Laos - the adventure

Do we still have the time to go there? What about the changes in
was a pleasure to stroll through Pakse's streets and glimpse at the beautiful and well-kept old colonial houses, although this implied the acute danger of getting absorbed by one of the many, several meters deep wholes in the sometimes existing sidewalks. Contrary to Thailand, where people seem to live and eat solely on the street and where they only care for flashy new cars and not for their houses, here in Laos there were only very few and old cars on the road (bicycles and many-colored tuk-tuks hello!!!), basically no street-vendors but many, many, many beautiful houses. To us, Pakse seemed like a real city! Another pleasure and difference to Thailand, Laos seemed a lot more quiet. Not many cars, not so many people on the streets, long lunchbreaks around noon (were the French here or not?!?!) and closed shops and restaurants at night (and by night I mean 11pm-5am).

Of course, you could see the lack of development, that is no question. The roads where in a terrible condition, many of the cars really did not inspire much confidence, there are no ATM machines at all in the whole country (imagine the amount of money we were carrying on us - with the great exchange rate of the kip we were millionaires for the first time in our lives!), and apparently, a very surprising fact for us, no phone-booths! We have no idea how communication worked before the introduction of the cell-phone, maybe there was non... But besides the lack of development, Laos seemed beautiful and adventurous. Colorful, friendly, simpler than Thailand, with lots of laughing kids running in the streets, somehow more of the idealistic traveler's Mecca! I loved the place and for the first time since coming to Thailand and Asia, I felt really, really happy!

Great, we thought, but of course, reality confronted us as soon as we started traveling further - the first destination Champasak and the old Khmer temple ruins of Wat Phou. We had been thinking that traveling through Thailand the attacks of tuk-tuk drivers were the worst? Oh no, here they actually jump and climb on driving buses to convince you to take their tuk-tuk and give them your money. You have to be really careful that they don't run off with your bags! Thus, we already had some trouble to get correct information and find the right boat to float along the Mekong to Champasak and finally, we ended up in one of the tourist ones ($5) instead of the local one ($1) we wanted but we had no chance. They all seem to work together and you won't get a local to take you, you have to take the tourist transports and pay the corresponding, and extremely exaggerated price! (Martin und Michi, wenn ihr hier reisen wollt, Transportkosten sind wirklich haarstraeubend, insbesondere in Anbetracht des nicht vorhandenen Komforts etc aber damit muss man leben!)Well, our boat, as shown in the picture was very cute and we did not long think about the price but marveled at the landscape in the early morning light.

Again, everything seemed so simple, so calm and relaxed, the Mekong river definitely has its very own charm. We saw beautiful gardens and farms along the riverbank, everything a little greener than the interior of the country, dotted with small houses and people walking around with their bamboo-hats or children playing in the water. Lots of fishers were out as well and we could wonder about some of their housings as seen in the picture on the left. The hills in the backgrounded seemed to shut out the rest of the world and the people here definitely have a different rhythm in life. If their hearts beat any slower, they'd probably just stop! It's a wonderful place!

Hier ein kleines Spezial fuer meine Reisegefaehrten von frueher, die auch schon mit mir auf Booten durch die Welt geschippert sind und fremde Wasser und Ufer ausgekundschaftet haben. Was macht man nicht alles fuer interessante Entdeckungen? Auch hier im Fernen Laos gibt es Baeume im Wasser, die den Fischen den Weg weisen. Sie passen sich der Region an und sind ein bisschen gruener, aber ansonsten doch unverkennbar, oder etwas nicht? Genial, oder? :)

In Champasak, we met again beauty, friendliness, and rip-off. Our boat driver did not drop us at the official boat landing but at a friend's place and, surprisingly, this friend had a guest house where the rooms cost $25 instead of the normal $3-5 in the region... Luckily, we are not lazy and so we walked the two kilometer into town and found a wonderful little guest house (photo in David's post) where we chilled a little before taking our bikes to go to the temple ruins. The city we cycled through proved to be very, very cute and the people were even nicer. Everyone greeted us with huge smiles on their faces and a friendly "sabai-dii", which they almost sing here!

The temple ruins, Wat Phou, were very nice but not too impressive, I would have expected something bigger. However, it is very beautifully located on three different levels climbing up a hill and it was definitely worth-while going there. There was something special about the whole place. Many buddhist people were working their way up the stairs through the heat to get to the top temple and honor the buddha there. In former times this was a hindu, not a buddhist temple but the government has changed the temple a little bit and now shiva on the door engravings is accompanied by large bonze buddhas.



Well, we spent quite a bit of time taking pictures but it seems we still need a better camera (that's how it goes, when you don't like the pictures, blame the camera :)). Anyway, after this nice stopover, our Lao adventure continued and we made our first extensive contact with true Lao transports. First, we wanted to take a sawngthaew-bus from our guest house to the pier but after having waited for an hour (the buses were supposed to pass every 30 minutes) we decided to walk the 4 km with our big packs. Soaking wet, we then took the rather special ferry to cross the Mekong and were a little relieved to reach the other side. There, we hitchhiked with a French campervan (it has come all the way from France, through Afghanistan etc!!!) to the bus stop, or rather to a dusty place along the main road that they told us was the bus stop.

The bus, well, ..., it was a sawngthaew-bus once more, was quite an experience. You have to know that in Laos, the bus does not leave at fixed hours, rather, when it is full. Full, in this context means that you have squeezed about 40 people into the sawngthaew and loaded about 20 bags of rice, some living chicken or geese. Thus, you go on a nice, comfortable journey. Moreover, there are no fixed bus stops either, you just wave to a bus passing by when you are on the side of the road, or you tap against the roof if you want to get off. Particular fun are the stops on the roadside when a horde of saleswomen and -children comes running up to the bus and almost slaps you with grilled chicken or little grilled birds, water bottles, or bags of sticky rice while trying to push the offer into the bus and sell as much as possible (see picture in David's post). If you succeed in keeping away from the grease and don't get it all over your cloth, the next fun activity consist in letting the person who is seated the furthest within the bus get out at the very first occasion. Usually, half the persons have to get off the bus for this and then back on, only to repeat the game 500m further along the road because the next person was too lazy to get off earlier and walk for 2 minutes.



Where did we go that way, you wonder? Well, we went all the way down South into a region called the four thousand islands, basically the widest part of the Mekong river and also the border between Laos and Cambodia. We spent three days on one of the smaller islands there, Don Det. Until last year, people on this island did not have electricity and it apparently was a dropouts' paradise. Well, things change and we soon found out that they do have electricity down there now. After our relaxing day of travel, we were so fortunate as to arrive on the island at the end of a three-day funeral. Next to our bamboo bungalow, the Lao put up a huge sound system and celebrated the whole night (well, until 3 am and then again from 5 am) with collective prayers, music, TV, ...



No need to tell you that the next morning, we fled from our bungalow and chose another one on the other side of the island. And then, we were in paradise. Above, you get some glimpses of the landscape on the island. Truly very, very cute, remote, and peaceful. We rented bikes and discovered some parts, we spent a lot of time hanging out in cafes and small restaurants along the river observing the local people building boats, washing themselves in the river, playing and swimming,..., and we also went for a three hour walk in the blazing sun. Our destination: a small local village at the border with Cambodia. Once we got there, we were the attraction for the local kids, in about three minutes they were all over us, first looking at us curiously, and then a bold boy asked for a pen. Of course, we could not refuse that and gave away our two pens. Soon afterwards, they came again and as we had no more pens, I gave them some paper. The result: every single child in the village was running around happily with a sheet of paper! What a pleasure if children in Europa would be so easily satisfied.



After our village trip, we explored some very beautiful waterfalls and then enjoyed the sunset one more time. I guess this was my favorite activity on the island (well, besides looking at smiling kids' faces or reading Lord of the Rings). Overall, I would say that we should have spent more time on the island than just three days because it was so much trouble getting there (and getting away again) but it is definitely a good place to hang out, relax, and forget about the rest of the world.