Southern Laos - Take Two

After some time recovering and resting at Grandma's from our little bicycle odyssey, I was able to keep down food most of the time, and getting restless staying at the house. Plus I'd thrown up all 7 of the 7 total Lao dishes already and so nothing really appealed to me to eat there - I was ready for some tourist-town pizza and Indian food. So we caught a ride with Ehp who was heading south at 2am to Thakek. We assumed this would be better than the bus, but in fact found that there are worse things than the bus - such as freezing in the back of a pickup for 7 hours. At least we got to look at the stars, and Sam's rendition of "Somewhere Out There" (or whatever the American Tale song is called) was excellently done in an authentic Feivel voice.

When we got to Thakek we found that there wasn't much to do or see there, so we went to the bus station to catch the 11:30am bus to Paxse, and waited, and waited. The only entertainment was a poor goat tied to the roof of an actual full size bus! The poor goat, stuck in the hot sun. At least someone climbed up to give it water, which it refused to drink. Anyway our bus did eventually did leave at about 3pm. It was a local bus so it stopped every 5 minutes to offload people, livestock, cement, etc, and didn't get to Paxse until late, causing all the poor locals to miss their connections and have to beg for a place to stay. We'd been up for 36 hours and were just happy to crash out at a town with a tourist area, meaning internet and pizza (which I devoured and promptly threw up.)

We rested for a day in Paxse. Swearing off local buses, we went to a tour agency and booked a minibus to Champasok, near Wat Phou, the only Khmer ruin in Laos. We stayed a day there and rode rented bicycles (sad after our nice mountain bikes) up to the temple, which we toured in great detail, because really it is not very big at all, though fun all the same. It was hot so we didn't stage any kung fu fights on the crazy temple steps. Next time. If you are going, my advice is to rent a scooter and do this as a daytrip from Paxse, because Champasok is a very small, sleepy town. By sleepy, I mean every shopowner and restaurant owner is asleep and has to be dragged grumpily out of their bed or hammock to help you. Well, most of them. There is a restaurant at every house but we discovered once you order that the owners of the restaurants all run over to the same kitchen nearby and order you food, then bring it back a few hours later at a premium price. Luckily we met only the second American couple we'd ever seen in Laos and had a fun time comparing notes with them while we waited.

Next we booked another VIP minibus to the 4000 Islands, an area in southern Laos where the Mekong divides and creates an area with about 20 islands, 2000 rocks, and 1080 trees sticking up from the river. We ended up having to throw our bags on a big bus and take a minibus, since the other minibus had broken down. Arriving at the ferry crossing to Dondet island, we waited for the bags. And waited, and waited, and thought about all the things that we really really needed and couldn't possibly replace in those bags. Eventually we found out that the bus had broken down as well and our bags showed up in another bus. So we finally got to catch the ferry to the island. The ferry was actually a rickety longboat powered by, I swear to you, a weedwhacker.

Dondet island was super cool, a lazy laid back place on the river lined with bungalows and riverfront restaurants where we immediately parked ourselves and ordered ourselves some french fries and fruit shakes. Later we got beers at the Monkey Bar where a crazy drunk wouldn't leave us alone - eventually we discovered he was the bar owner, but not until his children forcibly carried him away.



The next day we did the kayak tour with some friends from the broken down bus. The tour was great, but we forgot our cardinal rule - always inspect the equipment before paying! It turned out one of the kayaks was actually an inflatable - very difficult to steer and paddle. We soon found out why the tour was expensive and why they don't let you tour by yourself - locals have to carry the kayaks past the first falls, actually a section where the river splits into a series of small falls. It has not been whitewater rafted yet, at least not successfully, and we were not going to try it in our inflatable! After the falls we got to try the rapids (probably barely class 2) after which we cleverly got our friends to trade for the "fun" kayak. We had lunch on the Cambodian side of the river at the Irrawaddy river dolphin-watching spot. After the gibbons, we didn't expect much because we'd heard people often did not see any dolphins. But the dolphins were feeling organized and were in their assigned positions that day - we got to paddle out and watch them for about an hour quite close up. However they totally failed to do any backflips, oh well. We paddled back over to Laos where a truck drove us to the second waterfall, apparently the largest falls in Laos by volume, where a huge section of the Mekong dumps off a big shelf. We'd heard it was pretty lame but in the dry season it was pretty spectacular - probably about a 40 foot drop and a huge amount of water, glowing in the setting sun. Yeah yeah, pics soon, when we get fast internet i.e. leave Southeast Asia.

The next day we booked another VIP bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia - a 2 day journey. The border crossing exit point was a total cliche - just a tiny shack with a little tollgate style pole on a string. Then a short walk and repeat for immigration, and change buses. After about an hour, take a wild guess what happened next - the bus broke down. Apparently even VIP buses in southern Laos and Cambodia only have about a 33% chance of arrival. Luckily the operators have cell phones and the buses break down so much that they send another bus pretty fast. We did an overnight in Kampong Cham, where surprisingly the bus operator got us all a good hotel without cheating us much ($5 a night for a good clean room.) The next day we had to change buses a few times again but made it with no further trouble to Siem Reap.