38 °C Greetings (finally I’m back online!)
So I last wrote from Pakse, the provincial capital of Champasak province, and over 700km South of Vientiane. Flying low over the Southern provinces of Laos, I was shocked by the tremendous devastation of Laos’ deforestation. Vast areas of once-forested lands, lay naked and brown beneath me, and the constant haze of dust lingered in the air. About 2/3 of Laos’ export earnings are from logging, and on top of that, there is a large amount of forest area disappearing as a result of illegal loggers from within Lao and nearby Thailand (Thai border is about 40k away).
Upon arrival here, I went in search of (food and then) the allusive Mr Theung (no doubt, one of many), who, I was informed, would be able to provide me with the most up-to-date information on getting down to Si Phan Done (Four Thousand Islands) by slow boat. All I knew was that he owned a coffee shop, near the bridge closest to the port (which isn’t really a port, but more of a spot where a few boats huddle together at the foot of a riverside! See none of the streets in Pakse actually have names! Or if they do, they are numerical, but the numbers don’t make much sense, and nobody seems to know what they are! Of course speaking no Lao, was not much help…. So I never did end up finding Mr Thueng, but I did have a rather dull afternoon in Pakse town, where the most exciting event of the day was the bitumizing of the ‘main’ road – an occasion for every long-fingernailed man to watch in delight (only prosperous men can have long-fingernails ‘cause they don’t have to work in the fields!).
Anyway, I decided to take a bus, and the next morning, I hailed a tuk-tuk to take me to the bus station (which turned out to be a market) where I was befriended by a Lao woman who had just returned to Laos, after 25 years living in Paris (of course!). She asked me where I was heading, and invited me to share the tuk-tuk with her family to head down to Champasak. After grabbing some breakfast (a long crusty baguette plastered with margarine and copious amounts of brown sugar!!!!!!), I jumped aboard for the ride down to Champasak, with my new friend, and her companions. Whilst my friend and I chatted away happily in French (or rather, she chatted away, and I occasionally was able to extract a few phrases/words from my left hemisphere in order to reply), her mother munched on a half-formed baby bird egg, and her sister sucked away on a wad of betel nut (which acts as a stimulant and does a great job in discolouring one’s teeth!). After dropping off her family in Champasak town, she continued with me to Wat Phou, where she provided me with a rather detailed description of the Wat and its significance to Lao people (again all in French!). Wat Phou is an Angkorian temple (slightly older than Angkor Wat) set aside a hill (Phou is Lao for mountain), and purported to look like a Linga (Hindu phallus). The main stairway up the Wat is lined with frangipanis and the view from the top was superb.
Wat Phou Champasak
Whilst looking around the Wat, I befriended a German couple, who had booked a private tour on the internet and had their own mini-van to take them wherever they wanted to go. They offered me a ride down to Don Khong, one of the 4000 islands, and I arrived there quickly and comfortably – and without the help of Mr Theung!
I couldn’t quite afford the US$25/night comfort of my German friends’ somewhat palatial hotel, so opted for the $3/night Mekong Guest House next door. A good choice, it turned out as the guesthouse was run by a lovely Lao/Canadian family who did everything possible to make me feel at home, including nursing me back to health when I came down rather ill (I think a touch of cholera) early the next morning. I told them to rename it the Mekong GuestHouse and Hospital! Can also highly recommend Semalong essential balm and Marley’s (no relation to Bob) egg noodle soup as a remedy for reverse-peristalsis….
Aside from spending time being cared for by my adopted Lao family, I explored Don Khong island, mostly on one of those ricketty gearless Chinese bikes I rode up North. At first I started out with the 16km roundtrip cycle to the other side of the island, before doing the 25km Southern loop, and then yesterday taking on the 40km (maybe a little less) Northern circuit with Becky (friend from Vientiane) and Stefan (a German)…..on a mountain bike in a temperate climate, that’s probably not such a ride, but in the 35degree heat on a dodgy bicycle, it’s hard work!!
The scenery across Don (Lao for island) Khong is both charming and varied, with iridescent green rice paddies (presumably the folk with a bit of money for high-tech Lao irrigation systems) juxtaposed with dried-up straw coloured ones; water-buffalo mulling in the fields, taking a dip in the trenches that line the roadside, or wandering down the roads, clinking their cow-bells as they go; children playing in their front yards, smiling brightly as they gleefully wave to the ‘falangs’ or running out onto the road-side to high-five falangs passing by. Most of the houses are made from bamboo and coconut palm wood, and many contain television and/or stereo systems that could compete with any high-tech 80s model system. On Khong, there are also animals all over the place, including some of the most robust looking chooks and ducks I’ve ever seen, loads of birds, 100kg pigs, and plenty of skanky (“but always beautiful”) cats and dogs.
Scenes from Don Khong
From Don Khong I took a daytrip to the islands of Don Deth/Don Khone, close to the Cambodian border, where I got to see the spectacular Khone Phapheng waterfalls (claimed to be the ‘widest’ in the world hmmmm), the not-so-spectaular-but-still-quite-nice Li Phi waterfall, the old French railway line and carriage (the French had grand plans to build a railway line that connected Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with Thailand, and a school of the extremely endangered and rare Irawaddy Dolphins. Aside from the extraordinary opportunity we had to see these rare freshwater dolphins in relatively close proximity, the trip provided us with the chance to cross out of Laos, into Lao-Cambodian no-man’s-land, into Cambodia and back again, without officially dealing with immigration – therefore paying no visa-cost, nor any entry/exit/re-entry bribe to corrupt officials!
There was once a train planned to run across Indochina...it never actually happend...
Mother Marley (from my guesthouse) was kind enough to organize a ride for Stefan (German friend) and I back North, in what she believed to be the most comfortable mini-bus transport available! She guaranteed us a comfy ride at the local price!! So at 6.30 (Lao time – i.e. anytime after 6.30am but never exactly at 6.30am) we were surprised to be met by an over-crowded covered pick-up truck – think 27 people in the back (rather battery-chicken-like)!! A rather uncomfortable ride of about 3.5 hrs duration, but certainly character building. What was not so character-building, however, was sitting right next to the truck conductor (a charming man with bad body odour and no teeth) and his fat friend Freddy, who took glee in ogling the falang backpacker, who was ever grateful she had decided to go for the neck-ankle-five-sizes-too-big-ensemble………
Anyway, not much else to say. I THINK I’m heading east to the Bolavens plateau tomorrow (it’s possible I end up in Yangon or Krabi!), but for now, some sleep would be nice!
See yas later
Love Belinda
xxoo
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