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So, since we last wrote, decided to take a bike out again and explore even more of Southern Laos!
It was a 5 day figure of 8 we ended up doing, and it was brilliant!
The first day we got up at 6.00 but spent a while buying things for our trip (like rain macs (always useful!) and extra petrol should we run out! Haha, and knowing Ben's embarassingly long track record of running out petrol!)
We set off happy to be on a good (well,... surfaced) road heading towards Pahxong (Paksong).
We intended to visit a couple of waterfalls, but ended up stopping off to see 4 stunning waterfalls. We didn't get to Paksong until 3.00 keen to buy some of the famous coffee, but failed spectacularly, so continued on to Sekong. It was a nice ride, but started to get really cold towards the end, having to get dressed up in our winter clobber, (for those of us that had jumpers!). Shattered, we ended up getting an early night!
The next morning, we were up early again with big plans for the day! We drove from Sekong to Attapeau,
with a few diversions on the way.
Our first stop was a waterfall, which was nice, "Same,same, but different!"
The second stop, again another waterfall! But we thought we would explore a local village on the way. We saw a sign for the waterfall and ended up riding down a very small track that was leading in and out of peoples gardens or yards, great fun until we came to an abrupt stop. Turning around we saw we had a puncure on the back wheel. Great. A tiny village in the middle of no-where and we get a puncture!
At this point a little old lady decided to take advantage of our unfortunate situation and thought this to be a good time to try and sell us a weaving she'd made.
We tried (with the help of our useless phrasebook) to explain the situation to her (just in case it wasn't clearly obvious in itself!) She didn't seem to care that much, or even whether we would even be able to take her weaving home with us with a flat tyre, so we did the only thing we could in a situation like that and went
shopping! We bought this weaving for $3, hoping she'd go and get some help. She didn't. However a guy came over offering to fix it for a dollar so we jumped at the chance!
Lots of smoke and burning of rubber. Ben was intrigued, with Hannah offering "Is that the way it's supposed to look/smell, Ben?!" Ben, not wanting to either not worry Hannah or dent his male pride, just nodded.
15 minutes later we were back on the road (path) that led to the waterfall, before finding our way back onto the road on the proper track that for some funny reason came out onto the road before the sign. What is the point in the sign!!!??
We carried on down until we were 25km outside of Sekong where we turned South and headed down a dirt track where we knew there would be some amazing waterfalls. Along the way we saw a stunning view from the road of a waterfall in the distance. The impressive waterfall was meant to be another 1or 2 kms down the road, so we carried on. Then puncture Number 2 happened! This couldn't possibly be in a worse place. We
had been on this road for a couple of hours and only one car had passed, which was carrying on in the wrong direction!
We got off and carried down back the way we had come hoping to bump into another backpacker also hoping to see the waterfalls, but it's not exactly Alton Towers out here and people were few and far between!
We had been walking for about threequarters of an hour when finally a pickup came down the track, heading back the way we came from! Delighted, Hannah managed to flag it down and although it was a "mini" pickup, the friendly family bundled inside the cab, came out to rearrange water bottles, pineapples and birdcages to accomodate us and the bike!
They dropped us off at the junction, where a man did a very thorough job of checking the tread and replacing the inner tube. We decided no more dirt tracks for the day and carried on down south another 45kms to Attapeau.
Once there we had a much needed drink on the river and watched the sunset over the river Se Kong.
The third morning we woke up and
puncture Number 3 was waiting for us. So we decided to get the rubber tread replaced. At first the boy repairing the bike thought that pumping up the tyre was good enough. Ben tried explaining that it wasn't, which was helped by the lower wheel slowly sinking down as they spoke.
Eventually the father came out and after a lot of pointing and terrible Laos pronounciation from the phrase-book we got there. Though we're quite sure they thought we were mad for wanting to change a perfectly good tyre!
So we were off! and praying that we had no more puncture "adventures"!
We rode out to a village called Pa-am, possibly one of the remotes villages in Laos. The dirt track was terrible, and the river at the end totally uncrossable, so we didn't manage to get to it, but we did find a really cute village just before, where we stopped off for a bit, and explored. Some of the Ho Chi Minh trail is still used, in that it's not overgrown here, so we tried to find some of that, again going down little paths linking villages together. We kidded ourselves that we were on
part of it, but we wouldn't have a clue!
We made our way back towards Attapeau, along the way passing a water truck that was wetting the road, turning it into a red ice-rink (why would you do that!?)
Once in Attapeau, we took a "ferry" across the river to visit another village called Phu Vong, one of the most heavily bombed areas during the Indochina War. Riding down the dirt track leading there, the landscape around us was full of craters and when we did finally get there found the people really unfriendly towards us. It was creepy. We were desperate to find a friendly face, rode around for a while, and thankfully found some smiley faces, not many, but we didn't spend much time here before heading back to the ferry.
We seemed to have downgraded whilst we were on our visit to the village; when we got to the riverbank, the only thing we could take over to the other side was 2 longtail canoes with a plank of wood over the middle that you could perhaps comically call a catermeran! We tried not to move around on it too much as it took us to the otherside of the river!
Once back in Attapeau we made our way back towards and onto the dirt track we got a puncture on yesterday, determined to see the waterfall. We stopped off along the way to take a nervous look at the sky, and put macs on, - a funny sight in itself, - Ben wearing Hannahs child sized kagoul, and Hannah wearing a huge poncho so that she could put the rucksack underneath!
We managed to get to see the waterfall, which was worth it, but the clouds started to look pretty angry so we pressed on, on the same track leading all the way back to Paksong. The views were or would have been stunning as we crept though the mountains towards the Bolivan Plateau. We got to see some great vistas before the torrential rain hit us feeling like a milllion injections everywhere! Not the most comfortable of rides. The red track we were riding on quickly became a river that, at times, took up the whole width of the track. We were cold, tired (you get the idea!)
About 10kms before the end of our journey we hit some "surfaced" road that was ironically harder, and slower than the track, with potholes taking over more of the road than surface! It became a giant slalom that took us back to Paksong, and a total free-for-all (if it wasn't already) as to which side of the road you drove down.
We made it to Paksong 2 hours later than expected at 5.00 so found one of the only guesthouses there. The only thing to eat was soup, so we both had that, making our 2 meals of the day both noodle soup, but went to bed dreaming of proper food. A power-cut meant no hot shower to warm us up either!
On the fourth morning, we made our way to Tad Lo. Same story as yesterday, we got onto a dirt track and the heavens opened. Nightmare. We made it there eventually, and the rain stopped. Typical. Stayed in a nice guesthouse overlooking the gorgeous waterfall and river. They had good cheap food, steak and chips for 70p, we stocked up!!
In the afternoon we explored a few more local villages and visitied a couple of waterfalls in the area, and then just relaxed.
Day 5. We made our way back to Paxse after the powercut in the middle of the night meant the fan didn't work. Must have been a funny sight, the blind leading the blind trying to open up the wooden shutters to get some air in, with horizontal fork lightning in the distance!
On the way we stopped off for a Pepsi at a beautiful waterfall, with an eco-lodge alongside. Really nice, we would have like to have stayed here for a night, but were running out of time. We carried on back to Pakse where we got a bite to eat before heading south to Champasak, and the Wat Phu Champasak, some Ankor-era ruins. We had to get another "catermeran" over the river again, and had a great time exploring the ruins before being ushered away by the rain clouds rapidly approaching us!
Back in Pakse our bike-renal man did a double take when he saw the muddy state of the bike we delivered to him. We then treated ourselves to a very nice hotel.
Today (Tuesday 5th June), we're heading South to Si Phan Don also known as Four Thousand Islands, where we'll be living out the short remainder of our Laos visa, (hopefully from a hammock).
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niki
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Wow !!!!!!1
What a great site. Fantastic guys. Haven't had time to read it all yet coz I'm at work but I have skimmed through the pictures and they're amazing. Looking forward to tea break for a good read. Take care of yourselves. Keep safe. Love Niki xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx