Sarah & Richard's Travels

From the riveting capital of Laos that is Vientiane we took another overnight bus to Pakse, 10 hours away. Overnight buses are not my favourite form of transport but this journey seemed to be tonnes better than the one in China and flew by until we were dropped just out of town at the rather early hour of 5.30am. About 10 of us jumped in a Tuk Tuk complete with all our packs and were driven around to various hotels in town. Needless to say the thing was pretty overloaded and I was surprised we didn't tip whilst turning the corner...there was even a person seated each side of the driver!

Like Vientiane there isn't a lot to do in Pakse and it certainly doesn't have many tourist niceties in terms of plush western style restaurants or shops. Here it was a case of stick to the local stuff and don't bother with the rest...as for shopping, well... Our first day was spent organising the rest of the time there and where we'd head to next. As there wasn't really anything else to do we booked a tour to the Bolaven Plateau for the next day.

We were waiting for our tour to start when a German couple arrived for the same tour. Turns out one of their sons was a German exchange student who came to NZ for a three month exchange. Not only did he go to NZ, but he went to the same school and year as me (Martin Schmid for any ex Northcote people)! It's such a small world.

Anyway, aside from that the tour was ok, but a lot of driving in the back of an oversized Tuk Tuk which wasn't so fun when we were on the 12km of unsealed road they forgot to tell us about. Needless to say we were caked in dust by the time we finished!

We saw 4 different waterfalls along the tour, all of which were very pretty but didn't compare to the gorgeous Tad Sae falls in Luang Prabang. The Bolaven Plateau is famous for it's coffee and we stopped at a farm along the way where we learnt about how the trees grow and how they make the coffee. Most of the big companies are owned by Vietnamese families, so a lot of the farmers don't see a lot of money from the coffee and 5 hectares would earn them around US$2000-3000 per year, so not a lot. They can make more when they start to dry and process the beans, but ultimately the roasting is done by a larger company which is where most of the value is added. They grew Arabica and Robusta as well as some other wierd type that gets exported to Cambodia. We saw quite a few bomb craters and old shells at the farms as the area is close to Attepeu which was heavily bombed by the US for its' proximity to the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War.

Our next stop was a tiny ethinc minority village where we looked around the village. I felt a bit rude 'intruding' on the village like that without giving anything back and felt it would be better to have lunch or something there so they can at least earn some money from the tourists who come and look around. It was a village where they still practice buffalo sacrifice for the good harvests. For those of you who've seen the movie Apocalypse Now you may remember a crazed scene where villagers sacrifice a buffalo amid lots of music and heavy rain etc...this is what they practice here. They also keep coffins under their houses ready for when they die which we all thought a bit wierd. It's unlucky for the ethnic Laos to do this, but the Mon-Khmer minorities believe they will be ready for death if they keep a coffin under the house. Most of the villagers we saw were smoking these huge bamboo pipes of tobacco including small childrn no older than 8-10. We all thought it very unhealthy for the kids especially but our guide said they smoked like that because there was nothing else to do in the village which didn't surprise us either as life looked very slow. One girl was wearing a 'sexy girl' t-shirt, something I doubt she'd be wearing if they knew what it meant...it was a bit sad to see really, but I guess it's clothing for them as they don't have much money.

Our favourite waterfall was Tad Lo where there also were a few resorts and bungalows, it would be a nice day to spend a few days chilling out and between trekking and swimming in the falls there'd be plenty to do...of course there's always just lazing in a hammock as well!

We had hoped to be on a three day kayaking tour down to 4,000 islands the next day, but it wasn't to be as we couldn't get anymore people to join and is was just too expensive for the two of us by ourselves, so instead we booked a bus down to the islands.