Sweet Dreams and Coffee Beans

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How much does true luxury cost? If you're asking a proud new owner of a BMW or a Mercedes, they tell you a number that could no doubtedly feed all the hungry children here in Asia for years. If you ask Linds and I the same question, we would reply that true luxury only cost us $22.04 (150000 Laos Kip). To date we have been on more buses than either of us can keep track of and since we have nearly been puked on on almost as many buses as we've been on (seriously, it's got to be in the genes over here?!), we felt we deserved to treat ourselves for once. The answer: VIP overnight bus for our 10 hour journey from Vientienne to Pakse (pak-say). Complete with actual double beds and complimentary water bottles, mini cakes, yogurts and a hand towel. Yes we are truly living the good life over here now!
Arriving in Pakse (completely rested from our bus ride nonetheless!) at 6 am meant, as my father would say, we had our whole day ahead of us still. And what's the best way to start your day? Coffee of course! Lucky for us, Pakse just happens to be the hopping off point for people that are interested in exploring Laos' Bolaven Plateau: Laos Coffee capital! We rented a scooter (it's just not the same as a dirtbike) and made our way 40 km's east of Pakse to Paxane (pak-san) with great anticipation of sampling the freshest cup 'o Joe we would most likely ever have. It took a while to find someone who spoke any english for us to ask them where we could do a coffee plantation tour and much to our disappointment, it seems like we missed the 8 am start time for the daily tour at this particular plantation (read: regular house with a few coffee plants out back). We decided to stick around and sample some freshly brewed coffee anyways. The next thing we know, the owner of the house was shoving a cell phone in Lindsay's ear telling her that "Mr Coffee would like to speak with us!" The man on the other end of the phone, Mr Coffee as all the locals call him, is actually a Dutch fellow who has married a Laos woman (the woman who handed us the phone) and moved to the Bolaven plateau to start a coffee plantation. He explained to us that for 200,000 kip (~$30 CDN) we could do a whole day tour of his plantation, but we'd have to come back the next day. Prying a bit further, we asked if we could do a half day tour since we had already rented our scooter for the day. He said he'd be back from shopping soon and that he was sure we could work sopmething out. About 2 hours and 4 pots of coffee later (even foreigners can get sucked into "Laos time," which can range from between 1 hour to 2 days behind schedule depending on how urgent your matter is) Mr Coffee, or Coffee for short, finally showed up. He explained that he wouldn't be able to do a half day tour with us that day, but he brought his friend, Thao, to bring us around his plantation just down the road. Finally we would be able to learn about the little black bean! Our first lesson was that that little black bean actually starts out as a red or green cherry.
Some other interesting coffee facts:

• Coffee was introduced to Laos by France about 60 years ago when they colonized this country
• There are generally 2 types of coffee beans: robusta and Aribica.
• Robusta trees take 5 years to mature versus only 2 for Aribica and Aribica trees are much smaller and therefore easier to pick
• Robusta beans are smaller and worth more per kilogram (10000 kip = $1.50/kg)
• 1 hectare of land (roughly 2000 trees) should produce around 1 tonne of beans per season
• The life cycle of picking a bean until it can be roasted takes about 31 days; 21 days to dry the red cherries, then another 10 days of drying after the outer cherry has been shelled.
• Most, if not all of the coffee produced in Laos comes from the Bolaven plateau region and it is all organic (they don't use pesticides, but rather rodents keep the bugs away)
• Most Laos people don't actually drink coffee all that often
• If you ask for coffee with milk here it generally means half coffee, half condensed milk; take that Tim horton's Double Doubles! I doubt if Lindsay will ever be able to settle again for a coffee without some eagle brand in it back home. I on the other hand have learned to enjoy it black. Maybe this is why I'm now sitting 15 pounds lighter and she's roughly the same. Ha!

It's a ton of work to maintain the plantations and Thao does a lot of this work by himself. Everything in Laos for the most part (especially outside of the larger cities) is done all by hand. that means that every tree planted, every cherry picked is all done by hand! It's not a coincidence that Laos coffee is among the most expensive in the world. I know the two of us will certainly think about everything we learned this day the next time we're slamming back our large double doubles at Timmies!

4000 Islands

As there really isn't anything else to do in Pakse, we made our way the next day (after a cup of coffe with breakfast, of course) to perhaps the most lethargic place in Laos: Don Det. As the bold heading indicates, this is an area of Laos, where the Mekong river separates many times before emptying into cambodia over a ferrocious waterfall leaving behind spottings of tiny islands everywhere. On our first day there, we rented bicycles ($1/day) and cycled over to the waterfall. On the way we passed a small rusted out train which just so happened to be the only train and tracks that the French constructed during their occupation here and it connected these two islands for a total distance of about 5 km (i guess they were expecting this to be a big shipping route at one point; it never was, however). So what can one do with such a backdrop you may ask? How about once again hopping into an old tractor or bus innertube with a BeerLao in hand and meander aimlessly down the river. Sounded perfect to us, and so we did. Much unlike Vang Vienne, Don Det does not contain sprinklings of riverside bars along the tube route. In our opinion, this fits in a lot better with the ambiance of Laos as it is uncharacteristically laid back compared to the rest of Asia. Don't get me wrong, Vang Vienne is what it is and it was a blast, but it just seemed out of place here in Laos. Comparing the two would be like comparing spring break vacation at an all-inclusive resort to vacationing on a deserted island where there are no worries(or 4000 islands in this case). It was a place where you can let all of your worries melt away, or more accurately float down the river! Ever looking for new uses for ordinary things, I turned our dry bag into a portable stereo by placing our ipod and speaker into it to bring down with us. I'm guessing this is going to be a trend to catch on here in the next few years to i'm laying claim as it's original inventor now. I just hope that if it does catch on that it doesn't morph this place into Vang Viene's sequal. If we weren't floating down the river, we were swinging in the hammocks on our porch perched high over the river reading a book.
We only intended to spend a night or two here but because it's just so slow moving here, not to mention very easy on the pocketbook (we were spending only about $20-25 per day for the both of us; or roughly half of our normal daily budget and this even affored a couple of beerLao's with dinner even!) we left after overstaying our visas by 5 days (oops).

Next Stop: Siem Reap!

Traveller's Tips:

*Take the overnight bus from Vientienne to Pakse, you won't regret it.
*Do Not....I repeat, Do Not take the bus from Don Det to Siem Reap. You'd be much better off flying from Pakse for roughly the same price once you factor in all of the extra costs. If you still do choose this option, try to avoid taking a bus from the company "GST Express"....you'll learn why in our next blog!
*If your Laos Visa says it expires in 2 months from when it is issued, you still actually only have one month in the country!
After overstaying our visa by 5 lazy days (we thought we had 2 months, not one....oops)

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Photos

Fisherman at dusk
isn't net fishing cheating? Well i suppose it's better than using dynamite (this was commmon practice over this way not too long ago)

All you need....
Tube, check. BeerLao, check.

Freshly picked red cherries
The dark ones beside them are the dried version after 21 days

4000 Islands indeed
Some of them are very small at best

3 young kids in a boat
I doubt parents back home would let this situation fly.

Pig roast
Every couple of days one of the restaurants host a pig or goat roast. You have to get there early to get the best meat otherwise it's all fat. It was delicious.

Comments

[Coffee]

Coffee in Paksong.
Sorry that you had to wait while I was on my way back from my monthly shopping. But I'm sure that you liked my fresh roasted coffee and Thao's coffee farm. :P Next time when you are in the neighborhood I'll show you the coffee farming myself in Paksong, ok? Have a save journey. Coffee