Advertisement
Published: January 24th 2009
I found Vientianne pretty disappointing. Considering it's the Capital City, there's not much to see .......a few wats, a lookout tower in the middle of a roundabout, a stadium....nothing you haven't seen a hundred times already in SE Asia. There was a Buddha Park you could go to, but it meant a bus ride a couple of hours out of town there and the same again on the way back. Maybe I'm getting pretty lazy about travelling now, but a couple of hours on a bus just to see a few buddha statues didn't really appeal. Instead I hired a bicycle for a day and tried desperately to find something worth seeing. Not much joy! I did manage one constructive thing whilst there.....extending my visa for a couple of weeks. It's only $2 a day, and being that I had less that 2 of the 4 weeks left to do the whole of the South, it seemed worthwhile. It was also really hard to get a accommodation in Vientianne. I arrived pretty late from Vang Vieng, as the guy who I'd booked a minibus with had f***** up and overbooked. That meant the last one on was the first one off.......and unfortunately that was me. Instead, I waited another hour for the public bus and with the extra time stopping to let people on and off along the way, I didn't arrive until sunset. Having wandered around most of the hotel area down by the Mekong River, I ended up taking a really skanky looking room, hoping it didn't have bedbugs :O I'm not too sure why, but I'm so paranoid about bedbugs now...probably since the bus scenario in Thailand. The next morning I moved hotels to one which may have been a couple of dollars more and had shared bathroom, but it was 'comfortably clean'!
After Vientianne, I decided to visit Ban Fa ....... a village about an hour outside Vientianne, part of the National Protected Area, which has a herd of wild elephants living nearby. Apparently they had a lot of problems with the elephants, destroying crops and even killing the villagers once or twice. With some outside help, the villagers, instead of hunting the elephants and killing them, have decided to try and make some money to compensate for the problems they have living in such close proximity to them. The result of this being there's now an elephant observation tower out in the jungle where you can stay overnight and wait for the elephants to come visit the 'salt lick' which is down below.
Initially, I couldn't make my mind up whether or not to go to Ban Fa. In the end I left it up to fate and just rung them the day I left Vientianne to see if they had a space to stay in the tower that night. The guy didn't speak very good English.....I'd been warned it was limited!...... but I understood enough to know they had a space that night. Yeay! One thing I really want to do is see wild elephants! I had to be there by 2 that afternoon and it was gone 10 now so I had to pack up and go pretty quick. On route to the bus station I stopped for brekky, which turned out to be the best value fruit salad I've had since in Laos. Everything is so expensive in the North of the country you come to expect it. So when the menu said small fruit salad for 40p or large for 80p, I went for the large, which turned out to be enough for at least 2!
It turned out to be a songthaew to Ban Fa rather than a bus.....That's basically a pick up with a roof and a couple of benches and in the back. We had the usual waiting around for an hour or so, just in case one or two more people turn up.....they don't seem to have timetables as such on the songthaew, it's just a case of when they've got enough people they go! Eventually, it was off to Ban Fa. I was pretty excited, really hoping to see the elephants. The day before I'd gone on line and of all the blogs I found mentioning the tower, it seemed around 50% of people saw them......so that gave me a fair chance!
The songthaew dropped me on the main road which meant a couple of kms walk up a dirt track to Ban Fa village. With my pack in the heat of the day it wasn't so good! Luckily a young lad on a scooter stopped about half way down and gave me a lift the rest of the way......yeay! The only thing was I was so tired from walking, I wasn't really concentrating and ended up burning the back of my leg on the exhaust! Doh! :O/
I was hoping they'd be more people going to the tower that night, but it turned out to be just me. It also ended up being pretty expensive. I had asked on the phone, and in the broken English I obviously misunderstood the cost......good tip, if you're going and you want to know the price, ask for the total cost, not the breakdown the guy gave me on the phone. I think he must have missed half the things out as the total was near to double what I expected. If there's more than one, I think it gets a lot less, but being the only one, I ended up paying for the guides and everything myself rather than splitting it between the group. I say it was pretty expensive.....that's in traveller's terms! It was around 50 pounds for one night in the tower, with a bit of a walk through the jungle with the guides in the morning.
Being the only one there, I was really trying to make conversation with the two guides. They both seemed really nice but their English was pretty limited....It wasn't going to be a very chatty night! One of the guides asked me what something said in English on his phone, so I told him, and then to make conversation I asked him if his phone played music. That was a BIG mistake!! I spent the next 10 minutes trying to get him to turn it off again. Anyone knowing Laos music will know it's probably the loudest and least tuneful racket you've heard in a while! Actually, that's a bit unfair to single out Laos, I think most of the South East Asian countries listen to the same stuff, so I should be sharing the love! :O) Besides all that, I was more worried the elephants wouldn't like it and they wouldn't come....but then again, who knows......laos ellies......laos music?!!
Late afternoon they said we were going fishing for dinner......fab! I had visions of whole barbequed fish that night. mmmm! Off we went, with a long net about 2ft wide to catch dinner. The river I imagined turned out to be a stream with no big fish from what I could see. Maybe we were going to be there some time!
Wrong......on two counts! The guys got in the river and stretched the net across the width of the stream, left it there for a minute or two while they walked up and down the stream either side to chase any fish into the net. That was it....Bob's ur uncle......a net full of little fishies in less than five minutes! The problem was, when I say little, I mean little.....the biggest one was about 4 or 5 inches long! The whole barbq fish I'd invisioned may've been a bit premature. Mind you, 'whole' was pretty spot on.......these things are literally eaten whole.......heads, eyes the lot. I'm not really into 'funny food' as I put it and I wasn't too sure if I'd be able to eat these things, but with all the trouble they'd gone to, it would've been rude not to! In retrospect though, they actually weren't quite as bad as I thought..... Deep fried crispy tiddlers.....mmmm :O/
Unfortunately, the music wasn't the only sound that evening which was going to put the elephants off coming. Around 5 in the evening, there were gunshots coming from one of the nearby villages, followed by half hour of tractors running about! Needless to say, the elephants didn't make it that night! I was pretty disappointed. It's a shame, being that the money you spend going to the tower goes both to Ban Fa village and the neighbouring villages, that they can't arrange for noises like this to be minimised when there are people staying there.
I did enjoy spending the night in the tower anyway though and the next day we had a bit of a walk through the jungle to try and listen to the elephants! My wildlife touch had obviously worn pretty thin though, as the elephants were about as apparent as the monkeys had been up in Bokeo! Guess that's the chance you take with wildlife though. It makes you appreciate the moments you do get (like tommy turtle and leo leopard shark!) even more.
After lunch back in the village, it was on with the journey. I was heading to Tha khaek to do 'The Loop', so it was back to the main road to catch a bus. Being in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't too sure how easy it was going to be to find a bus, but after a long hot walk back to the main road a bus turned up within five minutes!......yeay, luck was back on my side!
The bus turned out to be the 'superfast ride' to Thakek! No kidding, this thing was stopping for nothing. It just beeped it's horn at anything in it's way as it hurtled South towards Tha khaek! On the bright side it did get there before dark, which was a blessing being that the bus station was again 'conveniently located out of town'! Originally, I was going to walk, but having realised quite how far it was, I swallowed my pride and went back and haggled with the tuk tuk drivers. I got them down to 20,000 from 40,000 but that's still half the cost of the whole 5 hour bus journey for just a 10 minute ride up the road. I HATE TUK TUKS! They're a travellers nightmare......the biggest rip off and never there when you need one, but always there hassling you when you don't!
To say there's very little to do in Tha khaek would be an exageration. There's actually nothing there at all. It's purely a base for doing some trekking or 'the loop'. I thought about the trekking, but the loop appealed more. It's basically a circuit you can do on a motorbike through the countryside, a bit off the beaten track. It takes you past a whole load of caves and swimming spots, a dam in the making and through some 'spectacular' scenery.
The guide book had the Travel Lodge down as being particularly good for information on the loop. Apparently it kept a log book of notes from all the people that had done it previously, which sounded really helpful to read before you set off. It also turned out to be a good meeting place for people doing the circuit. A couple of days later, there were 7 of us renting bikes and heading off....Neil and Megan, Lee and Natalie, Andy, Gerhard and I.
The first day of the loop was pretty uneventful....about 100ks of straight road before you turn off and head out into the countryside. We wanted to let the bikes cool down halfway down the 100ks (they're only little scooter type things, so thrashing them up a straight road for 50ks gets them really hot!) so we stopped at a noodle soup place on the road side. There we met a couple from New Zealand doing Laos on push bikes. I couldn't help but feel incredibly lazy riding off on my motorised vehicle as they peddled off up the road!!
Our next stop was the 'Sala' lookout point, about 30ks after we had finally turned off the main road. There we met Gerhard, who put us all to shame by getting up and heading off a good few hours before us! We, on the other hand, had had a 'cadbury's caramel' morning and taken it really easy! After sorting stuff out, going to the ATM, buying sunnies and other necessities, we didn't make it out of Thakek until 11! Luckily, none of us were in a hurry so it was nice to do it that way, rather than rushing around. I'm not sure Gerhard had bargained in waiting quite that long though!
The view from the lookout was pretty nice, but not nice enough to keep us there more than ten minutes. Some of us were hungry again already....noodle soup doesn't really fill you up (in fact, I'm sure it's the reason people are so thin over here!).......so we were on the lookout for another restaurant. We found our first contender in the 'worst food of the trip' contest! You wouldn't think too much could go wrong with noodle soup, especially when you've waited a good hour for it! Luckily we'd bumped into a guy Andy knew who'd come stocked up with snacks which kept us going instead!
From there we headed South to find Khong Lo cave. This was the first bit of unsealed road on the journey. It wasn't really that bad ...... just loose gravel, but on a scooter with wheels no more than an inch thick there were one or two hairy moments when you could feel your back wheel sliding all over the place! Oh how I wish I still had Bob and his lovely back wheel! Saying that, these scooter things are reliable...... but just scary as hell! I'm sure they're not supposed to go over 50kms per hr with wheels that thin! I was probably the most cautious driver of the group.......feeling my age! The others were well ahead of me most of the way round. Still better to get there in one peice! ...........was that me or my mum talking??!! :O)
We ended up getting down near the cave really late.....racing the sunset and the warmth of the day. There was a homestay very near to the cave which we were initially heading to, but we ended up staying at a guest house we got to about 10kms beforehand. We were so cold, none of us could face an extra 10kms! I was so glad I'd gone back for my scarf and rain coat. Some of the guys had only bought flip flops so their poor feet were frozen!
Having unsucessfully trying to bargain the guy in the guest house down Neil drove up the road to see how much another guest house we'd seen was. That one turned out to be 3 times the price! Suddenly we were coming round to the idea of 80,000 kip! It even had a hot shower in the rooms which sold it!
Unfortunately, only two of the four hot showers actually worked, mine not being one of them, so instead, we ended up getting a beer and sitting by the fire the owners had in their yard instead! The owners turned out to be lovely and I suddenly felt really bad about trying to haggle on the price, despite the broken shower!
The next day, we headed down to the cave. It turned out to be amazing......one of the highlights of the whole circuit. It's basically a 7km long cave with a river running through it, which you get taken through on a little boat! It was pretty dark for the majority of the 7ks, but the guides had really powerful lights, so you could see a reasonable amount. You have to get in and out the boat and walk a few times, where the river gets so shallow it needs to be dragged throgh! That's a bit hairy in the dark......torch recommended for anyone going! At one point, you get out the boat and walk up to a section of AMAZING stalactites and stalagmites. I've seen a few since I've been away, but these were really lovely formations, really nicely lit up with blue and yellow lights.......sounds tacky, but it really wasn't!! Maybe it also had something to do with the rest of the place being so dark, but the bit with the lights seemed really welcoming!
Eventually (and I mean eventually!) you emerge from the other side of the cave and have a pit stop at a stall up on the river bank. There, we saw the fattest pig ever loaded into one of the boats. I'm glad our boat had arrived a bit later than the others as they'd actually seen the local guys getting the poor thing into the boat. Apparantly it wasn't pretty. Being kind to animals doesn't feature high on the importance list over here. After successfully loading the pig, it was time to get the motorbike on as well. Getting it down the slope to the river was hairy enough, but it's a bit like India over here......everything's possible!
After half hour or so they took us back through the cave to the other side so we could get on our way. It was lunchtime already! Brekky had taken ages to turn up that morning and the cave had taken a good couple of hours. We all agreed the restaurant we'd stopped at the day before was a no no, and we didn't want to wait another hour for food at the guest house again, so we stopped for another bowl of noodle soup at a stall in the cave carpark before heading off! Noodle soup was starting to become the theme of the trip!
It was a good job we had, as there was nothing on the way. Late again, we ended up racing the sunset trying to get to Lak Sao....that night's stop. It was freezing. I was so cold by the time we got there, I could hardly steer the bike! You'd think I'd be prepared for it by now with all the time spent on bikes, but it came as a real shock! Tha khaek had been really warm, but up here it was freezing! It was wierd as we didn't seem to climb that much on the way, but we were obviously much higher than we were in Tha Khaek. The next morning we all headed to the market to buy gloves, balaclavas and jumpers! It's a shame as the road leading into Lak Sao was really beautiful, we were just too cold to appreciate it!
The night in Lak Sao was pretty uneventful. There's nothing much there. The search for a restaurant took most of the night!. We checked out the restaurant in the guest house where we were staying but discovered the menu was full of frogs, hearts and god knows what else! The homebrew on the bar was an eye opener too......literally a jar with what looked like a load of pond water and plant roots! It was harsh too......reminded me a bit of tequila and apparently gets you pissed almost as quick! We didn't check out this theory though.....one was more than enough! Instead we headed off to find somewhere to eat.
Having walked around the town we discovered there was virtually nowhere to eat! We ended up in the restaurant that we'd read about in the travel book back in Tha khaek....not good things either! It was called 'The Only Place' funnily enough! I have to say, despite being warned about it, the food was actually ok. The only trouble is they really don't get the 'eating at the same time' thing like we do back home! It's ok if your the first person to get yours, but more often than not, the hungrier you are, the more people get their's before you do. It's the Laos form of torture!
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel in what felt like below zero temperatures! It was probably miles above zero, but relative to what it was like in Thakek, it felt pretty close! When we got back Megan decided to try and get another blanket from the hotel. That was hilarious! The people in the hotel weren't exactly what you'd call 'keen to help' and the sign language for blanket really wasn't working, so when Megan saw a blanket on the chair she pointed to it to help explain. It must have been one of their blankets though as the woman in reception grabbed it and ran off, pushing Megan out the way in her hurry! Guess there's no extra blankets here then! It may have been the whiskey we'd had with dinner, but the whole thing was hilarious at the time!
The next day, having visited the market and bought some extra layers, we decided to head up to the 'hot springs'. Having been freezing for a while now, we were all imagining submerging ourselves in steaming hot water looking out over the Laos countryside! Unfortunately, that was as far from the truth as it could get! When we arrived, we spent ten minutes looking for the hot springs. Having no luck, one of the local guys came over and pointed to a building with a really dirty horrible bath tub in each room. Apparently, if you fancy it, they fill them up for you with water pumped up from the underground hot springs a few hundred metres away! Dissappointed, we headed back to Lak Sao to carry on the journey.
This was the bit of the road which really was 'off road' and we weren't really too sure how long it was going to take. We'd met a guy on a dirt bike who said it had taken him 2 hours on a bike made for the job. We only had scooters so were expecting it to take a lot longer.
Unfortunately Gerhard had an accident trying to follow a local through the bumps and rocks! The locals really know the flattest route through these off road bits, so it's great to follow them. The trouble is they've done it a hundred times before so they go like bats out of hell and you've got no chance of keeping up with them. It's really easy to get 'target fixated' though and follow them no matter what....like Gerhard. He ended up planting the bike in a pot hole and coming off! Luckily, it wasn't too bad, so after patching him up and bending a few bits back into place on the bike, we headed off to find the others. They were waiting a few ks up the road, so we stopped for a drink and an inspection of the damage to Gerhard's bike. 'Dangermouse' was his new nickname (he was a big guy!) :O)
On inspection of the bikes, Neil realised his front wheel was wobbling all over the place. It turned out the bearings had been welded into the wheel and the weld had broken coming over the bumpy bits! Oops! He phoned the guy from the rental shop, Mr Khu, to tell him what had happened. Neil was really worried Mr Khu would try and make him pay for it, so he was pretty blunt with him on the phone and basically said he'd get it fixed, but he expected his money back when he took the bike back. When he told Mr Khu how much the guy wanted for a new wheel, he wasn't too impressed. To be fair, I can see why. The guy in the shop put on probably THE most expensive wheel you can get for a scooter.....full alloy with go faster stripes......looked kind of out of place on the bike! It probably cost 10 times the amount of a basic new wheel! The upside was they managed to stop the oil dripping from Gerhards bike free of charge....or moe like included in the extortionate price of fixing Neil's! It bought back memories of India....bad roads, mechanics!
While we were waiting for the bikes to be fixed we went over to the stall down the road for .....yep, you guessed it, another bowl of noodle soup! That turned out to be the other contender in the 'worst food of the trip' competition! Fish soup.......well, actually, cold fish soup! The fire had gone out, goodness knows how long ago, and she still served us up a bowl without lighting it and heating it up! Having done the sign language for fire, she got the message we wanted it hot! Even then though, it only came out luke warm and still tasted gross! We ended up going up the road to a little shop which sold packet noodles.....kind of like super noodles back home. The people in there lit a fire and everything for us so we could cook them! Compared to the fishy stuff up the road they were fab! We even had an audience of local kids......they must think us farang are completely crazy!
Having fixed the bikes we headed off up the road. Originally, we weren't going to do too many miles that day, just complete the off road bit and find a guest house in the first village after that. The first and second guest houses we came too weren't great though, so instead we decided to try and get to this Belgian restaurant we'd been told about. Noodle soup had taken it's toll on all of us, and we were dying for some good food! Funny, I know, but there is a Belgian restaurant in the middle of nowhere on the loop in Laos! It's in Nakai and is run by a Belgian guy and a Laos lady who speaks fantastic English. It's a bit pricey, but the burger and chips were fab. :O)
I think it the restaurant gets its custom mainly from the foreigners working on the dam site there and the occasional people coming through on the loop, like us. The dam they're building here is massive and will change the countryside hugely when it's finished. In a way I feel sorry for the locals.......they were living very quietly in the middle of nowhere and are now relocated into these 'refugee camp' style villages next to a big main road with hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of massive trucks driving past every day. The dust is unbelievable. When we sat in the restaurant it looked just like the wild west....all you needed was the tumbleweed to go sailing past! I guess the good road is a plus point over here....after 50ks of offroad on a scooter, we welcomed flat road again, and no doubt the locals felt the same way. The downside is the noise, pollution and dust to what would have been quiet serene countryside a few years ago. The 'spectacular scenery' on this part of the loop has been ruined completely. It's ugly, dusty, dangerous with all the big vehicles hurtling past and altogether not very pleasant. Luckily the closer you get to Tha khaek, the nicer the scenery gets again. Overall though, I think the dam has kind of ruined what probably used to be a really nice 'loop' through the countryside. It's interesting to see though I guess. When it's done, someone somewhere is going to have tons of electricity! Unfortunately, I've heard it's not Laos...they just get to put up with losing their land......and homes......for this to be built.....oh and of course the dirt, dust and noise in the meantime. Still, I'll get off my high horse. I guess it must've provided a lot of jobs for the locals too and a road which they are probably quite pleased to have.
We were stopping at Tha Falang on the way back to Tha khaek......it was supposed to be a really nice swimming stop and we were all dying to get in the water and wash off some of the dust we were caked in! Before we knew though, we hit the roundabout just outside Tha khaek.....We must've driven right past it! Funnily enough, there was Mr Khu in his van also at the roundabout! He saw us too. Unfortunate timing though......Natalie had decided to have a go at driving (her and Lee were 2 up) and came flying out onto the roundabout going 'f***, where's the brakes????'!! Gerhard was also hoping to get a quote for a new panel before owning up to the accident, so he wouldn't get ripped off by Mr Khu. Hence, he was busy trying to turn his bike round with the unoffending side facing the direction Mr Khu was coming from. Poor Mr Khu! He didn't seem too upset by what he'd just seen though and told us how to find Tha Falang. Apparently, it was only 15ks back up the road. It was easy finding it the second time round. There was a huge sign coming from that direction....I'm sure it wasn't there coming the other way!
Tha Falang was beautiful. The sun was out and it was warm......perfect for a swim! It was the first time I'd been warm in the four days we'd been away. I was so warm, I kept putting off getting in the water, and in the end gave up on the idea of a swim altogether and decided to wait for a shower when we got back to the guest house in Tha Khaek.
From there, it was just one more stop for lunch before getting back. We stopped at what looked an amazing restaurant on decking over a river. Unfortunately the service wasn't great and they spoke no English! The bill even came in Laos language and was all different prices to what we'd ordered! Fun fun fun! The beer I had also gave me a stonking lunch time beer hangover that stuck with me all afternoon! I blame the headache for leaving my clothes in the shower......yep, my favourite clothes left in the shower while I headed off on the night bus to Pakse 6 hours away! Unfortunately, I didn't realise until I was down in Don Det, another 3 hours on from Pakse. If I'd left them in Pakse it wouldn't have been so bad. I was planning using Pakse as a base to see the Bolaven Plateau after chilling out for a day or two on Don Det. It wasn't the original plan to revisit Tha Khaek.
Having realised what I'd done and ringing to confirm the guest house had found them, I decided to chill out in Don Det for a couple of days before heading back to pick them up. I didn't think it would be that bad.....it was only 3 hours by songthaew to Pakse and the overnight bus journey from Tha Khaek to Pakse had only taken 6 hours. The plan was to go all the way back to Tha Khaek during the day and then catch the overnight bus back to Pakse......no big problem! Famous last thoughts! The day bus was a different story to the night bus. From Pakse to Tha Khaek took over 10 hours! No-one spoke any English, so I had no idea where we were or how far we had to go. The journey just went on and on. Stopping for no apparent reason at any given opportunity. The bus was loaded up with rice - all the way down the aisle, about 3 sacks high and in every foot well. Hence, you had nowhere to put your feet you had to climb over all these rice sacks to get on or off trying not to hit your head on the ceiling of the bus! On top of that my ipod battery ran out! Doom & disaster! I didn't even have entertainment. It was probably the most frustrating journey I've had in Laos.
Hence, I didn't make it to Tha Khaek and back in one day......right now I'm in Tha Khaek, waiting for tonight's night bus back instead! I ended up arriving at the bus station (conveniently located out of town!) near eleven last night, and stayed at the bus station guest house for the night. After 10 hours of that, I couldn't face getting back on the bus, even if I had arrived in time! I just hope the bus journey back to Pakse tonight isn't the same. I'm treating myself to the VIP bus ....just a couple of dollars more, but hopefully it'll be worth it. I have to say, I'm feeling a bit apprehensive! All those times I've said bus journeys are easy now are coming back to haunt me......maybe I spoke to soon! Just hope tonight doesn't add to my new found phobia!! I'm beginning to wonder if the clothes were worth the effort......possibly not in hindsight! Still, it's all part of the adventure, and a lesson learnt.......always be extra careful when packing with a hangover!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.182s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0981s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
