Laos

Laos
You know you are really travelling in South East Asia when you have a ridiculously awful transport episode and getting into Laos was well and truly that. We had opted for a tourist VIP bus (didn’t have these last time I travelled!) as we had heard that crossing the border brings with it hefty over charging, which ultimately makes it more expensive to travel independently than on a tour bus. So VIP it was. It started off ok (doesn’t it always?) Ok, so it wasn’t exactly VIP but we had a seat and there was aircon, despite no loo for the journey that would take some people 18 hours. We were only on this bus for about six hours, before we had to stay the night in what turned out to be a family room attached to a restaurant. It wasn’t so bad though, at least it was close to the bus stop!

The problem came when we asked for our tickets as we didn’t want to be charged for the room in the morning, the new bus we were getting on, or the one that we knew we would have to change on to at the border. Apparantly this was a no can do situation. They simply refused to give us a ticket and by refusing so unapologetically we knew that we were in for a scam so there was no way we were giving up. Half an hour and a lot of shouting later they finally pulled out their ticket book and wrote us one - easy as pie. One thinks they might have protested too much and the very fact that it was so easy to give us a ticket simply went to show they were trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Indeed the first bus we got in in the morning, not only was a local minivan that would have cost us pittance to book ourselves but it was completely chocca with bags and boxes and too many people so that the excess staff wanted to sit in our seats (we refused to let them, grumpy I know but we had paid a heft “tourist’ price for the “VIP” transport and we weren’t going to give up what semblance of comfort we had. Furthermore, as we expected, they tried to charge us again and their faces dropped when they saw we had somehow kept hold of our tickets. Crossing the border itself was relatively pain free, even the goats, pigs, cows and chickens who roamed around on the Laos side knew the border regulations! And somehow, when we crossed over to Laos we managed, with the help of a local woman who I think was following us on her moto, to find the way to the bus stop a km a away where we got ourselves on a local bus (no sign of that VIP bus we were supposed to have) for the five hour journey to Savannakhet. No aircon but windows do the trick! Besides which you need to the windows for all the street vendors to thrust their chicken on sticks, fried baby frogs legs and drinks in bags through. When we arrived in Savannaket we decided that after about 18 hours of travelling the only things to do was jump on another local bus for the five hour journey to Pakse! It sounds crazy but in fact it is far better to get all the drudgery and long journeys with over in one hard bash than stretch them out, wasting days. So finally we arrived in Pakse, in Southern Laos at about eleven, with just enough time for me to get ill before bed!

We spent our first day ‘planning’ which for us meant having a long lunch with some people we met, meandering around a few shops, asking a few questions, grabbing a few fruit shakes and then deciding to order mountain bikes from Thailand to cycle the rest of the trip and we so nearly did order them before we remembered just how hot it is, couldn’t work out what to do with our bags and contemplated cycling in India which quite frankly would just never happen! So then we decided to spend five days kayaking to Four Thousand Islands on the Laos, Cambodia border but finances put paid to that so instead we rented ourselves a motorbike and hit the road for a couple of days on the Bolaven Plateaux, extending it to reach Champasak Ruins.

The Bolaven Plateaux was sumptuous, with beautiful scenery, plenty of waterfalls and tiny villages lining the roads. Here the children play naked, running around chasing dogs and chickens and playing with the must basic of toys yet having the most fun imaginable. Life is hard and the villagers are extremely poor but happiness exudes and the way of life at first glance seems totally idylic.

Our first stop was at a wonderful waterfall stop where locals go to picnic and enjoy the gorgeous waters. There were a couple of waterfalls and the locals all play in the water fully clothed, jeans and all. Not so much in this spot, but in many others along the river, villagers have integrated the river into their daily lives. They bathe in it, the children naked, the men in their underwear and the women in their beautiful sarongs. They do their teeth in it, they wash their dishes and clothes in it, they take their water from it and they use it to catch food and have fun. The Mekong is the heart of the country and a lifeline to nearly all within it.

In Tat Lo, one of the waterfalls, the local children stripped off in front of our guest house and jumped in and out of the river, hopping between water and mud, smothering themselves in the gloop and having a grand old time washing it off. Beautiful dogs bounded past, criss crossing the paths of pigs, golden cows, chickens and the children themselves. This river is a free for all and everyone, man and beast, enjoys its pleasure. Behind the children was the back drop of the beautiful waterfall, where locals and travellers relaxed in the cool waters and where we watched an elephant be bathed in the morning. This area is home to the Alak and Katu tribe who apparantly once a year on the full moon in March, perform a ritual water buffalo sacrifice. We were here on this very date but could simply not find out where we would go to watch this ritual. The lives of these tribes people are very basic and have not changed in hundreds of years.

After taking a wee dip in the waterfall, we had a delightful evening just relaxing on the waters edge in our guest house, eating delicious food and strolling around. The next morning we wondered further into the village where we saw our bathing elephant and stopped for a while to watch him eat. We wandered up to some perfectly set up allotments, meandered through the forest and strolled around the local villages and past the tribal homes, before we jumped back on the bikes to find some more waterfalls.

In the afternoon we came across a few other waterfalls and one in particular was simply divine. You could swim literally under the thundering falls which was so incredible and one of the most gorgeous natural experience ever! I loved it! The falls were a good 50 foot high and so beautiful. Afterwards we visited a 100 foot twin fall which was pretty impressive but we were looking at it from 50 foot above the top of the falls. Seen as there was a sign to the falls we thought maybe we would be able to walk down to them but after about half an hour of walking down the steepest, most narrow slopes only able to hold on with the help of impressively strong vines, all the while with heavy day sacks and motorcycle helmets in our hands, we decided that quite frankly we were risking our lives and we thought that perhaps there wasn’t the best search and rescue team out here to help us if need be! Besides, no one knows where we are anyhow. So rather reluctantly, but definitely sensibly we breathlessly climbed back up the practically vertical route to the top.

For some reason we were clearly in the mood for going way above and beyond the sensible today and so having already risked life and limb to get up close and personal to waterfalls we decided that we would not in fact go back to Pakse on the motor bike but would instead drive several hours further to Champasak where the ancient Khmer temples of Wat Phu Champasak are. It was quite an eventful journey with bugs splattering into our eyes and the bike’s lights being hardly worth the trouble! When we finally reached Champasak we had to cross the Mekong in the pitch black! SO our bike was put on two wee little wooden motorised canoes with a platform of wood over them, which constituted a boat and in the deep dark of the night crossed the waters with the driver both steering and emptying the boats of the waters that were fast flooding in! We made it though and so did the bike and found ourselves a little guest house, complete with transvestite owners, giant frogs and humongous crickets slash cockraoches in our shoes!

The ruins themselves were prettey spectacular, though not a patch on what we would see in Cambodia. None-the-less they were very beautiful, surrounded by sweet smelling frangipani trees and looking out over the far reaching plains, far below. Some of the ruins were off limits but the others we were able to get up close and personal, perhaps too much so as there was license to scramble over many ruins and carvings if we had wanted to. There were some wonderful carvings and etchings in perfectly cut huge rocks, symbolic of gods and goddesses. The best of which was a huge carving of an elephant into the side of a rock face.

After our ride back to Pakse we grabbed our stuff and got on a local bus (otherwise known as a big rickshaw) and headed down for the nearly four hours to Four Thousand Islands. Despite being a little saw on the bum it was a far more exciitng journey than it would have been had we stayed overnight in Pakse to get the luxury tourist truck. It wasn’t too crammed, there was the cutest little boy making us smile the whole way, everyone was friendly and fed us random root vegetables and what not and we made it in good time!

Four Thousand Islands was beautiful. It is life as it has always been, with no hassle, no stress, no crazy modern shananagans but all the beauty of living life at its most relaxing pace. We had no electricity and on some nights no water. We stayed in a lovely little shack right on the edge of the Mekong, with our very own guardian spider, complete with the craziest web I have ever seen. The only problem with being in such simple lodgings was that I decided that because it was an inappropriate place as possible I would get sick, really sick! Two days of being violently ill with no fan, limited running water, no electricity - not the best! Fortunately I managed to keep well on our first day and we hired bikes to cycle around the island, taking in raging waterfalls, hidden beaches with crystal clear warm waters, shaded country paths, hot open sand roads and water edge middle of nowhere restaurants. Whilst being ill and hanging out in the little shack at least I had the view of daily life on the Mekong, with families washing both themselves and their clothes and dishes, fishermen rowing out as the night sky enveloped them and tourists coming in and heading back to the mainland. Sadly, this meant of course that we would be heading back to the mainland at some point and after a few days (which was by no means long enough) on the gorgeous islands we started our border crossing journey, to reach Cambodia.