The Journey of Laos:
4 months overdue, but better late than never.
Laos.. shit what a kief country! We started off by coming up through the northern Cambodia border – that in itself was the most adventurous crossing we’ve done so far. For starters, I had jippo guts, had battled with them for most of Cambodia, so the prospect of travelling was not an enjoyable one. Started off with a 4 hour minibus trip over mostly gravel bumpy road from Ban Lung to another small Mekong side town. Got off there and waited an hour or so until another minibus picked us up. This one properly local – packed, chickens, monks, cases of coke and beer, rotten dead smells.. This took us to the Cambodia border post, had to walk the gauntlet to the Laos border post, pay extra stamp fees, then each of us hopped onto the back of scooters that were waiting (somehow) there for us (Romy’s driver was not a day over 13!!) These took us 45mins to the Ban Nakasang where we caught a long tail boat to the island of Don Kong where we finally settled!
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| Your typical local minibus. Rad, isn't it?! |
Don Kong is part of an archipelago of islands at this stage of the Mekong called Si Phan Don, or 4000 islands (there are literally 4000 in the dry season) It is such a chilled out spot – kind of a backpacker/traveller epicentre. The 2 main islands are Don Kong, the quieter, bigger and more beautiful one, and Don Det, which has shit loads of bamboo hut bungalows, most for dirt cheap, and a perfect view of sunset over the Mekong. Neither of the islands have any roads, just dirt paths that are well worn. We hired bicycles to ride around the islands.. saw Si Pi waterfall, one of the only waterfalls on the Mekong which prevented a proper river trade route back in the day. It is not high but a huge mass of water. Crazy locals set up fish traps in and amoungst the rocks.. crazy! The locals have a lot of waterbuffalo, such awesome animals! They just chill and chew cud and park off in the water, every now and then dunking their heads.. perfect to watch if you’ve eaten a sandwich haha! Sunsets down there were amazing!!
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| Lots of power Mekong water "no Luke don't jump!" |
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| All these rock formations = waterfalls and stuff |
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| Viewpoint off Don Khon over Mekong |
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| Viewpoint over Mekong |
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| Sun setting over rice fields.. |
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| Magical sunset |
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| Shepardess Romy... |
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| Having fun in the sun |
So not too much to do – also lazying in hammocks, eating, writing in diary.. We rode the one night across to the Don Det, in the pitch black, and that was pretty cool. A million stars in the sky! It really is hard to describe the essence of how chillaxed it was.. even though for the first couple days Romy and I were shitting our pants.. toilet seat was constantly warm.. on a rotation basis!! Perfect place to recover!
Next we went by bus up to Pakse (still south of the country). There we hired a motorbike the one day and rode out to a little riverside town called Champasak, which is home to an ancient temple Wat Phu, from before the Angkor Wat period but same style. What set that apart was the setting – nestled in the mountains, it looked out directly over the Mekong flood plains, you could see for miles and miles!! Incredible! Had lunch in Champasak, the restaurant had a million dollar viewpoint of the Mekong. No, it was actually priceless.
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| Sunset over Mekong, crossing bridge from Pakse to go towards Champasak |
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| Notice the cloud in the backround.. Massive storms in Pakse!! |
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| Fun fun fun on a Scoot |
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| Approaching Wat Phu. So hot and humid and green |
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| Wat Phu, with an old road built straight to Angkor Wat in Cambodia |
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| Buddha's footprint |
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| View over Mekong plain from Wat Phu. Took a moment here |
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| View from restaurant over Mekong, priceless |
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| More immense storm clouds.. |
The next day we took motorbikes for 3 days up to what is called the Bolaven Plateau. Pakse is probably one of the hottest places I have EVER experienced. And there were some HUGE thunderstorms. So was awesome to get to higher altitude and cooler weather. The plateau is renowned for its coffee plantations, other agriculture, and an abundance of waterfalls. It was a really nice getaway – is still a really poor province, but got a sense of the culture and way of life that these people live. And it was so beautiful (have I already used that word??). The bikes were awesome – 2 new silver Honda Waves – 100cc each, perfect for getting around!
The first night we spent in Paksong, a shit hole actually, but we were doing the ‘loop’ in reverse. We did however meet up with a cool American / Singapore couple, and met an eccentric dutch guy who was coffee mad and had upped and left his home country, married a Lao girl, opened a small dirty coffee shop, and lived like one of them.. He was just so happy he had people to talk English to, and served a potent cup of coffee! That day we saw Tat Fan – one of the highest and spectacular falls in Laos, and Tat Cham which was perfect for swimming and you could get right up and under the waterfall.
Next day was a fantastic day of riding wow! We hit a dirt road just out of Paksong which carried on through virgin forest and jungle for about 75 kms.. As well as containing one of the most impressive and highest waterfalls, Tok Katamtok.. on the dusty road it really was as close to freedom as you could get.. At most the waterfalls, Romy and I were the only humans in sight and earshot.. was kiff! That night we spent the night in a dodgy little town called Sekong. The following morning I had to go into town as the one bike had fallen over off its stand and the side mirror had broken.. Got it replaced for like $2.50 from this little repair shop – Chinese parts, definitely not Honda, but we got away with it when we returned the bikes haha!
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| Romy getting kitted for ride |
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| Laos bush |
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| Beautiful winding red dirt roads going for kms and kms and kms... |
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| Big waterfall, Tat Katamtok |
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| Jumping from Tat Lo |
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| Tat Fan, pretty impressive |
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| Tat Cham |
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| Ahhhh.... spot the rainbow? |
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| **More whistling to happy tune** |
Visited a small town called Tat Lo, which is the same name of the local waterfall. This place was backpacker heaven.. a few bungalows scattered around the river, flora and waterfalls.. people swimming in rock pools and that sort of stuff. Magical! You could jump off tat lo into the pool below – was about 10m, straight into where the water crashed down, an awesome rush! Easier to do as a whole lot of French (they are everywhere) had been jumping since earlier!
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| Jumping into Tat Lo - so much fun! |
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| Happy faces due to comfort of 'sleeper' bus! |
Returned the bikes and that night we took a night sleeper bus up to Vientiane. Squashed like sardines – if you are travelling alone you are at risk cause you could get stuck with a dirty smelly Chinese or big Laos mama – the beds are right next to eachother – but so small that 2 beds look like 1!! Plus I was like a head and shoulders too tall to fit, as usual! That was about a 10 hour ride, then straight onto a dodgy old diesel-fume pumping local bus up to Vang Vieng – about 4 hour ride to do about 120kms.. The terrain is just so extreme, mountains and valleys. Everything takes forever! The funniest shit is being on the public buses, and we’d read that if you battle with motion sickness you should take pills. Then, when the road starts to descend – we understood why! Left to right, potholes, hairpin corners.. Next thing the bus conductor dude starts handing out plastic packets to the locals, some of whom start chundering into these bags! Hilarious and siff! It’s obviously just not bred into them – they come from villages and shit and hardly ever go in buses, so they just can’t handle!
So Vang Vieng… That was hectic.. Like a Splashy Fen in terms of how hard you hit it, only on a river with rapids, rocks, swings, zip lines, tubes, banging music, and set amoungst a mountain range of limestone karsts. It really does have to be seen to be believed. Known for its rock climbing, caves and other adventure sports, the Vang Vieng tubing down the 3km gauntlet lined with bars on either side has rocketed the place to infamy. Spent a day just scoping the place out – the town is full of restaurants with wooden shaded decks, booths covered in cushions, all facing the TVs at the front which CONTINUOUSLY play reruns of Friends and Family Guy – so bizarre! The day after Romy’s birthday we just maxed out the entire afternoon at one of these restaurants, eating chicken baguettes, drinking fruit shakes, dozing, and Friends. Then this huge storm rolled in – it poured so hard you couldn’t see out.. the noise on the tin roof was deafening.. Was all quite surreal!
But Romy’s birthday was awesome. Met 4 Irish guys (who were all immigrating to Australia) on the tuk tuk to the tubing start. Had a load of fun with them – good lads!
This is a brief summary:
1. Take tubes to ‘starting line’ – a bamboo footbridge across the river
2. Accept whiskey shots from little drinks stand at footbridge entrance
3. Go across river to the first bar, Q-Bar and accept more whiskey shots from crazy party-animal employees, other travellers who due to their eccentricism (yes that is now officially a word), get ‘recruited’ and pretty much party harder than you can imagine until they move on or die, whichever comes first.
4. Order Beerlaos for a nice and easy start. Sip maturely – hey it’s only 1pm and you want to check out all the other bars and still be going once it’s dark!
5. See whiskey bottle and shot glasses on table near bar, read sign saying “free whiskey” – have one or three with new Irish friends
6. Next drink, Laos Whiskey buckets – consisting of a 200ml glass of whiskey and mixed with coke or 7up and a dose of M150 (redbull equivalent)
7. Try to sip slowly, but doesn’t taste strong so it goes down faster than it should
8. Talk louder, laugh louder, bob head to tunes more visibly, move limbs more, start to think you’re becoming the life of the party, thus drink more and faster…
9. Engage in push-up whiskey shots – getting every passer-by involved (including the Irish)
10. Dance like you’ve never danced in the rain once the heavens open
11. Challenge the Irish to a RIVER DANCE, on the dance platform next to the river, in the rain, and completely dominate the competition.
12. Jump randomly and frequently into the raging river, dodging logs and debris (including people on tubes) flowing downriver, because hey, everyone’s doing it
13. Say farewell to the Irish who go floating off down the river to the next bars
14. Jump and shout and laugh and make noises and high five fellow stranger tubers
15. (Blank spot)
16. On the other side of the river realise that you are NOT going to be able to make the second bar (FYI it is now about 5pm, yes, not even dark)
17. Start crab-walking the 5kms back to town, tube on back
18. Flag down tuk-tuk
19. Run back up the road as drunken girlfriend has disappeared into the bushes
20. Get back in tuk-tuk, try make conversation with other passengers, scare them instead
21. Get to town, return tube, put fighting drunken girlfriend to bed
22. Go get some chow!
23. Once eaten get back into bed, vow that NEXT TIME you WILL make the second bar and dark!
24. ZZZZ
25. Next morning fill in the gaps (i.e. from point 12 after) for the now very hungover girlfriend.
‘Twas a good night – a fantastic party, albeit one that didn’t last as long as we expected! We did it all over again the night after the hungover day, the proper way, the best of actually doing the river and getting the most out of it! This time we went up early with the tubes and floated all the way down the river. Then we had the time to do the big swings and slides and all the fun stuff that the countless bars have (the bigger and better to try win over the crowd), and to sit back, relax and really appreciate the incredibly beautiful surroundings.
