Day three, Attapeu


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Asia » Laos » South » Attapeu
June 13th 2008
Published: June 15th 2008
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We had decided not to set an alarm but were wide awake by 7am anyway. We watched a little bit of TV before setting off. The goal for the day was to find the village of Pha'am which apparently still has an anti-aircraft gun from the war. The village was meant to be about 35km from Attapeu but as our odometer ticked past 45 km alarm bells started ringing. We had asked for directions plenty of times and always been pointed in the direction we were headed. As the petrol guage dipped into the red we hit a large mountain and painfully made our way to the top, looking for Pha'am. At the top there was nothing apart from a lookout point and a pickup truck. Lucky for us the man with the truck was able to speak some english and told us that we had missed the village by a rather large margin. He drew us a map in the sand and it became apparent that the road had split about 10km from Attapeu and we had missed it.

As the pick up disappeared down the hill we reluctantly set off back the way we had come. To save fuel we free wheeled the bike 9km down the hill and then set off again, desperate to find fuel. Our trusty bike made it another 25km on its reserves to a roadside petrol seller and we gratefully filled the tank. From here it was a short ride back to the split and then another 30km down a muddy road to find the village of Pha'am. Rolling through Pha'am we found a dirt road to the side and as it looked the most likely we set off down it to find the AA gun. We made it about 85 metres before the back tyre started its worrying wobbling and we discovered flat tyre number two. We quickly whizzed back up the road on the last little bit of air and found a mechanic about 5 metres from the turn-off. He quickly took out the inner tube, found it was destroyed, put in a new one and pumped it up, and then charged us 30000 kip for everything, about 3 pounds 50 pence. Bargain! Asking for directions to the AA gun produced no results and after driving around for ages we decided to head back to Attapeu

After our extremely productive day of driving about 100km to get a flat tyre fixed we were glad to reach Attapeu and after a meal of Foe we made it back to our room just before the rains came again and spent a while sheltering in our room. We went for a quiet BeerLao before turning in and listening to the rains which continued for the next 10 hours.

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