Oh My God, I think we just ran over a chicken.....
The flight went off very well and we arrived bright and early into this pretty Laotian town. We had a vague plan to hire a car and drive ourselves though Laos at high speed (we have only 10 days for the whole country) but soon after arrival, that idea was quashed by the Lao tourism people who told us that its simply "not possible" to do that. Ho Hum. Never daunted, we hopped into another hybrid of the rickshaw, which is unique to Laos- the "Jumbo" which is a small flat bed truck converted into a rickshaw. It goes damn fast and can hold up to 10 people in the back.
We commandeerd our own jumbo and asked the cute and helpful man to drive us out of the city on a high speed 250km circuit of the Bolvean Plateaux where we were promised by Lonley Planet we would see many beautiful waterfalls and also tribal villages where the people are quite primitive and all the ladies puff on Opium. Sitting in the dust drenched back of the Jumbo, we proceeded to drive at almost the speed of sound, down unpaved roads, throwing up gravel, chickens, goats and small children as we passed. At one point, I was dozing off, and I was woken by an alarmed Nele saying the immortal "Oh my god, I think we just ran over a chicken" and then glancing back down the road, we see a cloud of dust and chicken feathers flying in the air!!!
We stopped at a beautiful waterfall, and then proceeded to go and have a look at the villages. We were treated to a completely unpretentious visit to several villages, where we were able to wander through the stilt houses and visit people as they did thier daily things. The people were dressed mostly in traditional clothes, although some of the men were in western. They did indeed keep thier coffins under thier houses, and the women (and girls, from the age of about 13) did indeed puff on opium pipes...ALL the time......
We saw the ladies making thatch for thier rooves, also several fruit markets, and finally we came across a weaving village where they were making wonderful Laos fabrics. At every turn there were beautiful Laos children running around playing with sticks and chasing piglets. Magical. All the people we came across were furiously interested in us, and very very smily...all cracking up when we talked to them and the kids crawling all over us in interest. Even as we rode in the back of the Jumbo, people would zoom right up to the back on thier scooters and smiling broadly, wave until they caused themselves to swerve and nearly fall off.
We roared back to Pakse in our Jumbo, taking in all the sights enroute - lush greenness as far as the eye can see, mountains and rice paddies, people in pointed Laos hats sewing the fields, buffaloes employed pulling carts and ploughs, stilt houses, smiley ladies carrying babies and baskets strapped to thier backs. Also, Monks - obviously Buddhism is the main religion here in Laos, and monks, in thier beautiful safferon robes are very commonly seen - everywhere - on bikes, on busses...in fact there is a young monk sitting next to me now in the internet cafe - must be on buddha.com or something....
Next day we were to experience our first Laos bus - buoyed by our experience with the disco bus in Cambodia, we confidently booked ourselves on the 10 hour bus from Pakse to Tha khek, which is a frontier town (Thai boarder) halfway up the Southern part of Laos, which promised us lots of untouched eco adventures. As soon as we got on, I regretted it.....we not only had disco-vision (a TV blaring out) but it was REALLY loud, and unceasing. Now, with a good book, I can normally close out all distractions - but this was even getting through to me.....Laos TV is a thing on its own. First programme was a Laos version of Ant and Dec's Saturday night show - two young men in oversized suits in front of a big dance troupe wearing leopard skin doing a sort of line dancing cum dad dancing. Next they were joined by four "hilarious" old guys, who I think were comedians - each had a day glo suit in orange, green, yellow and pink. They kept hitting each other with plastic table legs (at the point of contact there was always a cartoonish "whack" or "pow"noise) Then it downgraded into a very very poor pantomime - lots of Laos guys badly dressed as women - all hitting each other. According to the Laotians on the bus, this was the funniest thing they have ever seen in thier lives. To Nele and I, it was definately a kind of torture. In the end, I stuffed paper in my ears, and Nele put her bag on her head.
The journey was made even more interesting when we stopped at a market for the others on a bus to pick up a few essentials. The market turned out to be a meat market, where such delicacies as live snails, live toads, dead rats, dead squirrels, dead kingfishers and buckets of blood (which transpired to be calfs bollocks) were the plat du jour.
The rest of the journey, we had to share our bit of the bus with a bag of dead squirrels. THE SMELL!!!!! Oh my GOD......
When we finally arrived in Tha Khek, we kissed the ground and then headed for our hostel -just in time, as we were then hit by an almighty thunder and lightening storm, the like of which we havnt seen since Kovalam. Big forks of lightening and swooshing rain like a bucket of water being thrown over your head. Lovely!
In the Tha Khek area, we had read that there were some interesting caves to explore, as well as rivers to kayak down, and lovely jungle walks to do. We had only one day, so we enlisted the help of a local tour company - who organised a Tha Khek oddysey for us for the following day. Our guide Death (yep, that was his name) was a young Lao student studying and teaching English, so he was very friendly and keen to practise his language.
Next morning Death turned up with a motorbike rickshaw (another hybrid in Lao -a motorbike with a cart on the back to seat 4/6 people) and we were off! This time, we didnt go at such a breakneck speed, so it was more enjoyable - seeing the marvellous scenery passing us by.
First visit was the Hermit Cave, where I had a rather typically Absterly moment, where bum surfed down a muddy slope (the guide told us that it was fine to go rambling in the forest in the wet season in flip flops....) and then proceeded to have hysterics on seeing a rather innoculous green snake (I burst into tears....ahem) The cave was lovely, but flooded (wet season again!) so we couldnt go inside.
Next was another cave, which reminded me a lot of a scary version of Cheddar gorge -well sorted for tourism -lots of walkways and steps - but also all crumbling and dripping with water. Beautiful staigmites and tites though. The cave was well lit with striplights, although I did notice that most of the electric cable was underwater...so we had the added excitement of dodging death as well....This second one was called the "walk and talk" cave....
The story of the caves goes, that the Hermit lived in the cave, and had a beautiful daughter. One day a novice buddhist monk came along and spotted the girl, and charmed her into coming to the other cave...where they walked and talked (of course!). Apparently the Hermit was a bit pissy that the little monk did this. There the story ends.
Next we were due to go for a swim in the river followed by a peaceful cruise on a dugout canoe through sunken forests. Enroute to the river, our rash tuk tuk driver decided a bit of off road adventure was required, and we got unmovably stuck in knee deep mud. All three of us had to get out of the vahicle and push, as we sank deeper and deeper in the mud as well. You can imagine what we looked like afterwards - mud splattered like we had been wrestling! That added to my already caked bum was a sight to behold!!
Onwards we went - to the riverside for lunch and a swim - except we couldnt swim because the river was raging and also very muddy -wet season again! we are soooooo great at planning....
Lunch consisted of grilled fish, sticky lao rice and dried fish that was like eating high fish flavoured leather shoe insoles.
After another shocking overland drive in the tuk tuk, we arrived at the prescribed place where we were meant to meed the canoe. It never arrived, and so Death had to go and find the man. Apparently, as it rained in the night, he thought we werent coming....???
I really enjoyed the canoe trip, although Nele wasnt so enamoured, as she doesnt like boats or water, and we were about 1 inch away from the surface of the water in a dugout canoe, and the owner was constantly bailing out! She panicked at one moment and started to bail furiously for him!!!
Last on our agenda for the day was a visit to the legendary Buddha cave, where, legend has it, a man i n 1997 climbed up a cliff hoping to catch bats for his dinner (nothing surprises me any more about Laotion food habits!) and came across a cave which contained more than 200 ancient buddha images - carvings and statues. No one knows how or when they got there. Today, it has become a real pilgrim site, and is a beautiful fascinating place. We clambered up into the cave and sat a while in meditation of the beautiful images before us.
Exhausted after our adventures, we headed home to the hostel for a well earned shower and dinner before we hopped onto the night bus to Vientiane.
posted by Abster at 1:02 pm
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