The Wedding Crashers

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Trip Start Sep 12, 2005 Previous
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  Pakse, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, November 3, 2005

fled the typhoon in Vietnam at 6am. it was like a November morning back home, dark, cold wet and rainy. After 3 hours of driving through some beautiful mountainous countryside we reached the Lao-Bao border crossing. After walking through the border we hopped on a bus for Savannakhet, the bus trip was crazy. Conor managed to get a seat in the aisle on top of 5 bags of onions, mairead settled for a seat on top of a box of stinking fish. After 7 hours of ear pounding karoke we made it to Savannakhet. There is nothing much to say about Savannakhet it is a sleepy little town with not a lot to see or do, it is just a cross roads for people moving through Laos. We had a few beer laos that night, a big wine bottle worth of beer for 40p and no hangover! It definitely lives up to its billing as the best beer in South East Asia.
Savannakhet wasn't all boring and a classical comedy moment was just about to surface when Conor revealed he was constipated! The scene in the pharmacy was hilarious! The poor women couldn't speak a word of English and as Conor hadn't figured out the Laos for constipation the charades unfolded. The woman's first guess was close.... "Aliens 2?" she said and after another few minutes of laughing and red faces she produced a pack of Turbolax. Job done!

Packed our stuff up the next morning and jumped on another crazy bus to another sleepy town called Pakse. It was more or less the same as Savannakhet only smaller. That night we wondered around the town looking for a bit of dinner. We saddled up in a busy looking restaurant. The tables spilled out onto the street and it was packed with locals, a combination that usually produces the goods. A young waiter came over to our table "two beer Lao please" we said, and almost instantly the whole table broke into fits of laughter! What was going on, the waiter began to set large bowls of food in front of us and the rest of the table encouraged us to help ourselves. We got stuck in still not having a clue what was going on. Nobody could speak English and it was not until after 15 minutes of sign language that we realised we had invited ourselves to a local wedding. After some food and "banter" came an offer of "pepsi Lao", it would have been rude to say no so we lifted our glasses and knocked back the clear vile liquid. After another 10 or so of these we managed to find the word for rice whiskey in our guide book, pointed to it and there were cheers all around. We made a good night of it and ended up staying into the wee hours.

Conor's sleep was cut short, when early the next morning the turbolax kicked in! After an hour or two the toilet was rendered useless and we pleaded with the manager to give us a new room so we could nurse our rice whiskey hangovers. Tomorrow we head for Si Phan Don (the four thousand islands.)

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Beer Lao please?

The Wedding Crashers

Two glasses of that please!!

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