So, getting back to Laos.
Rachel and I crossed into the country by an obscure and remote border
crossing, the kind that leads to border guard corruption. Leaving
Cambodia they asked for money but, as I was speaking Khmer pretty good,
and they guy was pretty lame, we all said no and took our
passports. On the other side of the buffer zone, in order to get
into Laos they were damanding money (only a dollar but it is the
principle) and they were not budging. We argued, took down names,
photo'd them, threatened to report them, but they didn't care.
They were outside playing a Laotian game much like lawn bowling until
we got tired (20 minutes) of waiting and paid up. We told them
that we hope this money buys them "some good boom boom".
Now in Laos we went to the "Four Thousand Islands" - well, actually
only two of them. In Southern Laos the Mekong River gets as wide
as 14 kilometers and there is thousands (presumably four thousand) of
islands, the larger ones inhabited. We spent two nights on Don
Det, sleeping in a shack (click to view)
for two dollars a night. We swam, drank beer, ate at little
restaurants, relaxed in a hammock
(click to view), and enjoyed the amazing
sunsets (click to view).
Next we were off to Pakse (the ride I mentioned in the last email with
all the fish in the cramped truck) and rented a motorbike in order to
visit the Bolovan Plateau. We saw a beautiful,
tall waterfall (click to view), then had lunch in a small town with
a good day market (click to view).
After that we went to another waterfall
and swam in the bottom. It was really amazing getting close to
the water falling and the mist was causing really strong wind, and also
an bright, whole circular double rainbow right in from of me.
Amazing place to be.
After Pakse we took an overnight bus up to the capitol city, Vientaine
- not much more than a town, really. We wasted a couple of days
there (got there on a holiday so many places closed) and didn't get any
of the chores we had hoped to (Philippine visa, Lao visa
extension). Actually, we did a walking tour of Vientaine and saw
some wats with people worshiping inside,
and we also talked to three colorful
monks who were a blast. At some point I brought out my photos
and they were significantly
impacted by the photos of me standing beside a topless African woman.
After that we were off to Vang Vien, a place of hedonism. It is a
small town that is filled with travellers enjoying themselves, doing
alot of drugs and not much else. Actually they are doing too
other things - they go tubing (which we did also and was soooo much
fun) down a river where every 200 meters is a ropeswing and people
selling beer, blasting music. The other thing travellers are
definetly doing in Vang Vien is watching TV. There is an
abundance of TV restaurants where people (usually after eating a "Happy
Pizza" if you know what I mean) drone/chill out and watch reruns of
Friends and other sitcoms at all hours of the day. But for us
Vang Vien was really good for sporting activities. See photos
below.
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