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Published: October 2nd 2009
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From Vientiane, I traveled fifteen hours to the southernmost part of Laos, near the Cambodia border. I figured I might as well get as far away from Luang Prabang as possible, to check out the other side of the country while I had the chance. The area is called Si Pan Don, or 4,000 Islands though I think it's really only about 10 islands and 3,990 tiny pieces of land that emerge in the dry season. There is reputed to be rare Irradway dolphins here, blind, and incredibly, adaptable to fresh or salt water. They live in the Mekong River in Southern Laos and Northern Cambodia, but are sadly almost extinct and rarely seen. The wet season is starting now, meaning it’s starting to rain quite often, and the thousand little islands are quietly disappearing.
The trip to this area first involved a ten hour night bus from Vientiane. While the seats didn’t lie down completely, they did recline back. As always, tinny, poppy, Lao music videos blasted from the TV screens throughout the night, a novelty I think for the Lao, a serious bother for me. The bus stopped at a big rest stop at 1 AM. It was
bustling and loud like a little city, filled with vendors selling food, indoors and out, homemade and packaged, tables to sit and eat, and a lovely, dirty row of bathrooms with squat toilets that always splash. The bus reached Pakse at 5:30 AM and the tuk-tuk drivers were there waiting, yelling their desire to transport passengers to their next location. I chatted in Lao with a driver and his cute kid and gave the kid a dumpling and a book in Lao on Australian Animals. (I bought about twenty books from Big Brother Mouse before I set out on my trip to give out to kids down south. Most kids don’t have any books, and there’s no Big Brother Mouse to give books out down south.) The man and his son gave me a ride to the center of town where I brushed my teeth on the side of the street and then went to a busy soup stand for breakfast.
I got the big bowl of noodle soup with beef for 17,000 kip, a bit expensive (about $2.10) and a strong iced Lao coffee for 4,000 kip (about 0.50 cents). I chatted in Lao with a man on
vacation, down from Vientiane. Then I hopped on a taxi to take me to the bank after realizing I had no Lao kip, only American dollars, which are only readily accepted in Lao in small bills of $1. The bank was closed as it was Sunday, but I did find an ATM. Many people have complained to me that each ATM in Laos only allows you to take out 700,000 kip at a time, or about $63. Last time I was in Laos, two years ago, there was only 1 ATM in the entire country of Laos, so I’m not complaining. And you can withdraw 700,000 kip up to three times from a single machine if you desire.
The taxi I took was a motorbike, with a little covered sidecar attached. Imagine that kind of thing in the US, but fifty years older with a lot of rusted metal. I had the driver bring me out to the bus station to catch my next bus south, which turned out to be a very dusty miles five-mile ride, as there was nothing to shield my face from all the dirt whizzing at it from the road. (Last time I take
a motorbike sidecar without goggles!)
We pulled in to the station, chaotic with big trucks lugging people and animals and goods out of town, and my driver spotted the truck heading to Don Khong, my final island destination. The bed of the truck was packed full of people, bags of rice, small tables, fish sauce, chickens and the metal roof-top was loaded five-times as much. The truck was just pulling out of the station so I quickly paid my driver, hopped off the sidecar, and hopped on to the rear of the truck. I even got a seat, sitting on the tailgate, which was safe because the truck has a little platform attached that for standing. The 2 ½ hour ride was very dusty. Along the way we picked up people waiting by the side of the road, usually with bags of rice or charcoal. There is no such thing as “Sorry, bus is full. Wait for the next one,” on Lao busses. During this ride, people sat on the roof, hung off the back, sat on my lap, crouched on the floor. For a while, a woman held on to my arm and my shoulder for support. The
she dismounted, without ever saying “hi” or “thanks”. But she seemed friendly enough, so I didn‘t mind.
Eventually the bus stopped at the end of a dirt road leading away from the dirt road we‘d been traveling. I was told this was my stop so I jumped off. I walked about five minutes, and came upon the Mekong River. There was a little wooden platform at the edge of the water and I walked up and spoke to a little boy sitting there. I asked for a ride across the river in Lao and he woke up his Dad, who was there too, sleeping, and his Dad said 10,000 kip, and I said OK and then his Dad went back to sleep and the boy took me across the river in a long wooden fishing boat with a motor. The trip across took only a few minutes. The view was nothing spectacular, but very peaceful, the current was slow and many small pieces of land were exposed within the river. (Those aforementioned, so called, “islands”.) I paid the boy and gave him a Lao story book and walked up the dirt bank to arrive at the island of Kong.
Don Kong continued in next blog...
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