Southern Laos

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We continued our journey to the south of Laos from Vientiane stopping in firstly at Savannakhet. The towns in this area are fairly small and with no major tourist attractions most people tend to pass straight through them or even miss them out altogether by taking overnight buses. We arrived mid-afternoon and discovered that there is a Laos Red Cross set up here which offer massages and herbal saunas. Money raised is donated to help fund aids prevention workshops and care for those already infected with HIV - so at least we would be doing some good while we were getting pampered. We opted for the herbal sauna, although it wasn't exactly how we imagined & instead of being led into clean tiled room in calm surroundings we got changed in a toilet and were then ushered into something resembling a garden shed! It was quite scary as it was so dark and anything could have been lurking in there, of the insect/spider variety. Also as we were scrambling to sit down in the dark, I put my foot down the steam-hole, which was full of boiling hot water - very painful! Having said that, after we settled in it was very relaxing and we did come out feeling a lot cleaner than we have done for the past few weeks!


Another couple of days travelling - (including one in which we had to sit on 5 tonnes of concrete in the back of the pick-up/bus, it was incredibly slow as you can imagine) and we arrived in Champasak, once the capital of Laos. Our reason for coming here was to visit Wat Phu Champasak which looks down over the Mekong valley. Again we biked there - "high fiving" all the little kids on the way. You don't have to imagine too hard to see how magnificent this would have been in it's day - the palace buildings are in ruins today, although the whole place is supposed to be under restoration, there is little evidence that much is being done at the moment. Steep stairs then lead you up to the temple sanctuary where you look down across the valley and beyond.


From here we arrived at Si Phan Don, otherwise known as "four thousand islands". This is created as the Mekong river spreads out and sandbars and islands have formed over the years. It is very beautiful and extremely laid back. We did very little for the few days that we were here...extremely little, although we did manage a boat trip out to explore some of the other islands. Life is extremely simple and very quiet here, everyone is so content, even though they have very little everyone is always smiling and always willing to help. One of our main decisions we had to make on the island is whether to have rice or noodles to eat each meal time - very difficult! We both love the sticky rice that they have here, it wasn't in Thailand so not sure if it just a Laos thing.....it's made by soaking the rice for about 6 hours and then being slowly cooked for a further 2 hours - you can then roll the rice into balls and dip it into whatever you're eating, or just as a nasty snack by itself - especially for breakfast!


We are definitely going to miss Laos - the pace of life particularly suits Sam! There are very few cars with most people only being able to afford scooters or pushbikes. The one thing I won't miss is all the spitting - the Laos people just love to spit! Especially up north it wasn't unusual to be woken up in the morning by someone "hocking-a-loogie" right outside your bedroom window! It's bizarre, for a nation of people so reserved - men, women, children, grandmas all do it - whether it's out the bus window or just as they are walking on the pavement they don't mind.


We head for Cambodia tomorrow, across an unofficial border, although we know that it is used all the time with seemingly little hassle. The only thing is the mood of the officials and how much they feel like charging you to leave and enter the countries, so we're off now to try and practice our Cambodian so we can impress them with the hope that they'll like us!

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Photos

Another public bus
This one was a complete rust bucket! Half of the ceiling was hanging at least 5 inches lower than the other!

At the cow-wash
Sam's pun - not mine!