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Published: January 28th 2010
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A tuk-tuk arrived to take us to the bus station at the appointed time, but we still waited around once we got there for the driver to lash our bags to the top of the mini-van we would be taking across the country. Seeing crowds of people approaching we got some sensible seats, but in retrospect they were not the greatest choice for me due to the lack of leg room. We eventually left and headed straight up into the mountains. The scenery was pretty amazing, but I couldn’t see much of it due to the low windows. The road curved around hills and went through several mountain villages where highland Lao eked out an existence.
After a few hours of twists and turns we reached a small town where we stopped for a break. There wasn’t much to do and it was too early for lunch so we just wandered around aimlessly.
Eventually the driver came back and we carried on, the road becoming yet more twisty as we headed south. We turned east at Phou Khoum and stopped an hour later above Nam Chat, a village squatting in a valley between the last of the hills. The view was nice, but there was nowhere to sit or hide from the heat of the sun, so we didn’t have any lunch there.
From that point we drove on all the way to Phonsavan, the twisty roads ending as we cleared the last of the hills.
When we arrived we were swarmed by people trying to persuade us to stay at their hostel. Most of them seemed to be different adverts for the same place, but to keep everyone happy we agreed to look at them all. (By which I mean Sammy would look and I would bravely guard the backpacks because taking off and retying my shoelaces every time would have been tiresome.) The Lonely Planet had strongly recommended a place some distance away, so we eventually found our way out there. The twin rooms were in fact little bungalows out the back of the main building. They didn’t look like much and perhaps we wrongly assumed we were missing some charming quality that the guide book authors had picked up. It would be some hours later before we realised they were simply wrong.
After checking in we went for a wander, looking for banks (all closed by that time) and then into the information centres for the Mines Advisory Group and other charitable groups. These were both interesting and sad, providing some fairly gruesome reminders of the effects of unexploded ordnance from America’s Secret War in the 60s and 70s. We stopped at the MAG office to watch a film and then had dinner at the café next door before returning to the hostel to watch a film on Sammy’s laptop.
By now we were thinking the hostel was a bit grotty - the sink in the bathroom leaked on to the floor, the walls had holes through which mosquitoes could come and go at will, and the bed linen did not look entirely fresh. Fortunately we had ways of avoiding most of these problems. What we did not anticipate was something that turned up in the middle of the night.
I tend to sleep quite lightly so when some plastic bags started rustling in the middle of the night I thought, at first, that Sammy had got up to retrieve something. However, she mumbled something so was clearly still in bed. When I turned the lights on all was still. Slightly worried by the possibility there was a LARGE spider creeping around I found it hard to get back to sleep, and various noises from outside the little bungalow made it all the more difficult to entirely dismiss what I thought I had heard. I retrieved my torch and dozed off. Half an hour later there was another rustling and my torch revealed that a packet of biscuits Sammy had left in her bag had fallen to the floor. I had noticed them earlier stuck behind the table and assumed it was just gravity. Phew! Time to relax. Lights off. Half an hour later there was another rustling sound, and it was definitely getting much closer to me. Lights on. The packet of biscuits had mysteriously moved half way across the floor and was now near my bed. I think I stared at it for a while before deciding that whacking it (and anything that might be under it) with my shoe was the best option. The innocent packet of biscuits was crushed, but nothing happened. I stared at it for a while longer before turning my torch off again, wondering whether I was the victim of a strange practical joke or an invisible cockroach. Five minutes later there was some pronounced scuttling and bumping and this time my torch caught the tail end of a large rat running up the wall and out of one of the holes in the ceiling! Sadly I didn’t get a picture of it, and it continued scampering around outside (and possibly inside) the building for the rest of the night. Needless to say we refused to pay full rate when it came to time to pay up the next morning. The Lonely Planet will no doubt receive a complaint…
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