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Published: August 9th 2007
A Special Laos Welcome
It took a while to get them positioned properly, but I think the end result was worth it!!By the time our stay in Champasak had drawn to a close we were looking forward to be moving on. There isn’t a great deal to do there once you’ve taken in the sights of Wat Phou. We had intended to leave the previous day but it had rained so hard we thought it better to sit it out.
So sods law says that when you leave it a day because of the rain, guess what’s in store for the next morning?? It rained even harder! This time though we were going no matter what! It wasn’t as bad as we’d thought and by the time we had caught the ferry, jumped off by the first bus & jumped into a waiting second bus the rain had stopped! Our second bus shall be forever immortalized as the tardis! I sat next to a shopping basket full of live toads…..enough said!
Ever heard the expression “lost in translation’? After crossing the Mekong for the second time that day we had supposedly arrived at our desired destination of Don Khon only we caught a glimpse of a sign as we drove along the road which was proclaiming “Welcome to Don Khong???”
Where’d the extra ‘g’ come from”? Nevertheless it wasn’t the first time in Laos that the spelling of a place name had varied from guide book to sign post to map. So it wasn’t until we had checked in at a lovely riverside guesthouse that I noticed from the map displayed in reception that in fact we were on the wrong Island!
Don Khon, our intended destination was about an hour further down stream, but from our conversations with the boy child that hung around the guesthouse, Don Khon is just filled with ‘whities’ and it was much nicer where we were! And he turned out to be right too!
That afternoon I wondered downstairs to get a drink and noticed we had been joined by another whitie. With this alone in common we struck up a conversation about ourselves and where we’d been traveling. This was the first time we met Liz a really lovely lass from Birmingham who was about to go back to Aberdeen to start a PHD. Later on we were joined by Emily, Bev & Matt who had all just arrived in town and were wondering around checking out the sights. That evening
we continued our chat over dinner at Mr. Pongs only it wasn’t called Mr. Pongs it was just the name that Matt thought it was called and it sort of stuck. Great curry though and no after effects!
Over dinner we found out that we all wanted to see Don Khon the home of the Li Phee waterfall. So with numbers on our side we went to negotiate with our lady guesthouse owner. She was a right tough cookie, after some hard bargaining we agreed on a price that left everybody happy. In a weird way I think she sort of enjoyed our negotiations, as on agreement she settled back into her chair with a Mr Miaggi nod of the head as a slow warm smile, echoed in her eyes, came across her face almost to say. ‘Errmmmm, Daniel son, you have pleased me’!!
The boat trip to Don Khon took blooming ages! The wooden seats would have been better served as oars to get us there quicker! Ironically, an up turned oar is actually what they felt like to our sore backsides after the excruciatingly slow boat down to the Island. Our hard fought negotiations the previous
day, for what we thought was a guided tour, turned out to be a bit fruitless as upon arrival our limited English speaking tour guide just turned around and pointed along a path and said ‘You go’ Followed by ‘back here, four hour’ !! It became apparent that this was in fact a self guided tour! I could just picture Mrs. Miaggi rubbing her hands together chuckling to herself for getting the upper hand!!
Some basic knowledge about Don Khon for you. The Island, I think used to be a French colony. They proposed to use the Island as a shipping port up and down the Mekong to shorten the time to move goods instead of the lengthy coastal route. It turned out to be a bit of a damp squib as the Mekong proved in certain sections during raining season impassable and the route soon became redundant. The only ruminates that remain today are two rusted out locomotives at either end of the Island and a couple of once grand colonial houses.
The main reason most come here is for the laid back, chill out vibe. Accommodation is reasonable and the scenery beautifully relaxing. Our reason was
to see the Li Phee waterfall. And we weren’t disappointed, well I wasn’t!! It just went on forever. The Mekong seemed to congregate at the falls, but not in a traditional waterfall way i.e. wide river goes over edge of drop. It was far more impressive, more aggressive in the way it was spread out over such a vast area. Numerous small rocky Islands were separated by thundering channels of water and white knuckle rapids cascading around others, it really was cool to sit and just watch. It wasn’t until you stopped to really look at the falls that you noticed that there were people on these little rocky islands! Some were fishing and some were tending to cattle!! I couldn’t believe how they had got onto the Islands themselves let alone brought a heffing giant buffalo with them. It remains a mystery!
So after our guided tour! We settled back on our speedboat (I wish) for the trip back. Only this time we were going against the flow and thus the journey time would be doubled. Therefore on this occasion it would be more than just a journey. It would be a journey of self discovery, a battle
of heart over mind and I wasn’t looking forward to it!! Apart from the obvious agony of the aforementioned up turned oar seat, Mother Nature decided I needed a kick in the nuts and unleashed merry hell with the wind and rain! And guess who sat under the hole in the canopy!!! I would like to say at this point that the smiling faces of the little kiddies running along the river banks waving and shouting ‘Sabadee’ as we passed made up for all the shortfalls of this journey. And although in hindsight they did bring a smile to my face, at the time I was more concerned with the up turned oar seat turning into a blinking razorblade and I had become Mr. bloody sodden sore arse!! Moral of the story, always take the brolly even when everyone else says you won’t need it! And take a cushion when going on a longboat!
With a day of recuperation under our belts we took a walk to the bank and stumbled across the local tourism office. Queue next laurel and Hardy moment! What would you do if you saw three little wooden doors in the side of a rather
rundown and sorry looking French colonial house each with their own little sign above them reading as follows, Immigration Office, Office of Tourism and then Drugs and Trafficking!! Run? Turn around, leave? Of course not, you’d go in!! Why not? So as we walked closer to investigate this little man appears from behind a bush or something and asks how he can help. Ermmmm, well apart from explaining those door signs, we really didn’t want to know anything. We were just looking for something to do. We made a little small talk as he didn’t have the best English and our Lao is terrible. But he sort of seemed likeable enough so when he asked whether we wanted to go in, we said yes : S Inside the little room nestled between the immigration and the drug trafficking departments we sat on two old wooden chairs in front of a small wooden desk which our little friend hurriedly ran to sit behind. He was going to help us if we needed it or not!! We didn’t really know what to say so rather than just sit there and look at each other I explained that we would soon be going
to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. At this his little face lit up and he quickly came back asking whether we had any accommodation sorted. We hadn’t so on hearing this he got up and rushed over to the corner of the room to pick up a Vietnam airways bag filled with bits of paper. He rummaged through them for a bit before getting to the desired article. ‘Argh’! He says. ‘You stay here’. Handing us a glossy flyer, we were very honoured it was a prestigious invitation to the Angkor Wat World Conference. In 2005!! His time was up; it was definitely time to go! But sensing we were about to leave he fired out one last question. And I fell for it!! See he liked football a lot. Only he supported Man Utd and as you know I am a Liverpool supporter. And as it transpires with me speaking in broken English and him not really understanding it too well and with Laos may be being a little behind the times on player transfers the resultant conversation went something along the lines of the following: You Play? Yes. Michael Owen? (Thinking he meant who was my favourite player)
No. Steven Gerard. At this point he went for a piece of paper and pen saying at me ‘Steven Gerard, Steven Gerard? You sign please’? A little embarrassed I said no and with Jo killing herself laughing we quickly left! Only now do I look back and wish that I’d signed the piece of paper for him, what harm would it have done, but more comically what in the hell would Steven Gerard be doing in Don Khong?!!
Back at the guesthouse it was time to leave. We were trying to get back from whence we came to Pakse. We did gleam an important bit of information from our afternoon at the tourist office the previous afternoon by finding out that the local bus left from outside our guesthouse every morning at 8am. On repeating this to Mrs. Miaggi our guesthouse lady, she once again leaned back and smiled a knowing smile and said that she was going to Pakse today herself and for a mere 6 times the price of a bus ticket she would take us too!! Errrrrr no thanks! I told her that we would be fine with the bus. She pushed the point a bit
saying. ‘Mine is new minibus, aircon, lots of room, I take you straight to your guesthouse’? Long story short, we ended up paying her a hundred Kip for the ride, which was a little more than the bus, but hey she promised so much!! What she didn’t promise was that she’d be taking her mates too!! And not just any mate, the fattest one she knew!! The minibus turned out to be a pickup. A new one at that, with air-con but with only a limited amount of space in the back we were a little distraught and in some discomfort when she shoehorned her fat mate followed by her fat kid into the back alongside us!! The journey to Pakse was a little cramped to say the least and when I looked at Jo I could tell from the way she looked back at me that she was thinking that we should have caught the bus. Not wanting to see the obvious reasoning behind this I tried to justify our….sorry my decision by saying that at least we’ll be there a lot quicker than the old bus we had overtaken some way back. Then right on queue, just as
I had finished my sentence we were left in a ball of dust as the rickety old bus roared passed.
We had been to Pakse (pronounced packs-say) before. We had previously set out for Champasak and Don Khon from Pakse after flying in from Luang Prabang. The first time we stayed here we had a bit of a nightmare finding accommodation. For some reason a popular guidebook had only recommended the scabbiest places in town and even though they were printed a couple years ago it’s hard to see how even back then these places would have been fit to house a rabid goat. I have come to realize that on arriving in a new town the best thing to do is to find a nice restaurant or café. Sit down and have a nice cuppa and while one of you watches over the bags the other goes walkabout to find a nice place to stay. On this occasion I found the Royal Pakse Hotel. The place was still wet from a recent refurb and considering it came with a double bed, a brand new bathroom, air-con and cable TV it was a pinch at 85,000 kip. I wanted
to mention the place as it was run by the family across the road from the Nazim Indian Restaurant and they had really looked after us. On our initial visit as well as being the first ever guests, we were the only people to stay at the newly named and decorated Royal Pakse Hotel. On our second visit we turned up on a Saturday morning with absolutely no money. We had run out of Kip and as it was the weekend, the banks were closed. Our hosts came to our rescue and we were entrusted to all our accommodation and food in exchange for a passport and our word that we’d pay our tab when the banks reopened on Monday. So thank you to the owners we hope that writing this will bring other people to your fine restaurant and hotel.
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