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Published: February 26th 2008
(N) We planned to be 2km away from Tat Lo down the dirt track at the junction for the bus south at 8 a.m., but the time taken by the breakfast shack to produce our huge egg baguettes and half-pint of coffee meant that we arrived 5 minutes late, not sure how much of the 2-hour gap between buses was still to elapse. Amazingly, one pulled up within a minute, one of whose passengers was a man who carried a pet bird on a stick - it was not clear if the bird remained on the stick of its own volition, or if it was somehow secured there.
Two hours and 85km south took us to the hub of
Pakse town, where we eventually located the old banger bus that would attempt to carry us another couple of hours south to our next stop,
Champasak; inside, small narrow benches were bolted to the rusting floor. The red, white and blue original colours of the bus' interior were faded and tinged with orange from the omnipresent dust; and a plastic, distinctly out-of-place faux-chiming clock was secured to a grille above the windscreen. About 15 crates of Beerlao were stacked just behind
On the old bus to Champasak
Keeping hands out of the beer cratesus, secured with twine, and a male watcher wearing flip-flops (the footwear of choice for almost everyone, as in Brazil) stood guard, the predilection of the English for a cheeky beer having perhaps been in the despatcher’s mind. A number of heavy, squat terracotta stoves were also loaded next to them, just to complete this weighty test of the bus’s perseverance.
We waited in the bus in Pakse's central bus station for an hour in the heat, to catch the extra 3 passengers who had also decided to make the same journey. Once on the move again, we pulled over after five minutes and soon a banging noise was heard from the roof. I got off to have a look and saw that the racket was coming from a number of timber planks being hauled onto the roof. Given that one of the haulers was a woman, I felt obliged to offer to take her place, and she duly accepted, so I began heaving up the thick 15' planks, but thankfully there weren’t many left! With the wood onboard, we set off again, shortly after which the driver pulled over to fuel up. Not just his own fuel tank
On the 'craft' over to Champasak
Vehicles loaded on the planks. Driver on the side of the vessel. Interesting. but also six, old, 20-litre plastic containers, which were then heaved onto the roof too, along with the sundry items such as random luggage and a bicycle that were already there, making us into a speeding petrol bomb. With a couple of other stops, it took about 2 hours to travel around 40 fitful kilometres, before we happened upon the little beach from where we needed to cross the Mekong River to Champasak just on the other side. It turned out to be on the oddest water craft we have ever travelled upon, effectively three large metal canoe-shaped boats covered by wooden planks, onto which drove our bus, along with a couple of others, and trucks and motorbikes. Unlike in Bolivia, where we had got out of the bus to cross Lake Titicaca, the passengers here were supposed to stay inside. "Not likely" we thought, and got out to stand alongside the bus, watching the driver manoeuvre the vessel from his driving position, which was on the side. We reached the other bank without mishap, and a strong acceleration from the driver hauled our bus, with its petrol, planks and people up the steep sandy path to the road, and
it was not long before we happened to stop outside the guesthouse that we had booked (Champasak being a
very small place). We unloaded, glad to be free of the bus, and in keeping with the minor frustrations of the day, found out that Mr Kamphoui of Kamphoui Guesthouse had not, in fact, kept our reservation, and his auberge was full. A sweaty hike around found us another room, which was fine apart from having been subjected to the worst paint job ever, with large pink drips over the mirror etc., and even the paper notice with the hotel regulations loosely taped to the wall was only painted around and not under! This was the place where we were to stay more than one night for the first time in 7 nights. It was also this hotel in which I saw the largest spider of our trip so far (and I include the ones we had seen in the forest the previous week, measuring about 6 inches across). I woke up and saw its outline on the curtain as the sun shone through. Thankfully (i) it was our last morning and (ii) it was on the other side of the
room. My gentle alert to Paula began, "I don't want to worry you, but..."
If Champasak had been in England, it would barely register as a village, consisting as it does of one small main street and a couple of sideroads. It is very picturesque, though, with traditional wooden Lao houses lining the way, with a couple of French colonial ones interspersed among them. What is especially interesting about Champasak is that it was where the Laos royalty was based up until the communists brought about independence from France around 30 years ago, shortly after which point blue blood was deemed out of favour, and the king plus family were banished to cave prisons near Vietnam, where they died. An unfinished royal palace near the centre is testament to this.
The following day we hired bikes for a dollar each to cycle the 12km to
Wat Phu Champasak, another ancient Khmer religious complex, which became a UNESCO heritage site in 2001, but which is much smaller than Angkor Wat in Cambodia. After a large breakfast of bread, eggs, juice, Lao sausages and banana pancakes to keep us going, the cycle ride was incredibly peaceful along the quiet road,
Paula under the frangipani trees
On the way to the top, Wat Phu Champasak. the sun already beating down and the air silent.
Wat Phu is located at the foot of Phu Kao mountain, overlooking a floodplain of the Mekong River. The temple complex is laid out on a linear plan, 1400m from east to west, and built on 6 terraces. It's mostly dated to the 11th century, parts of it have been identified as palaces but they could equally have served religious purposes. The earliest remains are from the 7th century. A shrine is built high up on one of Phu Kao's natural terraces, where a freshwater spring gushes out of the rock.
We spent some time at the two large sandstone pavilions at the bottom of the hill, which are at one end of the complex. We couldn't go in them because of their perilous state of repair; they looked like they might collapse at any time. We then climbed the rough, uneven steps to the middle level, with its impressive Khmer statue, and then on to the upper level, where Laos' fragrant-flowered national tree, the frangipani, provided partial shade from the scorching sun.
At the top of the hill, there is a temple sanctuary, containing several "almost clown-faced"
View from the top
Wat Phu Champasak. Buddha images. Behind it is a fairly small cave from where the ancient spring still flows, along with a large boulder with Hindu carvings, and enigmatic carvings of an elephant and a crocodile. The view from the top over the surrounding flat plains and the ruins just below was impressive. We peddled back when we were done, which was still in the heat around 3pm. There was almost no movement in the open roadside houses, shacks and stalls. The sensible ones were doing what Laos does best; lying in a hammock and waiting for cooler times.
We had a tough budget decision the following morning: spend $7 each on the fast tourist bus to our next destination, 100km km away, or go local again. Given that it had taken 2 hours to move just 40km previously, and that we'd need to sort our own (i) taxi, (ii) ferry crossing and (iii) another taxi
just to get to the point on the main road where a local bus might stop every hour or two to rattle us all the way down the country, we opted for Option One, and were shepherded across the Mekong to the minibus: 12 people and
their bags were squeezed onto a little wooden platform made of planks nailed across 2 canoes that had been lashed together as a makeshift craft, powered by a small engine. Once on the (mini)bus, we duly sped along at an average of 110kph - a speed which most people in Laos will have never experienced - and arrived early. This was
Si Phan Don, the laid back place where we would spend the next two nights. The name Si Phan Don literally translates as "4000 islands", which are spread out across a 50km-long stretch of the Mekong, which, as it is now dry season, has receded, and left behind low-lying islands and sandbars, in addition to the islands that are visible and inhabited year-round. Electricity has still not arrived via the national grid, so the islands rely on generators, which make a right racket when you're near a cluster of them. Our little rattan cabin didn't have any electricity at all, and we were provided with paraffin-wicked cans for illumination!
That afternoon, we hooked up on a trip to see the awesome
Khone Pha Pheng Waterfall. The sign outside claims that it is the largest cascade in South East
Asia (a claim we have seen in at least one other place), but it's impressive enough: up to 1km wide in places and 15m tall, it comes across as a beautiful force of nature. The same sign comments prosaically that the falls cause "the usually calm flow of the Mekong to roar through its narrow gorges, forming a natural obstacle to shipping". We could make out a blue plastic fisherman's tent on the otherside; those guys live, breathe and work fish; on a good day in the wet season one well-positioned trap around here can collect 0.5 tonnes of fish.
The second part of the trip was to see the Mekong River (Irrawaddy) dolphins, those rare creatures which - readers who having been paying attention will recall - we also watched near the town of Kratie, Cambodia. Our minibus dropped us at a beach and once the five of us were on board, the boatman tried to start the engine, but instead let out a huge yelp and fell back into the lap of the first tourist. It turned out that a 1.5m snake had entered the engine, and hissed at the driver! One of his colleagues waded up
to our boat, still in shallow water, and knocked the snake on the head with his flip flop. According to what we could make out, the snake was not poisonous but was going to be delicious in a soup that evening.
Anyway, eventually we set off, pootling along for 15 minutes till we came to a rocky outcrop where we disembarked and sat for a while in the steaming sun, catching brief glimpses of the dolphins around 100m - 150m away, coming up for air briefly and then disappearing. The highlight for us was probably seeing one of them puff out water through its blowhole.
The next day, we went to explore the two main islands, firstly leaving the one we were living on, Don Det, by walking along path through its parched dry-season rice terraces to its southern tip. At this point there is an impressive arched bridge built by the French, which links the island to its neighbour,
Don Khon. I took a photo of Paula on this bridge, in its own way it looked like the one over the Thames in Richmond! A train used to run over it, carrying goods from Cambodia and Vietnam
over to Don Det for further onward movement north into French Indochina, but the train hasn't run since WWII, and a rusting locomotive sits nearby.
A further 2km walk took us to a surging waterfall and set of rapids called
Tat Somphavit, whose power was amazing to watch. There was a little beach further down where I had my first full immersion into the Mekong, and a second one followed at another beach further south. It took 90 minutes to walk all the way back to our hut and the sunset, as has often been the case around the Mekong, took the form of a perfect orange, then red, ball that dropped quickly and gracefully over the horizon to go and dawn on some part of the eastern Americas. Plenty of households were using charcoal as cooking fuel as we walked back in the dusk, which resulted in far too much smoke than could be heatlhy entering their living areas.
Paula had pumpkin burger that night, the local speciality. To walk off dinner, we strolled to the end of the island where there is a small sandy beach which we shared with two playful dogs and a torpid
water buffalo. Looking up at the stars was a sight to behold, because without light pollution it was possible to see stars - some of them bright, and some dim - in almost every inch of sky.
We left Don Det the following day and had a large breakfast of pancakes and ginger tea-bread at a nearby bakery. It’s run by an Aussie baker who didn't like the early mornings back home, and who now begins his day around 11am on this island in Laos.
We got in a low-powered motorised canoe and headed back to the mainland. Barely had we been going for a few minutes when the driver at the rear, who was steering, yelled something in a high-pitched voice to his colleague at the front. It turned out that the steering mechanism was jammed, and that we were now heading straight for a large and - needless to say - intransigent, sandbar. We weren't travelling too fast, but if we hit it at the right (wrong) angle, it would have tipped all 12 passengers and their luggage into the Mekong. We braced for impact, THUD! Thankfully the boat didn't wobble over, the steering was fixed
and the rest of the long journey back up to the capital Vientiane was uneventful. It was interesting to pass one roadside market where there was nothing for sale other than large watermelons, hundreds of them, for sale across 20 stalls, which made Paula and I ask a question that we have posed many times in similar situations since we first left England: how do they
all make a living?
We pulled into Vientiane bus station at 06h00. The transfer to our cheap hotel wasn't there, and when we eventually arrived there by tuk tuk, the price was more than had been arranged. Both the pick up and price were sorted out by the one-man travel agent we had used on Don Det. We had been really impressed with his efficiency while we were there, not least because of his lifestory: his family was too poor to look after him, so he went to the local temple and was a monk for 5 years, learning English and landing a good tourism job as his reward. But the fact is that his arrangements didn’t work out, and he also said that the bus ticket he sold us to Vientiane was
the cheapest available (which seemed to be true after we checked a couple of places) but actually it wasn’t. Before we left, he told us that he was going to try and persuade the one agent that was undercutting everyone else to put up their price; something less than a victory for consumers everywhere, methinks.
Later that morning, we tried a second trip to the
Beerlao factory, this time by local bus not bicycle and, unlike a couple of weeks previously, it was open. We were welcomed and taken to the beer garden, before being asked if we would like a beer before the brief tour. We replied in the affirmative. Following this, we visited the bottling lines (30,000/hour) and enjoyed the deep malty aromas in the air before buying a small souvenir umbrella (they were out of beer glasses) and heading back into Vientiane.
In the evening, there was a free jazz concert hosted by the German Embassy in the ultra-smart Laos Cultural Hall, in honour, announced our host in a suitably Teutonic accent, to celebrate 50 years of diplomatic relations between Laos and the Federal Republic of Germany. The quartet were great, the pianist Sebastian Schunke
being of some renown, occasionally leaving his seat while playing, like a man possessed, and the sax player alternated between a soprano and a bass sax, sometimes in the same piece!
We had plenty of opportunity to use the Beerlao umbrella the following morning, as it was raining and continued to do so for the 4-hour bus journey to
Vang Vieng. It's a little town at the foot of towering limestone mountains and beside a river called Nam Song. People we'd spoken to raved about going tubing here: you get taken 3km upriver in a tuk tuk and given a rubber ring (actually a large truck's inner tube) to float back downstream at your own pace. Best of all, bars along the way can pull you in for a beer to keep up your sustenance, and they also provide rope swings and pulleys to launch you into the river (i.e. it is a combination of activities that wouldn't make it over the first hurdle of EU rules). This pastime we duly participated in the following morning; unfortunately the weather had only improved slightly, which still meant grey skies and shortly after we began, a light drizzle that lasted most
Bucket of drink
Round the campfire, Smile Bar, Vang Vieng of the day. Thus it was, slightly after midday on a damp Sunday morning, that Paula and I sat in the Nam Song, buoyed by a giant inner tube, getting wet from above and underneath, accompanied by some friendly English guys with whom we'd had dinner and a few drinks the previous night Saturday, on an island just off the shore of Vang Vieng, reached by a very rickety bamboo bridge, around a bonfire, the DJ making a good impression on us by playing a few songs from our wedding disco - we also had our first alco-bucket here, a white Russian, into which apparently went half a bottle of vodka. It was very nice.
Anyway, back to the tubing. We'd barely gone 50 metres when the first bar loomed, a bamboo rod was extended to us by people working there, and we hauled ourselves in. As at every future bar we went to, loud music was playing: here, Drum'n'Bass, there Reggae etc. We had a beer and a couple of us, including yours truly, had a go on the "flying fox", a short ride from a platform into the river along a cable, which ended abruptly with a
drop into the river. The bar had a hot fire going, the heat of which was very welcome, but part of the fuel was bamboo, the smoke of which causes a certain stinging of the eyes, so we headed off fairly soon. Our next stop wasn't much further downriver, where we had a coffee chaser to warm us up.
Sometimes the current took us quite quickly, but most of the time we drifted at a crawling pace, the water level being low due to it being the dry season. The scenery however was awe-inspiring, as the huge rugged black cliffs loomed over us covered in trees, some of which seemed to grow out near the top at 45-degree angles. It was like being 'on location' in Jurassic Park. My most serene moment was when I had drifted on my own for a brief time in the midst of all this scenery, the light rain still falling and Bob Marley's
Redemption Song floating in the air from some bar in the medium distance.
We made one more beer-stop (declining the bar's apparent signature drink (or typo) of "Bed Bull"), before getting back into town about 4 hours later, all
About to get wet...
Tubing in Vang Vieng pretty nippy by this stage and
really appreciated the rare hot shower we had!
Due to the fact that we didn't have any sun in Vang Vieng, or eat/drink anything made from
mulberry, which is the fruit for which the town is famous, we will have to come back at a future date. Just on a general everyday note, I thought I would share the toilet situation in most Laos places we went to: about half were squat loos (no explanation required), including the
NATO branded one at the recent homestay, and about half of of them have the "conventional" flush system whereas the others have a half-coffin-shaped concrete tank in one corner of the room, from which you can scoop one (or more, depending on requirement) jugs of water into the bowl. Toilet paper goes in a waste bin and definitely not into the toilet, whereas toilet roll holders are frequently found on tables of cafes, bars and restaurants, dispensing bog roll to be used as a serviette.
I wrote up some diary notes the following day in Luang Prabang, guarding our rucksacks in a trendy bar (the like of which we don't often get to hang
Nick on the flying fox (going west to east..!)
A spring at the end of the line brings an abrupt end to the proceedings. out it, with its whiff of fresh bread and electronic jazz soundtrack on its speakers), hoping that Paula wouldn't return from finding us a hostel
too soon!
*****
ALSO! The video problems seem to be over, and our clips are now loaded onto Paula's previous blog. Particularly worth checking out is the old dude playing the Kaen, a type of panpipes.
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Hilary and Dave Blanchard
non-member comment
SPIDERS (LARGE) UGHHHHH!
OH! MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME! I would have leapt straight through the so called glass or any other type of ceiling for that matter!!! Looking forward to seeing you soon - Take very good care of each other , Love Hilary and Dave XX