Indelible Roots

We got to Pakse about 6:30am this morning and of course were inundated by over priced tuk tuk drivers. The ride up was fairly smooth if frigid. All of the bus staff were wearing jackets, yet they had the a/c cranked all the way up. Even with the vents closed, cold air was still leaking profusely from around it. Even with our little nighty blankets it was quite a cold night.

In Pakse I donned my backpack, waved off the tuk tuk drivers, and started walking in my flip flops. I saw about a dozen monks receiving alms and made a dash for my camera which was in my little backpack strapped to my big backpack. The photos didn’t turn out too well.

A few blocks later in the morning light my four month old, four thousand riel ($1) flip flops gave up and quit on me. I’m actually amazed they have lasted this long as often as I wear them and as often as I scrub them and catch the little tabs that keep the straps on. So I stopped, dropped them on the ground under a table (perhaps someone with more patience will repair them) and donned my sneakers.

I walked to a few guest houses and finally settled on one just because I was tired of walking around. There was a better, larger one down the road that I had stopped at (Fang by the little bridge) but the lady and I couldn’t communicate and she gave my room to a nice German gal even though I had been waiting there first.

Anyways, waiting for my room to be vacated and cleaned I met Jaime from Homer, Alaska. She’s been traveling for five months all over the world and was looking to do a one day tour of the coffee growing area, the Bolevan plateau. They were short a person for the trip and had I been given a room and showered, I would have gone. As it were they weren’t enough people for that trip so Jaime had to run to find another group before they all left that morning.

Anywho, I don’t recommend the overnight bus as I was pretty tired and ended up sleeping till noon, awaking due to the intense heat radiating from the roof. Walking around town in the noon sun was excruciating, it was HOT! I didn’t realize how good we had it in northern Laos, but the heat here in the south is intense.

But as it were, around 2pm a huge thunderstorm moved in and monsooned on us for over an hour. It’s very nice now, but that won’t last long. And Pakse is a very quiet city, though it is a Sunday. I met a friendly moto driver and some kids shooting slingshots walking around. I really think the problem with northern Lao was that Luang Prabang is a UN listed “World Heritage City” and that had gone to their heads, rubbing me the wrong way. I’ve had quite a good experience with the rest of Lao.

Tomorrow I will either go on the one day tour of the Bolevan Plateau or take a minibus to Si Phan Don, Four Thousand Islands. One day there and I should be on my way back into Khmer Country. Anyone wanting Lao coffee from Lao had better let me know ASAP.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 am and is filed under Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.