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Pakse
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Monday the 10th of September. I arrived in Pakse at 6:30am and took a tuk-tuk to Sabaidy 2(Hello) guesthouse. I was lucky they had a room. I slept all morning.
In the afternoon, I walked around Pakse, not much to the place really, I did manage to see a catholic church and a temple. But to be honest I am all templed out. On my walk I got caught in the rain and so had to stand in under a shelter for an hour. I only came to Pakse to see the Wat Phu ruin at Champasak.
Pakse is not very impressive, but it was so nice to see the Lao people smiling at me and the little children saying "Hello" in English or wave at me. Some of them say it in there own language "Sabaidy". Back at the guesthouse I seen a massive spider in the bathroom (see photo) and while having dinner I met an Italian girl whose mother tongue was German. Interesting. We talked and had a few beers, an English/ Irishman and a girl from New Zealand also joined us. The Italian girl's boyfriend came later. It was nice to talk to other travelers and to here there stories of Laos. All good of course. The Italian girl gave me her email address in case I was ever going to climb mount Everest, which I want to do. I arranged to meet the New Zealand girl the next day so that we could hire a motorbike (scooter) together and drive to Wat Phu Champasak.
On Tuesday the 11th I got up at 8:40am, had a quick shower (checked for spiders first) and had breakfast and was ready for 9'ish. The Kiwi (New Zealand girl) was waiting for me out the front. I asked at reception could we rent scooter, but he told us that we could not, since none of the bike's were reliable. I think he didn't like me because the English/ Irish guy went out the back and seen 5 working scooters. The reason might be that the night before the Italian girl was talking to him, and when she seen me or when I sat down next to them she started talking to me :-) awell.
Anyway the Kiwi, English/ Irish guy and I went looking to rent a bike. We found one for $7 a day. cool.
I had a test drive to get used of the gears. Then I was off with the Kiwi girl on the back (just the two of us). We had to stop to get petrol, where the owner of the bike passed us, I think he was making sure that we did not have 3 people on the bike. A little further up the road and our trip was nearly cut short, when a van/ truck pulled across the road in front of me, luckily I was not going to fast and managed to keep control of the bike, a scary moment,:-) :-).
The town of Champasak was 30km away and then another 10km to Wat Phu (Wat = temple). We could only drive to Ban Muang and then get a boat, with the bike across the Mekong river. Along the way I had to avoid many pot holes, chickens, cows, turkeys, people and other motorbikes. There was even a check point but they left us through. It was a great ride. I got a great feeling as we got closer to Wat Phu Champasak. Built by the Khmer people (Cambodians) between the 11th and 13th centuries.
Champasak was once the capital of the Lao kingdom. Wat Phu is divided into a lower and upper parts and is joined by a steep stone stairway. I didn't notice the upper part as I walked up the long path to the lower part. The lower part consists of two ruined palace buildings, which are very impressive in detail. Then we walked up the many hundreds of steps to the upper part, which is a temple sanctuary itself, later it was converted into a Buddhist temple, but the original Hindu sculpture's remain in the inlets.
The view from the very top, which is off the Mekong valley below was spectacular, see photo and you will know what I am talking about. You can see the lower part in the photo. The Kiwi and I sat here for about half an hour. We then decided to go looking for the elephant stone, crocodile and snake stone's and Buddha's foot print, and we did find all of them in the bushes, to the right had side of the upper part, except Buddha's foot print.
After that we had a bottle of coke at a stall, and made the trek back down the many steps. The ride back to Pakse was just as much fun as going to Champasak. Nice to be riding a motorbike in South east Asia and to live to tell the tail.
We got back to Pakse at 4pm. I then brought the Kiwi girl to the bus station, which was 8km outside of town. She wanted to get a bus to Savannakhet. We made it with only ten minutes to spare. I then drove back into town and booked my bus ticket to Hue in Vietnam at Pakse travel. I had an Indian for dinner and met the Italian couple again, as they were going to Vietnam today. Back at the guest house I talked to the Northern Irish man for a couple of hours and then we called it a night.
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