Motorcycle Diaries

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So we took a sleper bus overnight from Vientiene to Pakse, in the south. Sleeper buses are great, all busses should be sleeper. It's basically bunks on a coach. Mike & I were in a double bunk on the bottom. What a way to travel. If aeroplanes were sleeper, the journey to Australia would be nothing. Although I guess it would be a bit awkward if you were traveling alone and had to share a bed with a total stranger!

Arriving in Pakse we got a tuk-tuk to town and rather by accident checked into a pretty nice guest house. It had aircon and clean sheets! Non stained/torn sheets are hard to come by around these parts. It was expensive, but we went with it anyway. It had a balcony which was a real sun trap (and it's bloody hot in Southern Laos) which blasted my washing dry and thus made me very happy. We had planned to rent a moped and do a tour around the region for around 5 days, as suggested in the Lonley Planet. In the end we only did 3 days, but it was still well good.

The following day, as planned, we rented a moped from a nearby hotel. We picked out helmets from the best of bad bunch (cracked, broken straps, bicycle helmets etc.) and set off. Realising the mileometer (what do you call a mileometer when it measures in kilometers??) didn't work, we returned and swapped it for one that did. And so we took off on our adventure with a dodgy photocopied map in hand in the direction of a village called Tat Lo!

Driving around rural Laos is well good fun. The roads were pretty straight and reasonably flat and take you through many villages. The villages are brilliant - straw huts on stilts. Cows, chickens, ducks, water buffalo, just wandering around, crossing the road whenever they see fit, never in any hurry to get out of your way. They know full well that you're going to slow down and swerve around them. The kids in the villages are brilliant too they peer at you as you get closer and when they see you are Westerners they erupt in excitement, waving vigorously and yelling "Sabideee!" which means 'hello' in Lao. We had a grand old time driving about waving at kids, watching village life. For reasons unknown, the village shower, or water pump in some villages, is located on the road side, so you see the kids and the women (in sarongs) washing. Don't know what the men do, smelly men!

We arrived Tat Lo after rather too long (went the wrong way of course) knackered and with very sore bottoms. We checked into a place reccomended to us by Cat & Paul, and well as by another traveller we had met, called Mamma Pap's. She was a funny lady, she couldn't stop talking and laughing at everything she said even if it wasn't especially funny. We acquired ourselves a rattan hut for the bargainous price of 20,000 kip. It was incredibly basic, consisting of a bed, a mozzie net and a lot of dust. Outside was a communal balcony. A few steps across the field was the 'bathroom'. This was another hut, with squat toilet and large tub of water with scoop with which to wash yourself. I loved it. Plus, it was right in the village - mixed in with the locals' houses. Every now and then a cow would walk past and start grazing outside your hut. The other houses were in the same style, only some didn't even have 4 walls! Some had TVs though, even if they didn't have 4 walls.

We spent 2 nights there, eating at Mamma Pap's restaurant, which was a roof over the dirt ground with a table. Inside was the kitchen. She made good Laap, which is described as a spicey salad, but is actually minced meat with chilis and mint leves in it. You eat it with stickey rice. I love stickey rice. It should be flavoured and sold as a snack food like crisps.

Tat Lo has a few waterfalls nearby, which is the reason it has any kind of tourist infrastructure. On our full day we took our 'ped and went visiting. The first is right in town, the scond is just nearby but the third takes some finding. But find it we did. It was not voluminous but it fell a long way off the Bolaven Plateau and into the expanse of forest below. Some little kids from the village ran down in front of us, hung around while we looked at the waterfall, suggested we should leave after a few minutes and then asked for money at the top. Guardians of the waterfall, obviously.
On the way back down a bunch more kids in another village yelled 'waterfall, this way!' at us, so we figured 'why not?' and followed a gang of them through their village and scrambled over the boulders to the bottom of the waterfall we were just at the top of. While I dipped my feet in the water (we couldnt get so close to the bottom to be actually under it) the children extorted money from Mike. But they seemed like good kids and had fun playing with our sunglasses/bike helmets and chasing after each other with Mike's smelly shoes.

After 2 very early nights we thought we better move on. But just before we did, we took an elephant trek from a nearby resort, as you do! We sat in the swanky restaurant (which had a floor and everything) waiting, when the waiter rushes in and declares "your elephant is ready!". So we climbed into the elephant mounting station and into the basket ontop. The guide took it for a walk through the jungle, some villages and across the river - twice! We were very impressed by the white-water elephanting as it crossed the rapids. I am glad I didn't get elephant sick, they have a very funny loloping walk, which could promote such an ailment. From where we were sitting your feet dangle down behind it's ears and so they get slapped constantly as it flaps it's ears about. Quite a nice scratch, actually. Towards the end the guide let Mike go sit on it's head and guide us home! Apparently it is easier than it looks as it's shoulder blades jog you up and down when it walks.

As so we dismounted the elephant and re-mounted our moped. We drove up a very bumpy dirt track in the direction of Paksong. Fuel running very low, we were relieved to arrive at the fuel station at the top of the hill. The rural fuel stations in Laos are brilliant. The consist of a thatched rattan shack with a barrel of petrol inside, attached to like a cylinder in which the required amount of fuel is drawn up into before dispensing into your vehicle. Marvelous. Our 'ped could only take 3 litres anyway, great little efficient things.

So we drove to the rather cold & dismal town of Paksong where it was very gloomy and there was nothing to see. We checked into a guesthouse which appeared to be nice but we later discovered to be dusty and full of bedbugs (damn you Lonley Planet!). In the town we sat out a rainstorm while eating dinner in a leaky hut before heading home to our crappy room at about 6pm with nothing to do. Safe to say we were relieved when morning arrived and we could head back to Pakse. (Apparently they grow coffee in Paksong, but not knowing what a coffee tree looks like it was lost on us)

On the way back we stoped at 2 pretty impressive waterfalls. The first we walked to the bottom of and got a bit wet, but it was cool. The second we tried to get to the bottom of but it was so slippery & muddy that we kept falling over so we gave up. There wasn't many British tourists around, they were all Thai which was weird for us, having been tourists in their country a few weeks earlier.
As an aside: we were eating breakfast at a resort by the first waterfall, thinking how very chilly it was compared to Pakse, and saw a thermometer reading 24 degrees C! It was only 9am up on a plateau. I wish we had brought our thermometer, I would love to know how hot it is normally.

And so we concluded our 4 day mopedding adventure, after doing a whopping 300KM and the only injuries were sore bums and a sunburnt neck (mine).

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Comments

[Pam]

Smelly shoes
Did the poor children of laos survive the deadly game of smelly shoes?!

[Mum & Dad]

nice
How nice- a loo with a moo. I'm glad you didn't get into a flap riding the elephant. Love Mum and dad