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Published: March 10th 2007
Elephant Crossing
Just in case you don't notice the three tons of grey matter coming down the street!We started our journey south from Luang Nam Tha with the goal of reaching the annual Elephant Festival (although this was the festival’s first year…) in Hong Sa and the prospect of an Elephant Festival filled us with a little too much excitement! We set off on a local bus with the intention of heading through a town called Udomxai and then another bus south to Pak Beng, a stopover town for travellers who journey from the north Laos border to Luang Parabang in two days via the Mekong River. We planned to stay there a night or two, then head to the festival the day before to arrive in plenty of time. Travelling with us were two of our new friends from our trek, Cat and Patrice.
Alas, like many traveling stories this plan was to hit a fairly major obstacle. Our obstacle took the form of a local bank, or in this case we shall merely refer to them as the extortionists. As we had a two hour stopover in Udomxai it seemed a fairly easy plan to head to a bank (from which there were 3 to choose), change some money, and be back at the bus
station in plenty of time to buy tickets and fight for a seat on the local bus. Or so you would think.
We calculated our travl plans without taking into the account that the bank would take 8% commission from me (which not surprisingly led to many heated words, especially since their ability to speak English miraculously only appeared after I'd already signed to cheques) nor that they would refuse (for a while) to cash Cat’s travelers cheques after she had already signed them. As we watched the minutes ticking away we somehow remained calm, and I praised Cat’s mental arithmetic abilities many times over (maths never being my strong point) as she time and time again explained their errors. We finally escaped, her with her money safely changed, me still suffering from the loss of 8% of my money, and both vowing never to return to that bank again whilst in Laos…
Not surprisingly we missed the bus to Pak Beng. There wasn’t another until the following day, and the thought of staying the night in soulless Udomxai filled us with misery, so we decided to take the bus south as far as it would go on
Aircon transport to Hongsa
We look so happy before the deposition and consumption of our body weight in red dust the way to Pak Beng and therefore found ourselves 4 hours later in the ‘interesting’ town of Muang Houn. When the bus dropped us off we wouldn’t have been surprised to see a tumbleweed roll through town, there was that much happening. We started the usual run of accommodation choices (not many) and it was as I was checking out one place that appeared to double as a truckers stop and residence of dubious character that a spider the size of a huntsman (human hand size for those who haven’t seen one) decided to try and eat me.
Those who know me will know of my deep and abiding love of all things spidery, so when this thing made a play for my head I not surprisingly screamed and shot vertically backwards out of the bedroom door. The host was very bemused and obviously wondering what was wrong with this crazy falang and it took several attempts to show him the offending arachnid. Upon finally understanding he then proceeded to nearly wet himself laughing at my expense. When he recovered enough to stand upright again he picked up the floor mat and killed it with one flick (show off).
Breakfast with our hosts at Hongsa
After the slaughter of the pigs, guess what we got served! Fortunately, Rob had made sure they knew he was a veggie the day before. Of course, logically, we decided to stay at this guest house. The others kindly restrained from laughing at me and instead made kind comments about the huge size of the spider. I sat outside our bedroom (not the spider one) and made Rob go over it with a torch and fine toothed comb to ensure there were no others before I’d even step foot in there. Fortunately we had a great dinner of Lao noodle soup to save the day (plus it was the only food place that appeared to be open). All in all not the most romantic Valentines Day I've ever spent...
The next day, about as bright and early as you could expect, we boaded a bus for Pak Beng and arrived safely at around 11am, with only a short pause to be ripped off $2 by an ingenious little scam that they have going on for those arriving from the north. Funniest moment of the day - Rob trying to communicate his displeasure by yelling 'Bad Laos' at the con artists, who were all suddenly struck dumb and unable to speak any English. When the rest of us had stopped chuckling (it almost took
Elephant Tribute (Hongsa)
Look at the size of that trunk! away the sting of being cheated) we realised that Pak Beng would do nicely to just do nothing in until we headed for the festival the next day. Being set up very well for tourists we chose good accomodation (with hot showers - THE JOY!) and then proceeded to spend the remainder of the day lazing on the beach, in the bar, in another bar, and then over dinner.
I have found a fellow evil partner in crime in Cat, and Rob can only look on and shake his head as we corrupt each other with the purchase of Pringles and 'authentic hand made crafts' wherever we go. Yes, I do need 5 scarves... doesn't everyone? Anyway enough of that before I get into trouble...
River journey downstream to Tha Suang (where we disembarked for Hong Sa) was uneventful and very beautiful once they'd realised that it would be better to put all the travellers going to the same place on one boat. The one hour overland journey to Hong Sa was an experience. We caught a lift in an open backed jeep which seated 6 at the back. Unfortunately there was no cover, and if you add
Elephant Beauty Contest (Hongsa)
Let me see you shake that ass ladies. to this the very hot dry weather, and many cars churning up the road, the result is a thick cloud of red dust constantly churned up by the wheels, which we all ended up wearing (and inhaling). Perhaps it's not surprising that we made friends with another of our travellers in the back - David from England. It's hard not to like someone when they can continue to laugh through so much dirt, and request that photo's be taken of themselves looking like a red yeti after the dust storm.
Upon arriving in Hong Sa (no elephant's yet... grrrr) we were asked whether we'd emailed in advance for accomodation - of course not. No problem, they had asked the entire village who would be willing to put visitors up in their homes, and so the 5 of us happily followed a local boy to our 'home' for the next two days. Immediately ran into trouble when our host tried to extort double the accomodation cost out of us, but one of the organisers duly sorted things out, we believe that one of our hosts friends had been winding him up.
Not a whole lot else happening the day
Elephant Beauty Contest (Hongsa) - winner
And the winner is a beauty. (although we think she over did it on the make-up) before the festival, they were still setting things up. With accomodation out of the way and enough money we set about finding the next most important traveller staple - food and a beer Lao. A relatively early night in preparation for the next day, and in desperation of finding anything else to do.
We were woken at 5am by a strange screaming sound... We all lay there in silence, wondering for a while what it was. Slowly realisation dawned... we had managed to get ourselves housed with the local butcher, who was in the process of tying up, then one by one killing and butchering, 4-5 pigs. Of all the experiences in our lives, this has to count up there with the most disturbing and macabre. The screaming went on for a good hour and a half before it mercifully ceased (although not so mercifully for the pigs). Suddenley the huge bowl of congealing blood that we'd seen on our hosts floor, partnered with the pile of body parts, made sense. We had assumed it was simply the families food.
In a disturbed silence we got ready and went downstairs. There weren't really any washing facilities and we
Elephant Ride (Hongsa)
Cath and Rob riding Nellie baulked at washing in the same water reservouir as our host, imagining him only too well washing himself clean of blood in there each morning. We sat ourselves down to eat breakfast with 'the butcher' (actually a very friendly, smiley, welcoming man) and waited for breakfast to be served. As we should have anticipated pork was on the menu, they had reserved the sweetmeats for us, and as Rob smugley sat there eating his vegetarian version the rest of us thought of converting. Breakfast got that little more bizarre when our host brought out his homebrew lao lao whiskey (as any good host would do) and we each proceeded to have 2 shots.
Thus fortified we set off in search of elephants, positioning ourselves in prime positions for the parade that would kick off proceedings. Well, did we see elephants? - 50 of them in the parade! I almost had to be retrained with all the excitement, we took silly amounts of photo's all day of course. A formal ceremony for the important dignitaries (nope, no idea who they were) and monk's blessing followed. It was amazing how close you could get to them on the ground and a surreal experience whenever you happened to be walking down one of the streets sharing the space with a couple of elephants heading the same way.
Very hot and dusty we sought refuge back at our accomodation. Cat came with us but then left and we arranged to meet her 45 minutes later. Went downstairs to set off, and found her still there looking glassy eyed and eating pork fat, our host and all his mates had cornered her and she was 5 more lao lao whiskies along to road to lao lao oblivion... We rescued her and set upon the festival again with a vengence.
An elephant ride had to be next on the agenda, so Rob and I saddled up and set off for 30 minutes of slow walking, rocking and a birds eye view of the festival. Brilliant fun! Our elephants hide felt really weird, all bristly. I think he also had a bit of a wicked streak because he seemed to feel it necessary to spray water over us both 3 times. Only issue with this was that he didn't have a drink the whole time we were on him... Elephant spit anyone??!! The rest of our time at the festival was spent simply wandering around looking at each of the events on the programme in turn. Good exhibition of Laos jugglers. The whole thing put us in mind of what Glastonbury might have been back when it first started - but with elephants! (and of course no big name bands), there were about 5000 people there so much much smaller!
Loads of fun fair type activites (burst the balloon with a dart seemed to be a favourite), stalls selling lots of 'handicrafts', beer lao everywhere you could want it and loads of people all in very good moods and being very well behaved! Rob purchased himself some Thai fisherman pants and is now very locally stylish. Had an interesting exhibition of Lao dancing and my first glass of wine in weeks.
Bedtime approached, the festival started winding down, and we returned home in some trepidation worried about the potential of being cornered for more lao lao, and the potential for further pig massacring the next morning.
Woken once again at 5.00am... 4 more pigs gone.
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Mac Thompson
non-member comment
Old time Hong Sa
Love it!! Hong Sa, LS-62, was "home" for me back fall of 1966 when I was with IVS. Out IVS house is now gone but it was right next to the large single story school. Mac