Travels in Laos with the Dutch

Hello again.



Well we have now been at this trip for nearly 2 months which means we are nearly half way through! We're having a great time, but also feeling quite tired of constantly moving on and not having a base of our own... one of us (you'll never guess...) has developed a fixation on Vegemite on toast and it's lack of availability :)





When last we wrote we were still in Laos in the Capital Vientiane, we headed south from there through Laos stopping at Pakse (a town notable mainly for the number of bus stops... or not as the case may be, but more on that later) where we decided to take a side trip together with a Dutch couple we were travelling with to look at a couple of waterfalls and Champasak, an ancient city and temple complex related to Angkor Wat which we were intending to visit in Cambodia.





We hired mopeds to visit the temple, the only bikes available had gears which our cool Dutch colleagues had no trouble with as one of them was taking their bike test... your Anglo-Australian correspondents were not quite so confident but after first stalling 5 or 6 times, we managed to get the hang of it. It's a great way to see bits of Laos as there are very few cars and on this area at least the roads are pretty good... until they suddenly end... on the wrong side of the river...





It turned out there was a ferry which consisted of two small fishermans boats tied together... oh, and you have to ride onto it over a plank of wood about 4 inches wide... and then stop, quickly, before the boat ends.





Needless to say we allowed our friends to go up first, and having watched their faultless boarding, and decided that driving into the Mekong would be better than the humiliation of admitting that we were scared we sailed on board, remembered to brake... but not how to change gear and stalled the bike to a standstill... much to the amusement of the fishermen trying to move it into a more useful position... oh well.





We actually saw a more conventional ferry later on, with buses on it etc. but the admiring looks we got from the tourists on the other boat made it all worth it, we were cool dangerous kind of tourists... or mental possibly... people took photos of us :)





Champasak itself was well worth the trip, the final temple was set at the end of a long ancient road, past two identical palaces (thought to be one for the girls, one for the boys) and then atop a series of very steep steps taking you to a series of different levels... pilgrims were made to work for their blessings. A photo from the top is below but it is pretty amazing, your final destination is about a mile from the start of the ancient road.




The next day we decided that as the ride had been further than it looked we would get the bus to a couple of nearby waterfalls as this would be "easier" ... well we got a tuk tuk driver to take us to the bus station which turned out to be under construction (but it looked nice if you are in the area in 6 months or so...



Undeterred we wandered around until we found the right road and joined what passes for a local bus (an old pick up truck with seats down both sides and a roof strapped on) together with half a dozen locals, a dozen sacks of rice and a large assortment of fruit and vegetables. We made stops all along the way, weren't totally sure that we were headed in the right direction, dropped people and shopping orders from the market off along the way and helped load and unload and were cheerfully charged 4 times what everyone else had been paying at the end (one passenger openly laughed aloud when they saw how much we had agreed to pay) but we didn't mind as it was a great experience, one old lady gave us bananas and made friends with a couple of the kids (a digitalo camera looks like magic if you've never seen one) :)



The waterfalls were pretty but again further away than we thought and we ended up walking 5km in the heat and the dust (unsealed roads) whilst people who had booked bus tours drove past us. Great fun again actually, we had EARNED our swim at the falls damnit... although we had taken too long to get there and the pool was in shade and bloody freezing... so we err.... took photos instead... oh well can't win them all and it was very pretty.



Right we will let you know about leaving Laos and our experiences so far in Cambodia next time and add the photos as well! Cheers



B&D