Yesterday, when I was reading by the Mekong, I felt something bite my toe. I looked down to see a small ant on top of “this little piggy stayed home,” but didn't think much of it. This morning I woke up before the alarm went off to a painful itching in the same toe. Having been bitten by fire ants in the States, I recognized the feeling. I tried to fall back asleep, but basically just dozed until the alarm went off. For Re's sake, I hit the snooze a few times before getting up and dragging her out of bed. While we drank coffee, we put together a shopping list of things we would need in the next week or so. Before we took a shower, we decided to get a little hot and sweaty...working on the bikes.

Re had mentioned that her chain was making noise on yesterday's ride, so I wanted to remove her chain case and check the sprocket bolts. Once the chain case was removed, I found that all the bolts were still tight, but Re's chain was a little loose. We adjusted her chain and lubed it, then checked mine and lubed it too. The other bike issue that needed some attention today was our batteries. For the past couple of days, I've had to kick start my bike since the battery seems to be dead. Re's is still starting, but not very vigorously. We pulled off the side covers, and sure enough, just like in Goa, our batteries were nearly dry. And again, since we didn't have any distilled water, we refilled them with purified water, which goes against every recommendation, but it worked last time! We may run into a sulfiting problem in the future, but for now, it's the best we've got. When we uncrated our bikes in Bangkok, we saw that Re's rack was cracking again, so after the 50 miles of dirt road on our way to Tad Lo, we decided to check the progress of the cracks. Well, they aren't cracks anymore, they've graduated to breaks. Sigh. We are going to need to get the rack welded again, but I think we'll wait until after we see how rough the roads in Cambodia are.

With the work done and tools put away, we hopped in the shower to get cleaned up. We then walked out to the “shopping center” and looked for the items on our list. We were able to get most things, but we weren't able to find any cotton boxer shorts in our sizes. Both of us have been having problems with what I assume is prickly heat on our butts in this hot weather, and since all of our clothes are quick-dry, man made materials, we thought some cotton pants might help with the problem. We did find some cotton boxers in the market, but the Lao idea of “Large” and America's idea of “Large” are very different sizes. We consoled ourselves with lunch at the market. After lunch, we went to a motorcycle shop I had seen when walking around yesterday and bought some oil to replace the semi-synthetic oil I put in in Bangkok. The other day I was thinking we were probably about due for an oil change and checked my notebook to see when the last one was. I was surprised to see that we've covered over 2,800 miles since Bangkok. I have been trying to change the oil around the 2,000 mile mark (and have missed a couple of times), but I really can't believe that we've ridden 2,800 miles in 28 days. We stopped to buy a watermelon, and then went back to the room to work on some more writing and do more research on possible future plans. After taking a break for some watermelon, Re worked on more writing, while I chatted with many other guests in the common area. Later, we went out for Indian food, but found that the recommended restaurant was no longer in business. So instead, we had dinner at a different Vietnamese place.