Last Day in Laos!

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Greetings All!

Well after nearly 3 weeks of travel in Laos we have come to our last stop in the small city of Pakse that is situated near the Bolaven Plateau in Southern Laos.

Since my last entry (in Luang Prabang), we certainly have covered a lot of ground. The next stop was Vang Vieng, which to many is regarding as the 'party' place in Laos as you can do the famous 'tubing' down the Mekong River. I decided not to do the tubing as we honestly heard some horror stories about it. A couple of us decided to take it easy instead so we took a trip to the 'blue lagoon' nearby. It was a short tuk tuk ride to a nice chill out place that had a fresh water pool suitable for swimming in, surrounded by limestone cliffs, rice fields and a nearby cave. The surroundings were lovely! The rest of the group was daring enough to go tubing but thankfully everyone came back in one piece.

We only spent a night in Vang Vieng then we were off again to the capitol city of Laos- Vientiane.

I would have really like to have spent more than one night there as it was a lovely city, quite small, about 25km radius. However its buildings and architecture was much more sophisticated and modern than most of the small towns I had passed through.

We took a short city tour around to see some of the main attractions which included- the famous Golden Stuppa (the symbol of Laos culture), the victory arch (which has an uncanny resemblance to L'arc de Triomphe in Paris, and is referred to as the Laos version of it) and the huge temple. We also had a walk around some of the many clothing and silk boutiques which was nice.

The next day before we departed Vientiane, we also visited the COPE centre which is a charity based organisation that aids unexploded mine victims and traffic accident victims who require health care and prosthetic limbs.
To my horror I learned how Laos is actually the most heavily bombed city in the world. During the Vietnam War over 250 million mines or more accurately know UXOs (bombies) were dropped on Laos. To this date over 80 million are left unexploded and buried in the countryside and in the jungle were a lot of the poorer, rural and ethnic minorities live. The sad thing is there is money to be made in foraging for scrap metal, so rural villagers and even children forage for scrap metal very often in the forms of waste bomb material which results in unexploded bombies. It is a high price for them to pay as many loose limbs and even there lives!
Still the tour and centre was very informative and it was good to see that good work is been done to help these people become more aware of how dangerous Bombies are and they risks they present.

The next stop after the capitol, we journeyed to Tad Leuk waterfall situated in the national park of Ban Na. Here we actually went swimming beside the waterfall and camped out that night with the help of two park rangers. It was a good experience apart from the giant spiders and insects I saw! Also the heat factor meant that we didn't get much sleep!

Kong Lor was the next stop of the tour. The highlight here was the 7km cave that went through one of the mountains. It was the most eerie experience I have ever had. We took an hour long motor boat journey through the cave and for 90% of the trip it was in pitch blackness apart from the small light from a few torches! I enjoyed it in a thrilling / freaked out sort of way- don't think I will be repeating the experience anytime soon though.

That night in Kong Lor we were treated to a very cultural experience by the locals- which personally is one of my favourites experience so far. We were brought to a local Laos Family's household were an Elder of the home performed a 'Baci' ceremony on us. This basically involved a ritual of him saying prayers and mantras over us, while the family tied cotton bands around our wrist which has something to do with binding 'karma' onto us. We were told the prayers he said were for good luck on our travels. We also had to participate in the eating of sticky rice, eggs and the drinking of Laos rice whiskey. We have to leave the cotton bands on for 7 days, upon which, we untie them not cut them as this cuts the karma (or so we were told).

Unfortunately the next two stops Thakhek and Tad Lo, due to very heavy rain, we didn’t do much apart from take it easy. In Tad Lo the highlight was basically staying in a guesthouse beside waterfall- not to sound bored but at this stage I have seen so many waterfalls that it has reached saturation point ha!

However, to make up for the rainfall on our way to Pakse we stopped by a coffee plantation in the famous Bolaven Plateau in a place called Paksong. I didn’t realize until the tour that Laos yields 20% of the world’s coffee! A Dutch man who immigrated to Laos three years ago runs a small coffee farm and he gave us a guided tour of his plantation as well as the coffee making process. It was very interesting and I now know a lot more about coffee, as opposed to just ‘latte, cappuccino and espressos’!

And so we have arrived at our final stop Pakse. After spending over 8 hours travelling to Tad Lo on a pot hole filled road that was like Swiss cheese and trying to cross a river (whose bridge was underneath the water, by the way), while on a ferry that was basically a tug boat attached to a platform (that resembled something along the lines of steam boat willy)- we had enough of travelling on the bus. So we opted out of travelling to the last point on the tour which was supposed to be Don Det.

We are taking it easy today and have a flight booked tomorrow to Siem Reap, were we have also booked a luxury 4 star hotel with all the trimmings for 10 euro a night each!

We are spending four nights in Cambodia then flying out to Hanoi- Vietnam this Sunday.

I am looking forward to a change of scenery- literally.

Anyway I hope everyone is keeping well back in Ireland.

Take care and I will keep you posted-

Jennifer.X

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