After the trouble before bed last night, I also got up twice during the night and made the mad dash to the toilet. And twice again this morning while we packed up and got ready to go. Re left me whimpering in the bathroom and went down to the first aid kit on the bike to get our last course of Azithromycin for me. After I took the Azith, Re cut up a pineapple she bought yesterday for breakfast. Since I wanted to see how it would sit in my stomach before we hit the road, it was after 10:00 am when we finally started riding. While I rode to the gas station to get fuel for the day, Re exchanged the Lao kip that we had forgotten to exchange before leaving the country. Since kip cannot be changed outside of Laos, we got whacked with a really bad exchange rate. Oh well.

Our goal for today was Kampong Cham, a city further down the Mekong. Not much to say about the ride today, other than it was again hot, ugly, and boring. We stopped for fuel and lunch somewhere near the Vietnam border. Since I wasn't feeling confident enough in my sphincter strength to risk eating much, we made do with Diet Cokes and Alaskan King Crab-flavored chips (made in Vietnam?) from the gas station. We only had a couple of hours to go after lunch, and the scenery remained largely the same. The only change was that traffic got more aggressive as we neared Kampong Cham. We crossed the Mekong and rolled into town around 3:00 pm and found a very nice room at the very nice Mekong Hotel, with a balcony overlooking the river. I was not feeling particularly well, so Re left me to take a nap while she went out and explored the town.

Later that evening, I was feeling much better, so we went out for dinner and both had some delicious Khmer dishes. After dinner, I felt much better. The Azithromycin seems to have worked as advertised this time. After a dessert of cookies and watermelon, we decided to take the evening off and actually watch some English-language TV for the first time in a couple of weeks. We watched about 15 minutes of CNN before switching over to something else better for my blood pressure.

160 miles in about 5 hours. We're definitely going to need to change Re's chain soon.