shanty town then anything else.  Driving around for another half an hour confirmed our initial fears, there was nowhere to stay!  After giving up we decided to pull over on the street and gorge ourselves on some street food chicken kebabs.  It so happened that where we stopped a lady on the street offered us to stay at her 'guesthouse'!  Before we knew it we were following her on her scooter and finally arrived what surprisingly resembled a place to stay.  Cheap but cheerful and relatively clean we decided we didn't have another option. 

That evening before we turned in we found ourselves an empty snooker club to entertain us for a while.  Although the club had a back room full of mafia-looking men taking part in illegal gambling, we seemed to be left alone and in all we had quite a good evening!