Chilling in Champasak
Trip Start
Jun 14, 2008
1
79
93
Trip End
Jun 20, 2009
Champasak,
Champasak,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, April 2, 2009
At first we had to journey back from Tadlo to Pakse, spend a night there in it's dusty drearyness and then head to the decrepit bus station to catch some form of large vehicle towards the river and hope for a floating devise to carry us home.
O.K., that's the plan.
We get to said station and are told " no problem, hop aboard we are leaving this very minute for Champasak ". Well, nice one, thats great we say. Except this heinious hawler was going nowhere fast
waiting for the bus to paksong
. It drove us over to the other side of the station where it began loading the roof with bags of cement. An amusing monkey on a chain kept the girls in high spirits though and after half and hour or so we were good to go. Go, that is, to the other bus station in town. Upon arrival the driver and obligitory side-kick disapear leaving us to ponder lofty concepts such as time and space, and how time can alter dramatically while one occupies the exact same space on a smelly bus. After much assurances that we would indeed leave any moment we decided to back another donkey. We hop aboard a tiny tuc-tuc . We will go back to the station for Champasak and try, try again. The driver for this tuc-tuc ,I fear , must also have been occupied with abstractions for he used our journey to experiment with unnatural suppositions of space by continuing to pack his sardine tin on wheels with ever more passengers. he pulled up to the station before the last rivit burst from the cab and offered now to take us all the way to the ferry. Impressed, after his courageous and death-defying display with the Hillsborough on wheels, we decided that this was our man. We jump back in and are at the river within hours.
At the river we were met by a young man whose head attire allowed a view only of crafty, peeping eyes who assured us his floating troughs held together by several old planks was indeed the ferry
kayla chases a turkey
. We bravely stepped aboard to the strains of Chris de Burgh in our heads. Not to worry, this crafty chap was dead on. I'll never doubt a man in disguise again.When we got to the other side we were met by a friendly hotel owner who whisked us off in one last tuc-tuc and we were there. Our digs were sweet and cheap. About 3 Euro a room. Not bad at all. Also, the man had bikes to rent for another Euro so we were good to go.
We spent that first day cycling off in the cruel, mid-day heat to the impressive eneough ruins. We were met ther along the track by a man who wished to welcome us to Laos, his country and " the land of slow motion", indeed. We wandered about the ruins taking snaps and doing our best to avoid placing a hand or foot for that matter on sneaky snakes who were also visiting that day. It seems only mad-dogs, Irishmen and snakes visit mildly interestin ruins in the mean mid-day heat.
That night we found a lovely river-side restaurant and a shop selling scotch. The night ended in Jason and Kaylas with the guitar and a friendly frog for company.
Day two was spent relaxing and eating at the nice restuarant
we get a flat
. Sometimes they had electricity and sometimes not. I was invited by the hotel owner and his buddies to sample some home-made rice wine. It was shocking strong and none of them spoke english so I slunk back to our room . Just before dusk we hired one of the drinking guys to boat us over to the clean side of the river for a swim. He stumbled into the water and brought his boat ashore for us. We spent an hour swimming and then as the rains came in our man came back for us even drunker than before.
Another lovely, cheap as chips meal rounded off a couple of sweet days in Champasak. The drudging endeavor in getting here was wiped from memory and we were ready to head further south into more unknown territory.
