Life is so hard for us here in Laos. We wake up early as the sun shines through the thick curtains. We then promptly turn over and go back to sleep and wake up at a decent hour like 9 or 10 am. When we finally do decide to get up we take a long hot shower each and begin the grueling task of finding a nice place to eat breakfast. Once we choose a suitable location, we then decide how to take our coffee. Laos, it seems, discovered coffee thanks to some French intervention and they have been growing it ever since the early part of the last century. The coffee here is most excellent but rather expensive @ 50 cents a cup. After a leisurely breakfast that takes at least an hour we decide to walk to an interesting spot (no more than 100 meters away) that happens to have a watering hole nearby which we inevitably stop at and have our first drink of the day. It is after all 9 pm in Portland and we would like to keep some sort of routine so we can easily readjust to "normal" life when we return.

Okay not every day is as bad or good as what I just described, but we do seem to have been taking things a little easy these past couple of days. After spending three relaxing days in Don Det - which was great except for all the bugs - we made our escape to Pakse which turned out to be a pretty laid back town. And then after two days sitting around there we headed for Tha Khaek which is about 5 hours north of Paske even though it took us nearly 9 hours thanks to two flat tires. I wanted to go to Tha Khaek to check out an underground river but after making the arrangements we were told that the roads were so bad that we could not make it there. We eventually decided to hire a tuk tuk and do a tour of some local caves around Tha Khaek which we had heard were pretty nice after talking with this English couple we met while watching the sunset.

Once you get off the main drag here in Laos the road seems to deteriorate into an uneven dirt path and Tha Khaek was no exception. Fortunately, once you make any effort to get away from the towns you normally are rewarded with a nice vista. We followed this "road" for a couple of miles, covering our faces every time we saw a vehicle coming in the opposite direction as we knew that we were about to be served a dust sandwich, which luckily for us did not happen too often. Suddenly our driver took a sharp turn going down this path I was sure was only meant for goats. To our relief he slowed as we approached a river, only to down shift and then speed up driving down the embankment and luckily after much coaxing managed to drive up the other side with Amie and I hanging on for dear life. We did this a second time and then pulled up in front some concrete stairs leading up to a cave with, of course, a Buddha and also a few other statues of people we didn't recognize. We then went to this huge cavern that had all these concrete steps leading in different directions. It was really nice as it had this natural air conditioning system that made it nice and cool. We ended up seing 5 caves in total (or I saw 5, Amie only saw 4 as she would not climb the Laotian ladder to see the last cave after we both crossed this rickety bridge to get to the cave). In the end we were glad to head back to the hotel as both of us were covered from head to toe in dust.

After 2 days in Tha Khaek we were ready to head for the big city but unfortunately Amie was feeling a bit under the weather and after spending the night sitting on the toilet (sorry no picture) thought it best we not attempt another 6 -8 hr bus journey. The next day we were up early and on the bus heading for Vientiane. We had planned on traveling with this Canadian women we met originally on the boat from Kratie but unfortunately it was her turn to be sick and she decided to stay an extra day in Tha Khaek.

We have not being doing a whole lot since our last entry and it's a little tough writing about our day to day life when at first it's sounds as if it's not much different than spending a week back home, but we are having some great experiences. One story that I would like to share is that we now know our numbers in Laotian thanks to this sweet woman who worked in our hotel in Tha Khaek. She insisted that we ask for our key in Lao and after a little help we now have the language skills of a 2 year old. She was so cute because I would ask for the key and say the numbers and then she would say "Madame" and Amie would have to ask for the key also.

The great thing about traveling in South East Asia is everything is so cheap. We normally stay in the best hotels in town for around $10. There was only one place that we felt we would be spending too much if we stayed there and that was in these over-the-water bungalows on Don Kong that were $25 a night. We did go and check them out but we felt we could not face our fellow backpackers - who were all spending $1.50 a night - if we stayed there. The food is also real cheap and best of all is the beer at less than $1 for a large bottle it is a great value and also I can say it is some of the best beer in the world.