Hoong Thip Hotel Savannakhet

... old colonial French-style buildings, in a bit of a state of disrepair, but this adds to it's charm somehow. One of the most beautiful small streets had a red clay surface and small children playing and cycling down it. Swelteringly hot during the day, late afternoon was the best time in Savannakhet, where the sun casts a glorious red light over the streets and buildings, and local ...

... We did 'um and ahh' about it for a while because it was quite pricey with just two of us in the group. However, the next day a Swedish guy turned up to join us. The Trek was more a nature trail than hard core exercise which was a good introduction for us. We had one jungle guide with no English and then a 20 year old guy, Tin Tin, to act as translator. The guide was extremely knowledgeable about the jungle. He stopped frequently to show us ...

... pool, but when we asked where the changing rooms were we were told that the pool was exclusively for hotel guests. We explained to the manager that we had come all the way from Vietnam to use this pool, to no avail, and it wasn't until Raj started asking how much a room was and threatening to move in to the hotel that they relented and gave us free reign. <br><br><br>Sufficiently cooled down and ...

... rain!) to the town, only to find that there were no buses, nor any taxis or motorbike drivers eagerly offering to take us the 250km to Savannakhet where we, and our bags were headed. We spent the next 3 hours desperately ringing the offices of the tour operator and bus company in Vietnam and Laos who weren't particularly fussed about our predicament, or about returning our calls. We were still with the other 2 couples, and our Blitz spirit gradually evaporated, especially as the older ...

... give ME dinner, I was a little bummed out. (I LOVE food!) How can anyone forget not to feed me? The lights on the bus went out soon after I eventually got my food at around 9pm. and I slept except for various occasions when the bus broke down. But even then, I just glanced up, and went back to sleep. I knew we'd make it to Pakse eventually. And we did!

... cool and mysterious but at the end off the day its just a load of rocks. One interesting think about Phonsavon is that it was heavilly bombed by the americans during the "secret war" at the same time as the vietnam war. There are lots of bomb craters and artillary shells still left around and the area is still being cleared of explosives to this day. There was a small museum in the town dedicated to educating people of this huge problem, it only took 10 minutes to wander through ...

... of money i think as they sell about 50tonnes a week, thats a lot of salt! Business was seamingly booming as they were working on a new pump to get even more salt. After that we go back on the tuk tuk and went a short way before meating up with a local man. Couldnt understand him but we had a laos tour guide who spoke good english. We then trekked for about 5km through the jungle, the guy caught various ...

... some way off the main road, which would mean a long detour for an already late bus. The bus was very full with people squeezed into the aisles. Being among the first on the bus we had seats but unfortunately this wasn't to last. To avoid the detour to Savannakhet, the conductor tried to sell us on to another bus, although we didn't realise this at the time. Just after dark we arrived in a small town behind another bus. The conductor asked us to follow him and got ...

... number of tourists, in the space of a five minute period on the way from the airport we spotted 17 tourists alone! Already our feeling of being intrepid travellers was beginning to ebb away. Nonetheless we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in the capital city with one of the highlights being Pha That Luang, a shimmering golden Buddhist stupa which features on the reverse of the Lao currency. We visited late in the afternoon when the low-lying sun set the most ...

... to temporarily remedy the knee and the world reappeared. I cannot sleep on transport, and it got dark before long so I couldn't read. So I just let all the experiences, sights, sounds, tastes and emotions of the last 5 weeks flow through me. It was quite an interesting exercise. I arrived in Savannakhet at about 8pm, accepted the first tuk-tuk ride offered to me (at a cost of 10,000 kip into town, a very good deal), and was deposited ...