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On the rest day in Laos I gave Penny the love and attention that I had promised her before the rest of the group arrived to join us following their car collection in Bangkok on Monday. In the afternoon I went for a walk around town and discovered that boys will be boys the world over. There where 4 boys on the rail of the bridge jumping the 8 metres into the flooded creek along with trying to push a very unwilling friend off the bridge. The creek was raging with dirty flood water and the boys would jump in to the spaces between the flood debris. Not even my cup of tea when I was young and pretty silly about 40 years ago. The first dinner together was at the Laung Namtha Night Market where you can get all sort of great food and some dishes most of us didn’t really take to; like the eggs that were nearly ready to hatch and then cooked as a meal or the kebab sticks of chicken feet. Most of us ate the roast duck and pork with fried rice or noodles. As we parted for the night we agreed to meet in the morning for a 7.30 departure to arrive at the Chinese border when it opened at 8.30 to get through early and have all our car and licence paperwork completed on Friday before the police knocked off for the weekend. At 4.00am I woke with the realisation the China border was one hour ahead of us. That was the end of my sleep. I was to scared to go to sleep in case I over-slept. At 5.30am I texted Ross that we had to leave by 6.30 and he got everyone organised so we all ended up at the border to meet our guide in time. Mr Alim was waiting for us and will be taking care of us till we depart Western China on about the 13th of September. The border crossing followed by the drive up to Mengula to get our Chinese number plates, driving licences and safety instruction, all went off like clockwork and we were back on the road at 12.30 on route to Jinghong for the night stop where some of us purchased SIM cards for our IPads. The drive from the Border up to Jinghong was through fantastic mountains covered with rubber plantations with the trees just starting to produce rubber. The night finished with a welcome banquet put on by Alim and Silk Road Adventures. It a bit of a struggle working on the blog in China so this will all be sent home to Julie who will construct the page and publish it for me. Thank you very much Honey for all the help you have given me with construction, maintenance and ongoing guidance with grammar and spelling.
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julie stephenson has been contributed to a whooping 27 articles.
The Plan!
Here is the plan!
We head north from Bangkok in Thailand crossing through Loas up to the Chinese border. Heading north in China till we turn left to travel around the Taklanman desert to Kasghar in western China before crossing in to the Stan’s.
We enter Kyrgyzstan for one day before crossing Tajikistan on the Parmir highway and the Wakhan Corridor along the Northern Afghanistan border then off across Uzbekistan and Kazakstan into Russia.
Early plans had us crossing the Ukraine but this was all changed; and now we are going to stay in Russia and across Belarus into Poland to head north through Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to re-enter Russia to visit St Petersburg before crossing into Finland to finish in Helsinki.
This should all take 60 days!
Once we arrive in Helsinki I’ll decide where to from there. If Penny is still going very well and I feel she’ll make the trip to the UK, I’m heading off from Helsinki with Reg and Mitchell Toohey and their car, back to the UK to put Penny away in a friends barn till our next adventure!!!
The Group…
Here is the makeup of our group on this crazy adventure from Bangkok to Helsinki…
Reg Toohey and his son Mitchell will be traveling in a 2014 Toyota Landcruiser station wagon so they are traveling in luxury
Peter and Sue Wilson will be traveling in a 1970’s Peugeot 504.
Frank Bird and Ross Oakman are traveling in Frank’s latest Toy which is a 1939 Willys body mounted on a Mazda BT 50 chassis with a Holden 202 motor (Frank likes his holden motors).
Garry and Joanne Williams along with Ross’s wife Belinda will be traveling a 1990’s 100 series Toyota Landcruiser.
Maurie Smith and myself will be in Penny; my 1923 23/60 Vauxhall from many trips across the globe!
How this trip began for me…
How this great adventure from Bangkok to Helsinki came about for me.
In late 2013, I was speaking to Ross Oakman and Frank Bird and they told me about a plan to drive from Hanoi to Helsinki in August 2014 with a small group of friends and asked if I was interested in joining them. This soon became Bangkok to Helsinki when we found that we couldn’t drive right hand drive cars in Vietnam anymore.
I immediately said I was very keen and would do the trip in Penny my trusty 1923 Vauxhall that has carried James, Julie and I to many far away places. I discussed it with Julie to see if she was able to join me on the trip but alas, she was unable to join me due to her training for Bhutan, so I decided to look for someone to accompany me on the 60 day journey.
After lots of too-ing and thro-ing with different people, I decided I was going to do the trip on my own. In late April, Maurie Smith a friend of Ross and Frank’s, didn’t have anyone to go with him in his car, so he decided to leave his car in OZ and travel with me in Penny.