South Laos

After a final goodbye meal to celebrate completing 'the loop' and me not being charged too much for the extensive damage i did to the motorbike!! I fell into bed soooo tired and had a great sleep.

I headed off the next morning to the last big town in the south of Laos (the last ATM in the south!) for a night or two before a few days on one of the famous '4000' islands in the very south. So in Ireland we take snacks like fruit or crisps onto a bus here they eat 'foetus egg' on a stick or dig into their bag of LIVE cockroaches!! I like to try new and exciting foods but i will just pass on these two!



Had a nice relaxing time here, catching up on sleep, trying to catch up on this blog and as the cut on my knee and a bad burn i got off a motorbike exhaust were starting to go a bit euugghh i went to a doctor. She took one look, said euuuggghh! Gave them a good clean and gave me a massive bag of medicine to take my god!

I randomly bumped into Johfra that night, one of the guys from the motorbike trip and so we headed together the next morning to Champasack street! (it cant possibly justify being called a village!). There is some government building that blares out government radio all over the area with really annoying pipe-based Laos music for everyone to hear- whether you want to or not. It was so irritating we couldnt eat our noodle soup fast enough!


The reason to stop at Champasack is that it has a beautiful set of temples on the outskirts...of the street! The place is completly in ruins but you can just imagine how it looked and the people were who lived there in its glory.

It really was a steaming hot tropical humid day! It was just a short climb up to the temple but hard work.

This is a view of the ruins.

An ancient elephant carving

I was really excited about getting down to the 4000 islands I heard it was a lovely chilled-out place, a perfect end to my time in Laos....i have to say it was a slow start but i've warmed to this country immensely.

First we took a special boat across the river that carried cars, trucks and tuc-tucs across. The boat was made from a few small boats tied together with planks of wood on top and it works grand!

Little old lady with her stash of......mmmm ive yet to find out what these are

We went to the island of Don Det and found a lovely friendly guesthouse, not to mention super-cheap room with hammock looking over the Mekong. No electricty here so when i chose a fruit shake from the menu one of the girls had to run down the road with the blender to a place with power!

The poor buffalo was terrified of this little boy who fired at him with his sling-shot whenever he saw him!

Electricty isnt really that necessary here though. Laos people get up early and go to bed early and you get into the habit of doing the same. It took me about 2 hours to walk the perimiter of the island, really lovely just a few guesthouse and restaurants and rice fields.

I never gave a pig a little rub before...this fellow LOVED it! What a really chubby face just a big handfull of fat....i wouldnt mind having one of these for a pet in the future

Myself, Johfra and one of the girls from our guesthouse called 'Oy!' took bikes and cycled to a near-by island thats connected by a bridge. There was a huge waterfall there, called something like the Devils...claw basically because if you go for a swim it may be your last!

I wouldnt really recommend crossing the bridge either!

Later we saw a sign that said 'beach & nice view 300m' so that was clearly the direction to go! We got chatting to a friendly guy who took us on his boat for a friendly price to see if we could find some of the very rare dolphins that live in this area.

It was a really lovely boat trip, very refreshing after all the cycling. Im sure the boatguy was very drunk! He hopped off the boat into bamboo traps that had been left by fishermen to catch fish and in one he found one 3 inch fish and one bigger but half eaten/rotton one. 'COME ON WE HAVE BARBEQ!!!' Yes why not, we had no better plans!

Our friendly boatman

He took us to a little illegal bar on the Cambodian side of the river where we payed $1 for the pleasure of sitting there. Out came the massive bucket of Lao-Lao rice whiskey, and the Beer Lao, and the Ankor beer, and the Anker Beer, and....mmm oh yes the horrible pineaple licquer! And then the moment we were waiting for...the barbequed half eaten/half rotten fish!! I pulled a little off (incidently it was still very liquidy!) made sure he saw me eating it and how delicious i found it but that i was feeling quite full.

We had ANOTHER barbeque and more Lao-Lao when we got back to the other side of the river, for sure he was not fit to drive the boat and the same could be said about us getting on the bikes! Johfra's tyre exploded so myself and Oy! cycled along slowly beside Jofra the singing at the top of our voices the whole way home!

We passed some kids jumping into the river on the way home and with that much Lao-Lao in me there was no way i wasnt jumping in too! The water was so fresh and warm i jumped in about 5 or 6 times before the others were getting a bit bored/hungry it also started extremly heavy rain.

Myself and Johfra had started a fascination about where does rice actually come from?? Everywhere here, in Thailand, India you see people working on the rice fields but you never actually see where the rice comes from. Is it from the flower? the seed? Oh we were utterly confused!

Sooo Johfra had the idea...why not ask our guesthouse people could we help them out for a day or two on their rice fields! We got up at the crack of dawn for our first lesson!

It was really tough work! You plant these in a very specific way while you are in deep very warm muddy, squelchy water, wait 3 months, then you dig up some of it to re-plant and harvest the rest for rice. Which is the seed of the plant. It really made me realise just how much work goes into a bowl of rice!

I had to cover myself with mud to stop getting burnt as it was SOOOO HOT the sun cream just slid off like putting butter on a pan. The mud was very effective sun-block and the laos people found it even funnier that firstly some 'Falang' want to work in the rice fields but also that they are covered in mud!!

Im not sure if we were a help or a hindrince to the rice-planting but i sure learnt a lot about it. Laos people say 'uuuhhhhhh' for 'yes' sounds a little like a caveman and i'll never forget the woman i was working beside in the rice field. I was asking her....is this right? She would look over and say 'uuuhhhhh' such a caveman noise for such a tiny, pretty laos lady!

Heavy monsoon clouds....love them!

So farewell to Laos for me, i have to say it took a little while to get used to the culture here but once i did i certainly made the most of it! On to Cambodia now for some Vipassana meditation!

Here are some lovely sunsets from my hammock on 4000 islands

Central Laos

Sooo after the north of Laos I spent a day or two at the touristy town of Viang Vieng. Its a strange little spot! All the restaurants have beds instead of chairs and TV's playing friends 24 hours a day! I have to say i spent an hour or two just lounging about watching friends it was very nice as i haven't seen TV in god knows how long and i'm happy enough to be without it now after 'Friends' overdose!

The other thing to do here is Tubing where you hire out the inner tube of a tractor tyre and float down the river all day stopping off where you like and jumping off really high platforms into the river! A very fun day, soooo good to be able to cool down and i have to say and got away lightly with the injuries!

Worship me!! My god look at this fello!

Next stop, Vientiene, the capital of Laos. It was soooo good to be in a city at last after all the ruralness i was craving it a bit! Had many things to sort like some iron tablets NB!!! and get on the internet a bit, and of course have plenty of good cheap street food! I have to say i really liked this city but didn't meet many others who agreed!

Vientiene's victory monument aka vertical runway....made from cement donated by the USA to construct Vientienes airport, however the Laos decided to use it to build their monument another foot or two higher so that it was taller than the french's Arc de Triomph. This was to say 'HA' to the french as they came to Laos and left when it suited them without doing much good at all for the country.



This was a real lived in city, with just a little bit of everything that you need, no Starbucks or Mcdonalds, excellent street food and markets, nice temples, chill out by the river at sunset and carry on to some bars after just what the doctor ordered!


I spent my time in Vientiene walking constantly about 6 hours a day its such a great city to walk about my ole 20 rupie flip-flops from Calcutta still in one piece! Apart from endless walking i took a visit to Buddha park about half and hour from Vientiene.

Well what a strange place! It was made by a cave dwelling hindu-buddhist hermit. Its so strange, trudging along on the flimsey local bus through a tiny village and all of a sudden this crazy park pops up!


When you go in the mouth (see above!) you reach the inside of a strange room with very strange and slightly creepy things!


Hallo!


I had a little wander about loosing my flip-flops in the squishy mud. Really strange things here....would you worship this guy?





Anyway enough of the city, with my vitimans sorted i headed down south to the town of Thakek with a friendly Dutch guy i met at the Cambodian Embassy. I had heard that all around Thakek there are lovely caves and waterfalls and you rent a motorbike for a day or two to explore them.

We ended up making friends with a cool Japanese couple and a very humurous English guy, we discussed the travel plan that evening over many Beer Lao with some Laos policemen who where ridiculously drunk! So drunk their eyes where glazed over then they hopped on their motorbikes and clumbsily drove off only to come back half an hour later to drink more! When we asked are they ok to drive?? Their friends saying 'ahhh yes they the police!'

It really is quite vague here what the police do! I met a 13 year old boy driving a motorbike who said he started driving with when he was 12, he told me the legal age is 18 but its ok with the police!

The next morning the 5 of us head off on our motorbikes!

Within a few minutes we were back in very rural, rice land and mountains, beautiful scenery.

We couldnt find the 1st 3 caves marked on the map, a lot of the area was flooded from the heavy rain and the caves werent sign-posted. After a few random, unsuccessful treks to find a cave we EVENTUALLY found one!! you had to hop over a fence through a farmers ricefield to get there....and it was flooded, we couldnt go in.

BUT everything is possible!! We found some kids...or well some kids with a dodgy looking boat found us and offered to take us into the caves for a look. Very smart kids, my god children that age....about 8-12 years at home wouldnt be able for this at all!

As you can see the boat was more suitable for tiny Laos people!

The caves where really beautiful inside, it was a huge open area with lots of seashells!

I thought them how to make a whistle out of a blade of grass and they loved it!...i was very happy with myself! Dont usually know what to do to amuse kids

Do not touch this fluffy guy....poisoness!

After this we headed back on the road again to find more caves, unfortunately all were flooded even worse than this one so there was not much we could do but the adventure was fun! We were getting a bit hungry so we pulled in at a little roadside market.....somehow our hunger pangs faded a little!

Fancy dead bird for sale.....what in the name of god would you do with it?? Eat it? Stuff it?

Oh Yummy a snake!! Very popular in Laos aparently tastes a bit like chicken

All the women at the market were having a great chat about us. In Laos they use the word Falang for foreigner so as soon as you hear someone say 'ohhh Falang!' you know they are talking about you! We in turn had a good chat about them, one of the guys amazed them with being able to touch the cieling all the little women no taller than 5 foot!

We just happened to be driving like this when alex took the photo!

After spending about an hour sheltering from CRAZY thunder and lightning storm we headed off again cave searching and what a really cool one we found. We climbed about inside for over an hour, thank god everybody but me thought of bringing a flashlight!

Johfra

Magic?

There was no doubt that we were all completly knackered by the end of that day!! We decided to head for a little village called Mahaxi just about 6km away. The roads to this place were very muddy and the town itself had been turned into a mud pit from churning motorbike tyres and heavy rain. We found a place to stay at a 'homestay' and went on the search for food...well noodle soup is the only option! When we arrived back at the house to sleep the guy there explained that his mum had come home so we'd have to now share 2 single beds between 5! did it matter...NO! I was so tired before my head could hit the pillow (my bag) i was unconscious!

Mahaxi Petrol station

Noodle soup for breakfast and off we headed....not a coffee to be found in the town imagine that! I realised that maybe i am quite addicted to my morning coffee!

What we did that day i cannot remember (maybe due to no caffine!) however we stopped at the last village for the night before a notoriously 'bad patch'of road that we figured would be best after a good nights sleep in a bed and plenty of caffine in the morning.

Thalang really was in the middle of nowhere, there was nothing in the village just a few identical wooden houses on stilts and pigs and cows wandering around the place.

Lovely sunset....

We slept in a house on stilts and it was quite relaxing as it swayed in the wind a little like being in a rocking hammock!

After our breakfast of sticky rice and strips of chewy beef (and buckets of coffee) off we went!

Ge-cko!

Everything was going fine until...nooooo i crashed the bike! I had been using the handbrake all the time....didnt even know about the footbrake! So when i came to a sudden big hole in the road i tried to slow down but the surface was very gravely so off i slid.

No major injuries thank god just wasnt really in the mood to get back on the bike and the worst stretch of road ahead...if you can even call it a road!! Well my god almighty i dont like using bad language but it was a SHITTY SHITTY road!!! Really massive and deep muddy puddles that the bike was going all over the place driving through it and the water up to my knees, steep downhill rocky roads where i was so afriad to brake since thats how i fell and general sharp turns and steep ascents and decents and plenty of livestock.

This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the bad condition of this road!!

Many times i just stopped when we got to an obstable say...having to drive along a really narrow strip of mud about 3 inches wide i would stop the bike and wish i didnt have to do it!! But thanks to Jofra he really pushed me to drive through all this, sure couldnt the little 12 year old kids do it! I realised that i was well able to ride the bike before i fell off it, the day before i had enjoyed driving though little streams and up and down steep muddy roads....it was just fear that was making me forget how to ride it! It still was a nightmare...all 3 hours of it...but i learnt lots of things about myself and getting over fear! If ever i met a 'Yes Man' it was Johfra.

Alex delighting us with his rendition of AHA 'Taaaaake onnnn meeee!' at a no-name eating place, Nahin

I almost felt like kissing the ground when we passed under the red and white barrier to signal the end of this terrible road...very dramatic i know but it was awfully stressful at the time!

We arrived that night at my favourite village of the trip called Nahin. It was kind of a truckers stopping point kind of a village in the middle of nowhere but we found our home in a friendly restaurant with Karoke! It was very nice every evening after each long day driving we all had a few beers over our dinner and a great laugh! We all seemed to get on very very well and although i wasnt that keen on riding the motorbike at the time i didnt want this little adventure to end!

The most impressive caves of the ones we saw were these ones, the Kolonor caves. The are hollowed out by a river that goes on for 7km before reaching the opening at the other side. Some locals use this as a short cut between villages!

Supercool boat trip, it was so hard to get my head around how huge it was inside and the shadows where playing tricks with my eyes! A few times we entered an area where the roof was so high up and black i was convinced that it was night-time sky and we were on a river surrounded by some high mountains!

As we were travelling back through the caves on the way back the litte boat i was in with Alex and Jofra started to make spluttering noises....sure hadn't we run out of fuel! So the boat stopped in the middle of the huge pitch dark cave. It was very nice actually to have a break from the noise of the engine and if it wasnt for Johfra pretending to tip the boat over it would have been very relaxing! We certainly got our money's worth as the poor little 10 year old driving the boat had to paddle us the whole way back!

On our final stretch of road we went on the hunt for some 'cool spring' we had heard about...how nice to cool down in this!

This may have been it but we didnt jump in with the Buffalo!

group photo!

Our final stretch of road was 140km of mostly straight, flat and livestock free road....it still took us all day due to many really heavy thunder storms we had to shelter from.

When we saw the clouds like this we knew it was time to look for shelter ASAP!

About the 4th time we had to stop because of the rain.....so close to being back at thakek yet so far! Card games and sweet supply exhausted

This was certainly a litte adventure that i wont forget. I drove the bike around the riverside in Thakek after we had returned to just have a last look around and enjoy the nice sunset.

Next day off to southern Laos. This is the 'egg-on-a-stick' mob!

Big thanks to Take and Aska for fixing up my many silly injuries all along our little adventure, to Alex for motorbike crashing empathy and of course to Johfra for without him i would never have completed one of the most challenging and stressful things so far in my life!