Who’dathunkit? I can actually navigate from place A to place B without getting lost, needing a boat or taking a 50km wrong turn.

On time into Nong Khiaw, a small town on the banks of the Nam Ou, and a magnet for backpackers, scooter-routers and loop-doers.

There’s a reason everyone wants to stop here and it’s this:

The terrain here is beautiful but uncompromising. The road from Muang Kiam is one of the worst of those I’ve been on. Back up into the mountains, and there have been frequent rockfalls and landslides. When they happen, the debris is simply pushed over the side of the cliff, and what’s left behind is pulverised by lorries into all-penetrating dust. Stretches of continuous asphalt are few and far between across the mountain passes.

Again, as I was riding I was struggling to comprehend the lives and lifestyles of the villagers who live right up against the road, every day as trucks, minibuses and pickups rumble past. The efforts that they make spraying water to keep the dust down seem Sisyphean. I can complain all I like about it as a once-through-and-done tourist. Living it every day seems like hell.

So I take these views as I see them: staggering natural beauty coupled with grinding poverty. An uncomfortable mix.

Terrible segue

What’s not uncomfortable is my accommodation for the next two nights (my ass will thank me). A little way out of the town is a new “resort” (doing a lot of heavy lifting) comprising about 15 wooden bungalows looking out over the river.

Whoever designed and built them definitely considered the wow factor.

There’s a hot shower, a heated toilet seat, and a view to soothe the weariest rider.

I shall make the most of it.