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Published: September 19th 2007
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We travelled by bus from NE Thailand to Central Laos. Our first stop was Pakse where we encountered our first tasty baguette. After weeks of tasteless, white bread from the 7-11 where crust-less loaves were an option, I was stocked with peanut butter to satisfy my old breakfast routine.
As we roamed the streets of Pakse we noticed something was missing, no one was hassling us. The motorcycles approached us and when they noticed we weren't interested they just rode away. The children we encountered greeted us with smiling faces and waves. The adults acknowledged our presence but were a little more reserved. They seemed comfortable to let us observe them in their daily lives and haven't (yet) changed their ways of life to cater to the tourism industry that is guaranteed to experience a giant boom in the next few years.
We visited Tad Fane (the tallest waterfall in Laos) and Tad Champee (apparently a swimmable waterfall), which left Jenna with a small leech on her leg! Next we went to Champasak, a town on the other side of the Mekong. The ferry looked like a child's homemade toy raft, and with all the weight placed on the
buoyant supports we were amazed we didn't sink. Vong Paseud, a guesthouse owner, recruited us to stay at his place. We opted for the cheapest of rooms where the bamboo walls were so thin the French girls on our left could hear the Dutch couple on our right talking! Vong laughed at everything, regardless of who was talking, each sentence would end with a multi-pitched continuous laugh. Even as we rode away on our single-gear bicycles we could still hear him laughing.
We rode 8km on a dirt road with the Mekong on our left, the mountains on our right and the sun beaming down. There were children without pants running along the street, a Buddha sat beneath a random Bodhi tree, and most of the Laotians were resting on the lower exposed levels of their stilt homes. At the end of the road was Wat Pho, an ancient Khmer Hindu temple, older than Angkor Wat!
The highlight of Laos was our experience of life on the Mekong River while we stayed on Don Det in Si Phan Don. Electricity was recently installed on the island but mainly for 2 reasons: cooking and television. We stayed at Magical
Moments with Mr. Man; our wooden bungalow consisted of one room equipped with an essential mosquito net, a hammock and a balcony directly over the river. The river is where our vegetables, dirty dishes and laundry all got cleaned. After observing this we found no reason for us to not swim in it, especially since the shower water is pumped directly from the river! So we spent the next couple of days on a raft, floating past the Cambodian border, swimming with water buffaloes, and bicycling along the car-less dirt roads.
Our stay on the island was made even better by the banana-pineapple-coconut shakes, lentils with lemongrass curry and shak shuka (an Israeli dish) that the guesthouse owners have perfected to satisfy the hungry tourists. Evenings were spent story-telling with other tourists and swinging on the hammocks by candlelight while watching the lightening show along the horizon.
The final destination for us in Laos was Savannakhet where we took an extremely slow tuk tuk driver to Wat Inghang . Even the bicyclists were going faster than us! Wat Inghang is located in an ethnic minority village and we decided to tackle the heat and forage through the forest.
Some girls from the local village followed us and as they led the way to the lake, they collected wild mushrooms and offered us seeds from giant tree pods. On the way back we hitched a ride from a truck driver carrying a huge bin of water; even with all the weight it was a faster option than the turtle-like tuk tuk driver.
In the evening we headed to the bus terminal. For the first time on this trip I was eagerly awaiting a tuk tuk driver to pass by. Not a single one passed by us (maybe they all go to sleep at 9PM?) and we ended up walking the entire 2km.
Our overnight bus was already in the parking lot, workers were loading more and more boxes INTO the bus. It was only when I stepped into the bus did I realize where all the boxes were placed. Only the front half of the bus had seats; the rest was storage space. There were 6 tourists in total and we were given seats. The un-lucky ones sat on the luggage or on small plastic seats placed in the isle. It was a gruelling 15 hour trip
which involved sleeping at the border, a guy on a motorbike who drove off with our passports (who we tackled in front of the immigration window to retrieve them!), walking across the border at sunrise and being swarmed by illegal female money changers that carried massive shoulder bags full of cash. After that ordeal, we travelled through the Truong Son mountains and saw lush green landscapes. Unfortunately, we both fell asleep and missed most of the spectacular view...
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