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Published: September 21st 2008
Full moon
on the 4000 Islands. And so in quick progression (due to the democratic process of petitions you facebookers!) we hit the next blog!!
Having arrived in Vietienne after a hectic and extreme sports day, we set about finding some cheap, clean, and good accomadation. We quickly realised that 5.30pm was not the best time to arrive in the city, as all the cheap places were already full, and you could see by the panicing rush of people that places were getting tight. Me and Macca left the group to patrol the area and find some accomodation, finally securing some rooms at the Ministry of Information and culture. This was not an exteneded part of the governments sleeping program, rather an imaginatively named guesthouse, albeit with no culture, and limited information. It did however have satelite TV and aircon! the name Misnistry of Aircon and TV obviously wasn't as appealing.
After settling in we headed off down to the Mekong river to find some food and drinks, and we eventually found ourselves boarding an old cruiser for a free night time cruise down the river with some food. The cruise being an hour we set about ordering some food and drinks with relish, and
had some good food and cheap beerlao. By the time we got back the food had just been consumed and we got off quickly, mainly because they missed half the food off the bill and we didn't want to get caught! We found ourselves in a decent cocktail bar, Martini's where we decided to celebrate Craig and Macca's impending departure with some expensive cocktails, and found ourselves upstairs with the young and the restless of Laos. It seems this bar was the haunt of the Diplomatic and NGO's children, most of whom seemed to be in thier mid to late teens, and we watched with mounting amusment as they got drunk very quickly, and had bowls put in thier area for any 'unfortunate' incidents. Apparantly when they are in there with thier parents they are completely different and hardly utter a word. When the rabble had gone Macca soon persuaded the barman to let him show off his cocktail skills, mixing up some fair immitations with limited goods, mojito's, long island ice tea's, and some blue drink, soon hit the bar. It was a good send off, finishing off with some beerlao on the balocony overlooking the dead quiet streets
Giant Pumpkin
In the Buddha Park (park full of Buddha's) of Vientienne. they have a 12 O'clock curfew here in Laos, so when i say quiet, it was!!
We said our goodbyes the next day to Macca and Craig, having spent the afternoon relaxing and playing some pool on the best table we have seen since leaving England, and waving them off to Thailand.
We next day the remainder of us haggled (we learnt a lot from macca's style) a tuk tuk driver down to take us to the Buddha Park, (also known as Wat Xieng Khuan ) apparantly a park @30KM out of town which was filled with statues and the such from Buddhism and Hinduism. Not really knowing what to expect we turned up, and found a pretty impressive array of sculptures, all ornate and bizarre in design, which look centuries old, but are only around 30 years old. This is confirmed by the fact that the ones falling down had bricks in the middle!! One statue resembled a giant ball and you could climb through, round the demons, gods and animals and up to the top for a lovely view of the park. We got some pretty good photo's (well carol did!)
After the
Some weird statutes
All inside the giant pumpkin hectic mornng we decided to stop at the greatest temple in Laos, the most important site of all, the BeerLao factory. The tour was free, and we was greated with a couple of cold free beers to wet the pallet before the guide. We had a tour of the factory, unfortunately we didn't get to see the brewing process, i think because they thought some of us might swan dive into the vats! But we got to see the bottling and filling plant, which interested me more because it reminded me of all things work like!
We spent the next few days in and around the city unfortunatley saying goodbye to everyone we had met on the slow boat, everyone having thier own itineries, time scales and places to go, so we said goodbye to Ville, Louise, Jordan, Jamie, and Rick, hoping to meet up in later places where our paths cross.
We had long decided that the last few weeks had caught up with us being a bit older than the others so we booked tickets down to the 4000 Islands on the cambodian border in the south. We left at 7pm for the main bus station
to get our overnight bus, a sleeper bus, this sleeper cost $1 more than a convential bus as it had beds on it. Genius. Sheer Genius. We got on and found ourselves a nice bed by the door, stretched out and looked forward to the next 12 hours of comfort. Well, Almost! Apparantly we had seat numbers and were eventually ejected by a very determined local lady to another seat, which wasn't quite as good as the bottom half of the bed was underneath the bed in front, so we spent the night entertaining ourselves by cursing the other women and dreaming bad things about her lol. It was the best bus journey so far and we slept pretty well from 12am to arriving in the bus station at 6am, from here we picked up another bus to the village by Don Det arriving to get a boat across at 10.30 am. We hit a bit of a jackpot here as we got ushered onto a longtail boat operated by a german guy, pretty unusual but we immediately thought he world know all the best places to stay, so when he asked if we had anywere in mind, what we
were looking for etc we gace him some details as follows
1. Cheap (my condition)
2. Good View (carols condition)
3. Hammocks (joint decision)
4. Good Food (also joint decision)
We ask for little, and he said, $2 a night ok? I bit his hand off and we soon headed across the Mekong towards Don Det, rocking up at some bungalows named Boun Tip on the east of the island, not surprisingly he owned them!
We had a look around, a little dubious as there was no toilet in the bamboo bungalow, no fan, no electricty and the toilets were basic. The rest of the group were the same but the quiet beautiful location sealed the deal and we decided to stay. I think the words "we'll put up with it for 3 days, then make a move, same as the others" came out of our mouths. You can tell how much we loved it as we crowbarred ourselves out after 7 days!!
Don Det is located in the Si Phan Don area of the Mekong where in the 60 km long stretch of river it splits in various waterways seperated by islands and sandbanks into a
14km wide waterway, culminating at the 14km wide set of falls and rapids into Cambodia. To say it's laid back is an understatement, i think the guide book says something aong the lines of 'so chilled you'll turn into a icicle'. Thats true!
We spent the first day relaxing, recovering from the bus journey, having lunch and then finally getting stuck in the restaurant playing Uno as it rained so hard, with some friends we met on the bus coming down, Ben, Amy, and Katie.
The generator kicks in about 7pm - 10.30 when the islands community demands they all be shut down due to the noise. From this point if your staying up, it's candles, torches, and quiet music from the ipod and speakers only! From our early reservations we actually loved this basic way of living. Happy was the word!
The only noise at night was the river quietly rushing by 2m from the front of the hut, and the sound of S.E. Asia's biggest waterfalls in the distance, the noise of the mekong crashing down the falls at the height of the rainy season made a quite the sound. We quickly learned in the following days
Our new tuk tuk driver
check out that happy face! to leave the door open, to let the moonlight into the bungalow and a soft breeze, only to be woken by rainfall at night or the bungalow next door snoring. OK that was me, and it was our neighbour who complained!
We became quite the communtiy with the other long termers and neighbours Aaron, Adeaide and Mr Bez.
The day after arriving we hired some bikes, and set of on the motorway that goes round the island, the 0.5m wide path. We headed straight round to the french built bridge connecting Don Det to Don Khon, and crossed and then headed down towards the falls, passing an old decrepit steam engine left behind years before. The french had grand ideas of opening up the Mekong to trade with China, main problem being the many rapids making it unnavigable, so the french built a landing stage at the bottom of the falls, a crane, and a train line crossing the islands to the other side of the falls to transport the cargo. This is now rusted and dissapeared, but still remains Laos's only railway system to date.
We rode across the Island to the falls, with the rising noise
Sleeping Bus
Like i said Genius announcing our approach, we finally saw the falls, and it was quite the sight, thousands of tons of water crashing over, the rainy season meaning not only was the water high, it was also brown as well, picking up the silt from the hills and washing it downstream. Apparantly in the dry season the falls are higher (the water level downstream being lower) and the water blue, however the sheer ferocity was stunning. However, looking out to the left was an even better sight, falls and rapids stretching into the distance towards the mountains which blocks the Mekongs path and diverts it southwards.
Being the long term travellers now, we believe ourselves up to date with scams, schemes and money making ideas. We weren't altogether prepared for the 3 kids who run over to us and started enthusisatically playing with us, and pulling us by our hands down the track. Being the suckers we are we believed they wanted to play with the Falang (foreigner) in pure innocence. No they led us to thier mums restaurant. Ah well, we bought a drink, gave them some cocunut and watched them torment the lcoal ducks and chickens, pulling thier feathers out,
and being scamps. In punishment I swirled one of them by his hands in the air until i was dizzy. He enjoyed in too much though and the rest of the kids demanded the same. Oops. We excused ourselves and got out of there, getting away without being coerced into buying lunch as well by the cute kids.
The guy's we caught the bus left after 2 nights, with us agreeing that we would see them, maybe in the next few days up on the Bolavan plateau, we promised, "yeah, we'll be there" As they left, none other than Arthur turned up and moved in next door, a welcome addition to the communtiy!
The next few days we got fully into the Island life, enjoying cycling rounds the island, contemplating the days objectives, maybe one day going to the Bakery (i got a slight addication to thier carrot cakes, surprise) another day going to use the internet in the main village 1.5km up the path, we began to believe in small steps throughout the day, preferring to relax in our hammocks next to each other reading a book, listening to some music, chatting to the neighbours, enjoying beer
Our home for a week
Basic but we loved it o'clock at 4, promising to leave the next day. Maybe.
The sunset trip up to the other side of the island delayed us again, Mike the owner, his wife Tip, Bez, Adelaide, Aaron, Artha, and Lim jumped into Mikes boat and cruised up river to a sand bank in the middle of the river, jumped out, grabbed the eskie, and sat on the small island, and enjoyed the quiet. The sunset wasn't all that due to the rain clouds gathering, but we had a nice evening none the less.
Carol here, just making a quick entry as Rich didn't come with me to the very early, and pretty local, Buddha Day celebrations. It invovled an early start where me and Adelaide, dressed in sensible clothing, caught a boat down the river to what we thought would be close to the temple. Incorrect! We had been given a tray of offerings and told under no curcumstances could we drop it. All very well except we had a quarter of a mile walk in the wet and very uneven mud, to the temple. Adelaide took responsibility for the tray most of the time and we finally arrived, late but with
a complete offering. Phew! Was really interesting to watch the locals with the monks as they prayed/chanted and sent up their offerings and then everyone ate what was left and shared food with each other, including us. There wasn't many other Falang there so we felt pretty honoured to be invited along but soon realiaed it was just so we could document it in photo's. We gathered this after many locals jabbed us in the ribs making the international sign for take a photo and pointing at the monks. Of course we felt pretty odd taking photo's as everyone else was chanting but we did as instructed. The sharing of food was also an experience as we didn't want to be rude by refusing but it wasn't exactly appetising. Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, banquet scene. It wasn't quite so bad but was pretty close. After two hours we headed back and then I returned to the closing celebrations in the evening, this time with Athur in tow. Now this was just downright dangerous!! The closing ceremony had a fire theme to it.....and involved setting things on fire and fire crackers.....and not in a controlled way. It
was bedlum!! Children, teens and even monks, all throwing bangers into crowds of people....throwing them at us.....apparently Buddha keeps you safe.....bugger that! Part of the tradition is to do three laps of the temples but I'm tellin' you, these monks were evil and wouldn't let up so I only mananged two before I headed back into the temple (which was wood btw....slightly unnerving but better than outside) and hid behind an elderly lady, serving well as a sheild. As soon as the chanting started, we were out of there.....dodging crackers as we ran, covering our heads! Phew......we survived, slightly shaken, but OK! ha ha ha
The sunday roast being produced just along the path delayed us fully by 2 days, one to stop and have the roast, the next day enjoying the digestive process. The roast was not only cheap but a nice occasion, the Island's long term residents gather for a roast cooked by a scouser on the south, chicken roast with Bisto Gravy (no more dreams for C) roast spuds, veggies and stuffing!! YEAY!! We got to know some hilarious people, got engaged in the islands gossip (none of which i can mention of course) and had
a lovely afternoon.
We finally forced ourselves to leave on our 7th day, with most people leaving on the same day or the day before. We booked a ticket to Pakse to the north, left at 11am, still umming and ahhing to stay 'just one more day' we got in the boat and told Mike to leave before we changed our minds again!
We had every intention of getting to Pakse and arranging our trip east to the Bolavan Plateau, but discussing it on the way meant a change of heart. I had wanted to get some bikes and do a 3 day loop of the area, however it being the rainy season and our wet stuff being in Bangkok was it worth it?? Could i handle Carol calling it the Volavant Platter for 3 days? The final answer was no, so we immediately booked an overnight Bus to Hue in Vietnam for 7pm. We inadvertantly booked the local bus due to some confusion, however not to worry we thought, we can handle it, how bad can it be? BAD!! Thats how Bad. We got a tuk tuk out to the bus station, and found the small bus,
chucked our bags to the driver and got on. The seats were the main problem, the only free ones being towards the back. Sitting down was the problem as we could just about get our legs inbetween the seats. We looked at each other, thought about being on the bus for the next 16 hours, got off and tried to find someone who spoke English so we could get the later VIP bus, as no one spoke english it was nigh on impossible so we got on again and tried to get a seat each, luckily for us the bus boy saw our predicament and moved us into someone else's seat by the door where we some more leg room. We noticed we were the only falang on the bus, and was the source of some interest to our fellow passengers, about 20 of us crammed on the bus. We laugh about chickens on the roof, well this one had 4. It was uncomfortable but bearable and we set off just after 7pm heading up to the border, we had been told we would hit the border around 5am, wait for an hour or 2, then cross, continuing our journey
south to hit Hue at 11am the next morning. We pulled up at a small place at around 1am, jumped off expecting some food for 30 mins or something, get back on and continue, standard overnight bus practice. At this point we was confused because people started dissapearing upstairs, others occupying the seats on the bus in a 'head down i'm going to sleep' fashion. Ah, this is the border. Ah, we have 5 HOURS here! we pushed back onto the bus, evicted the old women who had taken up residence on our seat and sat down in the heat of the bus........eventually i gave up and got out and sat outside leaving carol to sleep, found a seat, got out the ipod and put on 300 to relieve the boredom, quickly making friends with a local guy who watched it with me, not understanding a word of what was going on. That used up 2 hours.
The little town was deserted apart from the 2 goats wandering the streets, and the local soldier who kept on riding past looking at me. It was a bit of a desperate night, and having promised ourselves after the Botswana hitching incident
that we would never sleep on a bus again, we did. We live, we learn, we make the same mistakes again and again!
The next morning we headed to the border 5 minutes away dodging scams all the way, experiencing only what i can call extreme culture shcok in reverse. We had got so used to the Laos quiet way of life that we were slightly unhinged by the constant harasement by the locals, 'hey you mister' 'where you go' 'you germany' Was it Carols blond hair? Was it my beard? My pot belly? Why did everyone think we were German? Carol eventually told me they were saying "you change money"!! AAH!! "YOU CHAN MONEE" where you from etc etc the border gave us a harsh introduction to Vietnam.........will we like this place? Will we enjoy? Well find out in a few months when we post our next Blog!!
Lots of Love from us both, to you all in the rainy UK!
Rich and Carol xxxxxxMWAHxxxxxxxx
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ma and pa
non-member comment
we think vietnam will a bit to american !
It was great reading blog ,we still like our 3 *but would love the peace of some of the places.Wethink you will find hue to american wanting tips all the time. I bet you will not be able to fit into the cu chi tunnel ? Hope you you go to hanoi 1 and have a beer and think of us..... and are you going to Uncle ho chi .and has he aged . ? and fire works also for happiness. can chen .cheersand bia ,beer . a bit of vietnamase.......love ma and pa xxxx