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Published: January 9th 2009
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Stranded in the mountains
Yeah, we're in no hurry... I left Vientiane, which I strangely enough liked despite it being very touristy and whore infested, to go to Phonsavan. So I had one of those painful neverending busrides ahead of me. It started out pretty bad when I got ripped off by a tuk-tuk driver to go to the bus station. I thought I'd be going to the one that's more than 10km away, so I thought 20 000 kip was expensive but okay. Well, I wasn't going to that one but to another one that was only 2km away or something like that. Great! Well worth the 20 000 kip... Then, at the bus station, I was told that the 6:30 bus was broken so I had to pay the extra 25 000 for the 7:30 "VIP" bus that would actually leave at 6:30 (???) So I sat in the bus for 75 minutes until it left at...7:30! After the usual stops, to pick up people and junk, it quickly filled up and got really crowded. This time people were filling up the entire aisle and there wasn't much room for my legs or anything. By this time it had gotten so bad that I couldn't be annoyed anymore
Uhh... let's see here...
Our driver tries to figure out what's wrong. but only accept reality. I had a long 10 hours to look forward to.
It doesn't look like it's very far between Vientiane and Phonsavan when you check the map but it's mountain roads that just winds up and down, back and forth forever, so you can't really go fast either. I've heard of people being sick on these rides and I had a woman beside me, sitting on the floor leaning against her husband behind her, barfing in a plastic bag practically in my lap. Not very nice of course, but I felt more sorry for her than disgusted by the situation. After 10 hours of crawling along these roads while trying to catch a glimpse of the gorgeous scenery, there were some funny sounds coming from our vehicle. We stopped and the driver and some others took a look at the engine. Turned out the bus was finished and we had to wait for another one. Woohoo! So we waited around for 45 minutes or so until another bus showed up. We still had an hour's ride left and now it was dark. But hey, check this out folks! There was never any karaoke on that bus,
Eating joint in Phonsavan
Reminds me of my old flat as it was called "the Crater" back in the good ol' days. which might explain my very tolerant mood! However, on the new bus they gladly blasted that shit so I had to take at least one hour's worth of torture. It was really late when we finally arrived in Phonsavan so me and a dude I'd met on the bus checked in to the guesthouse by the bus station, sharing a cold but quite okay room.
The first day I moved to a dump in town and did nothing much but trying to figure out which sights to go to and how. All the things I wanted to see were scattered in different directions from town and very expensive to go to, so I settled for a tour visiting a field of craters, some village, a waterfall and Plain of Jars sight 1. The crater field was okay and our guide showed us some unexploded (supposedly) live bombies laying around in the field. Maybe it was true or maybe it was a thing to get us tourists excited... "Wow! What if we touch them and they explode and we all die!?"
Next up was the village of Ta Jouk (?) where they were supposed to have a lot of
War scrap everywhere
Phonsavan itself has more war junk than the villages you're supposed to visit on daytrips to see exactly that... war scrap. Well, not more than in Phonsavan itself... I felt really akward walking around this little village with a camera in hand along with my fellow farang. People were living here, going about their daily business and here we came to take pictures of it all. Felt a little bit too much like a zoo for me so I stuck to communicating with the cute animals. Among other creatures there were a bunch of puppies, kitties, tormented pigs (check picture) and coprophagous ducks!
Leaving the village we headed to the highlight of the day: the waterfall. I never caught the name of it but it was nice. It wasn't so much the waterfall that was so fantastic but the trek getting there and away. I really enjoy those treks were you don't have a paved road or something like that leading to your goal. Here we had to actually climb up parts of the waterfall to get back, really cool! And yeah, the waterfall looked really nice. Everybody but me and a German girl took a swim in the ice cold water. Maniacs... I really had enough of the cold in my room (piece of shit).
Lastly
Was ist das?
What the hell is that outside my hotel window??? we went to the plain of Jars sight 1, which was so so. A bunch of stone Jars on a field, so what? At least now they've developed a theory about these jars being burial urns as they've found some cremated remains in some of them. There's also a cave adjacent to the field where they supposedly cremated people before dumping them in the jars. We watched the unspectacular sunset over the field and headed back for some BBQ back at Kong Keo Guesthouse.
Unfortunately the crazy Kong brothers broke out the ol' Lao Lao in addition to the Beer Laos I was drinking, so I got really hammered and the next day I had to pass on leaving with the early bus as my head was throbbing like one of those flesh sticks in a blue movie. Most of the day was spent shivering in my cold room trying to sleep off the hangover. What a nice way of enjoying a day in Laos!
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Bomb Tech
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Those Bombies were alive
I worked in Laos for two and a half years as a Bomb Disposal Supervisor. Those BLU26/36's were live and if you did take the chance and pick one up you had a 50/50 chance of turning into pink mist.