Route 13 Road Conditions

[brian_bkk]

Hi All,

Rex and I are just back from a 13 days fantastic trip to Laos..

**** Trip reports and video to come ****

On the last day we met some cyclist.. (We had met them up near Kasi earlier)

They reported that the road conditions were fine around Vang Vieng.. No road works and certainly not the mess we experienced in October.

On the last day we had a 70 km ride down the 13 to VTE.. This had all the rough spots repaired since our October trip on road bikes.

According to what we have seen and what others have reported.. All should be good for road bikes from VTE to LPQ on the 13.

Cheers
Brian

 

[Rod Page]

Brian,

This sort of information is indispensible for anyone wishing to travel in countries such as Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam. So many of our community travel these roads & yet there is almost total silence on getting timely updates such as this - something, alas, I feel certain, has led to many an unnecessary accident. The above countries are not Thailand; they lack both the finance & the expertise to build roads that have any chance of getting through a single rainy season if not already destroyed in the interim by the overloaded trucks that travel their length. Apart from the safety angle the deterioration can be such that it can almost completely ruin the comfort of a planned trip, totally blow-out anticipated travel times.

The last time I saw official statistics for Vietnam was when I was riding there in 2011. The death toll for motorcyclists that year was a staggering 37,000. When you consider the Vietnamese are experienced riders travelling on underpowered bikes in areas they ride daily - virtually all Vietnamese have never travelled as much as 100km from where they live - its not rocket science to work out that road conditions play a massive role.

Those of us who ride these roads regularly know that the authorities rarely even sign-post potentially lethal situations - zero warning that around the corner you are already committed to there has been a landslide wiping out the entire road, or a truck has for no apparent reason left a load of gravel roadside, or there is a hole big enough to swallow you & your bike.

I trust your report will entice others to update road conditions on threads such as this, or, in the case of Vietnam on https://www.gt-rider.com/thailand-motorcycle-forum/showthread.php/35536-HO-CHI-MINH-ROAD-or-Hwy-1A-%28the-coastal-route%29-north-from-HCM-City

Many thanks for this invaluable information. I look forward eagerly to reading your & Neils report.