Advertisement
Published: December 17th 2008
I've been thinking of doing my own version of the Lonely Planet guidebook, based on places I've stayed at or/and seen, but I'm just too lazy to keep a good record of things and I can't remember the names of places I've stayed at (or remember to grab a business card...) But bad experiences, which fuels me with hatred and disgust, always inspires some writing! 8-)
First of all, after spending a little bit more than a week in Laos, I have to don my mythbuster hat and proclaim the "wonderfully friendly" Laos to be a pile of horseshit! I do NOT find people more friendly here than anywhere else in the world. On the contrary, people tend to be rude and grumpy when you want to do business with them. Take this piece of shit place I'm staying in right now for example: The Soulinsouk Guesthouse in Savannakhet (there are two of these but I'm referring to the one further away from the bus station). First a little setup:
I was leaving Tadlo at 8:45 in the morning to catch the "bus to Savannakhet". Well, turned out it only went as far as Pakse and there I had to wait for over two hours before the idiots decided to start the transfer bus rolling, but that's just how it is here in Laos. I love waiting... I had the pleasure of listening to some moron testing the bus station sound system during this time: "Hallo! Hallooo! Haaalloooo-o-o-oo!" There's also an echo added to the mic, that's right - to the mic, it's NOT a natural echo. Who's brilliant idea was this? They mixed this "sound check" up with playing some crappy radio, of course loud and distorted. When we finally got rolling it took us about 45 minutes to get out of the small town of Pakse, because we had to stop everywhere to pick up people and crap loaded onto the bus. Yes folks, of course it was the famous local bus! The mouthbreathers even turned the damn bus around and drove back to a gas station to fill it up. I guess they forgot earlier... By now I knew I wouldn't have any chance of going straight to Sepon, which was the initial plan. After a couple of hours of this slow ride I began to worry that we wouldn't even make it to Savannakhet before dark. Of course I was right. Just 30km from town we made a longer stop loading sacks of God knows what onto the bus - IN THE AISLE OF THE BUS! Fortunately some people had gotten off earlier so there were no people sitting on plastic chairs in the aisle anymore. That's right, the bus is never too full! There's always room somewhere. So the vendors invading the bus crawled on top of these sacks to stick their hygenic sticks of meat in our faces.
So I arrived in darkness, tired and hungry, having no idea where I was or where to go. After asking around awhile I finally found someone who could speak a little English and could point me in the general direction of the city center, 2km away... So I started walking with my 30kg kit. I'll be fine I thought. Hell, I've already done a 2km walk with all my bagage this mornig walking to the bus in Tadlo. But now I didn't have a clear destination. I needed to find a cheap guesthouse pronto. Unfortunately the places I passed had signs like "X Guesthouse 200m" which meant I had to walk this extra distance off the main road just to find some overpriced dump. After a couple of these detours I'd lost my temper and my shoulders and neck were really starting to hurt from the weight I was carrying. Fuming with anger from not finding any place where I could finally drop my heavy bags and start looking for a place to eat, I finally walked into this place, the Soulinsouk. A lady showed me a room that she wanted 50 000kip for but agreed to 40 000 if I dropped the hot shower. Sure, deal! But when I was about to pay, that didn't fly with the idiot guy who seemed to be in charge. So after some arguing (sign language here, no English...) I was shown another room for 40 000. OK, fine. I paid, brought my stuff up there and went to the bathroom, but when washing my hands the water started to splash everywhere. Great! The fucking sink is broken! Extremely annoyed I went back downstairs and complained. The moron guy came up with me to check the sink and "fixed" it...for 5 seconds... I desperately tried to harness my annoyance and reason with the cocksucker in a civilized way and was politely asking for another room. This maggot piece of shit didn't want to do this! So I told him to give me another room right away or knock off 10 000kip of the price or I would get the fuck out of there, with my money back! Reluctantly he showed me another room - with the same leakage!!! It felt really invigorating arguing with this shit for brains when all I wanted to do was get some dinner. He finally showed me a room with a working sink, while mumbling some Lao profanities aimed at me (judging from his mood at least). What a piece of human waste! HE was grumpy that I didn't want to accept a faulty room. Ah, what lovely and "FRIENDLY" service! I'm moving the fuck out, right now! Bad luck for me, as I wanted to find a decent place so I could leave my big backpack for a couple of days, while travelling to Sepon, and then return to same place. Not gonna happen now...
PS. I now see how ironic it was for me to leave Don Det because of the roosters and hard bed. Roosters are EVERYWHERE here and ALL the beds are hard pieces of shit!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.063s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0414s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
ivanhoe
non-member comment
what kind of moron travels with a 30 kg backpack?? what kind of asswit would be bitching just about everything when traveling?? the worst kind, the real human waste.