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Published: October 10th 2012
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Hello Laos!
And all it took was a 3h bus ride, half of it from Ubon to the Chong Mek-Vang Tao border, and the other half to Pakse, a relatively prosperous Laotian city located at the confluence of the Mekong and Se Don rivers in the Champasak province in Central Laos, and often used by tourists as a staging point to nearby attractions.
The Laotian immigration counter at Vang Tao was something else. Not the typical counter where the immigration officer sits behind a desk and sizes you up before deciding to issue you a visa, this was more like a tourist attraction ticket counter where you can only peek at the immigration officer through a small opening at the bottom of the panel of heavily-tinted glass. I'm not sure if the officer can see the visitor clearly from behind the glass. In any case, I'm not sure if they're all that interested in looking at faces, judging from the actions of the Thais and Laotians who seemed to be regular crossers of the border. Instead of standing in line one-by-one, all they did were to deposit their passports at the opening, and then stood back waiting for them
Wat Phabad
You know you're no longer in Thailand when you see supposedly important temples not being that well-maintained. This one supposedly enshrines Buddha's footprint, I just don't know exactly where though! to be stamped before retrieving them again. This sure ain't no JFK or Heathrow airport immigration line!
On board the bus I sat next to a Japanese tourist who said he was visiting Laos (Pakse) and Cambodia (Siem Reap) during his week off from work. Interestingly, he proceeded to show me his passport, which was filled with visas from various places like Syria, Iran, Armenia, Russia, Taiwan, India and Nepal! He told me in the smattering of English he knew, "Every place, one week!" because he could only take that much time off work each occasion! He also told me that the prettiest women were to be found in Armenia ("Armenia, Number 1!"), and we both found out that we had gone to the same club in Taipei because we'd heard there were pretty show dancers there (Luxy)!
Anyway, back to Laos. This is actually my second time here. The first was in 2007, but then I had visited the north, so this time I wanted to check out the central/ southern region, and Pakse seemed to be the best launch-off point, especially coming from Isaan in Thailand.
Pakse itself is a rather quiet city, though there
Dao Heuang Market
The Laotian version of a hypermart! Super-sized, and selling everything a Laotian housewife could possibly want, and then some (confession: I bought some apples there)! are definitely signs of prosperity with a few large, luxurious-looking hotels, and a few quite stylish boutique guesthouses and cafes. Prices here also definitely seem on the high side, even generally higher than in Thailand, though the guesthouse that I stayed at (Noknoi) was reasonable. There is a large market (Don Heuang), a few important temples, and a museum that unfortunately was being "closed for improuving" for two months.
Perhaps the highlight of my brief time in Pakse so far was my, on hindsight, rather comical interaction with the tuk-tuk driver at the bus station. There I was, a Singaporean wearing a "Saigon" logo T-shirt, trying to communicate with a Laotian using my limited Thai, and showing him US dollars to pay as I hadn't changed any Lao Kip yet. It wasn't quite funny at the time, as it was dark and I wanted just to get to a nearby guesthouse, trying not to be too ripped off at the same time. But on reflection, it must have been quite a bewildering sight to an observer!
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