Pakse and the 4000 Islands

10/04The night was not too bad. The bus had double beds, still a bit short in length but we've managed to sleep, even without earplugs for Val!!! The Laotian man behind us doesn't like the trip and keeps being sick, just behind us, the road is not too bumpy but it seems many people again here are car sick!!! We arrive in Pakse very early and book straight a tour from our guesthouse to visit the Bolaven Plateau. It's 8am, quick shower, quick breakfast (even for Val!) and we jump in the van, we're only seven of us, two guys from Latvia, a young Italian woman and a nice French couple on a short holiday. We visit a tea plantation, and the Lao tea tastes good, a coffee plantation, and the Lao coffee tastes very good. The plateau has an average altitude of 600 metres, hilly, lush and very fertile terrain. The plantations were developed by the French during colonial times, but it is again very successful now.
We go to see some waterfalls, Tad Fane waterfalls, very high in the middle of a jungle, one of the highests in Laos. Then drive to some animist tribe villages. The first village Ban Kandone we visit is not spoiled with tourism yet and we meet some women weaving traditional skirts, children running around naked. On and off it will take them three months to complete one skirt. The village is composed of two tribes. the Katu and the Nge cohabiting very well in the same community. Only the ceremonial place, a community house on stilts, has two different stairs to get on the ceremony platform. One is a proper staircase made of different elements, the other one on the other side is a tree trunk where the steps have been carved in (the nge people). All the houses in the village present the same characteristics depending on the tribe. We reflect on old age existence and how people still live here.
The second village Ban Kokphoung, of the Alak people is much more used to tourists and the kids attitude doesn't lie. Children are insistingly saying 'Hello' and showing the palm of their hand muttering 'pen' or 'bonbons'. We give a kid one and she instantly frown her eyebrows, tilting her head to the side now asking for 'bonbon' with a very angry look. We feel a bit lost and puzzled...so much anger. Interesting place here, the tribe people make their coffins when they are alive and store it under their houses, we can see many under the wooden huts. People smoke tobbacco here from a very young age (small children too) and I try it in their bamboo water pipes! There is a party going on and we can see many men and women dancing, some seem drunk or merry, already celebrating new year!!
On the way back we stop at some waterfalls. Tad Lo where I have a swim. The current is very strong and it takes lots of effort before I manage to reach the foot of the waterfall before letting go, drifting back to where I came from. Amusing!
We drive back to Pakse, go to book our tickets for Si Phan Don, the 4000 islands, and, most importantly, to Ubon Ratchathani as next week is Pi Mai Lao, the Lao New Year and we're a bit concerned that, if we wait more, we won't have any seats in any buses to catch our flight to Singapore. Thailand is starting to have few political problems and tensions again...Hopefully we can cross the border! Pi Mai is also celebrated in the neighbouring countries, lasting for a week, everybody travels back to the families or simply for tourism. We come back after a short walk in the town and have dinner with Virginie, a French girl travelling alone, who stays at the same guesthouse we met briefly this morning. Val stays up late, talking about India, spirituality, life in France when I go to bed early as we're travelling early again tomorrow.

11/4
We take a mini bus to the harbour to reach the 4000 islands. We meet up again with the French couple, Philippe and Elizabeth, we met during the bolaven trip, nice to see friendly faces. After two hours drive, and a great example of decerebrated babble from a retarded teenager who spent far too long drinking in Vang Vieng, we arrive in Hat Xai Khoun, the ferry harbour to Don Khong, our destination. They're not really ferries but more small narrow river boats crossing the 500m wide branch of the Mekong to Muang Khong, the village where we're going to stay. First impressions are great, many small islands and islets, the river, lush vegetation...We start walking around carrying our bags under high heat, looking for a guesthouse. It is very hot and the few hundreds metres we walk make us loose an amazing amount of water, so much sweat!! Our pick is finally a hotel to the north of the village, the Souksun Guesthouse, nice huge room with two beds, a nice balcony. We enjoy a short cold but welcome shower before having lunch over the Mekong River. The restaurant is not so good but the terrace is located above the water. We watch the river, rural life revolving around it, the fishermen, the little flooded forests, the banks. Here the Mekong concludes its journey through Laos, before going to Cambodia. There, we meet Beatrice and Oliver, a French-German couple who are cycling all over South-East Asia. They started their trip in August and are still going...brave and admirable people!!! We chat a lot, get on well as we share some similar issues, travelling, life, where to go, what to do...We then go for a walk on the Mekong river heading south, the views and the scenery are fabulous. We go back, rest for a while, go eat in a crappy restaurant, the village is small and we have very few options to eat, then bed time! The room is unbearable as it is so hot and the fan doesn't cool it at all. Maybe one of the hottest nights since we are in Asia, it is really excruciatingly hot as we have been told, before the rain comes.

12/4
It's an early morning for us as we are going cycling today to explore the South of the island. It's a 20km ride but we only have a short time to do it. By noon the heat and sun are such that cycling will become rather challenging, if not impossi­­ble. So we set off on our small bikes (it feels that I'm riding my younger sister's bike when she was eight)on a narrow path tucked between the Mekong River and the village houses. It is very scenic and a fantastic way to experience life on the island, passing traditional wooden houses on stilts to more modern houses, also on stilts, made of cement and concrete, but more or less preserving the local style. We visit Wat Thepasoulin temple, some parts dating back to 1883, teak-plank wall monk quarters, with terracota tile roof and a really pleasant sight added to the bright colours of the temple. A bit further away, we stop at Wat Silananthalangsi, with its derelict monk school house. Around 11am we make our way back on a tremendously hot road through the rice fields, the cultivated lands. But there is not one tree and it might be around 45 degres here and even the small breeze has turned hot. Eight kilometres of pain, making us feel like we're crossing some kind of saharian portion of desert. It's so hot that it takes us around 45 minutes and two litres of boiling water to reach our guesthouse. We run to the shop and buy some cold water to quench our thirst! After a quick lunch and a cold shower, we spend the afternoon in our room as the heat makes any activity impossible. We've been really hot in some places in other parts of the world, but this is uncommon. Early evening we try to book a boat with our guesthouse as a couple staying here is also planning to go tomorrow to visit the small islands around. It's a bit of an odd encounter but we go and speak to them to enquire about their plan. Ingrid and Wolfgang, both German, have finally booked their narrow boat somewhere else, cheaper, and Wolfgang offers straight away to come with me to speak to the man and try to negotiate a better price (more people on the boat), which we actually manage to obtain. Around a beer we agree to have dinner together. We talk about their life, our life. They lived in Nepal 30 years ago, went back to Germany to raise the kids and now that they are grown ups, they are travelling again. Ingrid is currently under contract with an NGO in northern Laos where her role is to improve the hill tribes quality of life (health but also agriculture). She works mainly with Akas. Wolfgang is an architect and an expert in buddhist architecture in Nepal, he has worked for many years in the preservation-protection of the Kathmandu buildings and temples. We exchange a lot about travels and experiences abroad, about Ingrid's difficult work and the harsh issues inherent to any developping countries work.
After an excellent dinner (honey chicken) and beautiful lightnings on the Mekong's horizon, we're back in our room when a violent thunderstorm breaks. Thunderbolts are tearing the dark skies in long and powerful strikes and the rain now pours down heavily, pounding on the building roof. There is half a metre of water in the coumpound. But the air cools down rapidily and we slowly fall asleep, listening to the falling rain...

13/4
The entire night has been very wet, rain flooding the garden. The thunder has been striking until this morning. Luckily enough it's not raining anymore even if the sky is overcast with threatening black clouds. We're up early to get the boat that will take us to see the waterfalls and the southern islands, Don Det and Don Khon. We go with Ingrid and Wolfgang. As we set off with the boat sailing down the Mekong, rays of sunshine pierce the big puffy clouds. Few local boats are sailing up and down the river, fishing, transporting goods, but not so many carrying tourist passengers. The Mekong River is quite wide here, sometimes shallow, and it takes all the ability of our young captain to avoid the submerged rocks, the flooded plants. After an hour and a half of beautiful sights and interesting conversations with our two companions, we reach Ban Nakasang where we take a tired van (it may explain why we paid our boat quite cheap!) to reach the Khon Phapheng waterfalls, the largest of South East Asia. They're only 15m high but nearly 1km wide at the largest point. This place is very busy with tourists, mainly Asian, lined up with small souvenir shops. We climb the rocks to get away from the crowd and after a couple of tree trunks or bamboo made passerelles, we sit down for a long moment to look at the falls. Impressive sight and the water is roaring loudly. We go back to get our boat and sail to Don Khon and its little harbour, Ban Khon, where we stop for lunch. It's a smaller island than where we stay but it's busy with cheap bungalows and youth arriving from Vang Vieng!! Quite the opposite to our little village. However the island looks nice and we could have also come here. The electricity has just arrived permanently last week, a change to the previous two hour time per day. We can already feel that the island is going to change in no time. We have a chatty lunch on the river and then walk through the inner island to try to see Irriwady dolphins. When we reach the boat departure area down river after the falls, we realise that we won't have enough time to see the dolphins. It's such a shame, as they're critically endangered. A wildlife organisation is trying to protect them, but the nets and even the dynamite of the Cambodian fishermen are a great threat. The only other part they can be seen is in the Irrawaddy River in Burma (Myanmar). We walk back, still talking with our friends about our lives. On the way, we first stop at the smaller Somphamit waterfalls that all of us like better. They are accesible and more diverse as the water escapes the falls through an interesting canyon. It is much quieter here and we can have a look and enjoy the view without the crowd running and shouting all around to take family pictures. We set off again as our conversations tend to slow down our rythm a lot. We admire some French vestiges, a school, the locomotive that used to run between Don khon and Don Det on a specially built railway and bridge by the French. At that time boats were unloaded from their goods at Don Khon southern harbour, goods were then put on the train to the northern point of Don Det over the bridge in order to go over the falls. Different boats would eventually transport the goods upriver to Vientiane or Luang Prabang. We get back on our boat an hour late, and we start a very slow return to Dong Khong, against the current. We enjoy the beautiful landscape, scenery and the evening activities of the Mekong River. Fishermen are gracefully throwing their circular nets high in the air. This is so graceful that I cannot get tired of seeing this and photographing it. Kids running naked, enjoing splashing ythemselves in the river, women washing in their sarongs, doing the family laundry, men washing the bikes, the boats, the Mekong is now a very sociable place, neigbhours washing and chatting, monks bathing too... At the same crowling pace as our boat the sun declines gently over the Mekong and the sky starts dressing up into its flaming robe. This is such an amazing and magical moment that discussions are now stopped and four pairs of eyes just look at the burning sky. We're only distracted by the young captain friend who falls asleep in an uncomfortable position at the front of the boat, but in great style: the sunglasses will stay on until the boat pier!!! As we come back it's dark. The day was full of various interests, in the nature but also in ourselves. We part with Ingrid and Wolfgang to meet up again with Oliver and Beatrice, our cyclists friends for dinner. We eat local fish hotpot and talk. These guys left everything for a trip of an unknown length through South East Asia on bicycle. They left Europe, France in August (starting their cycling trip around Europe for a month in July) and have been to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. They are not sure where to settle next...We're completely admirative, such a physical effort but they both seem relaxed about it! Impressive. We carry on our conversation until midnight, chat, laugh, think, reflect. We head back to our room in the complete darkness, the village is fast asleep, only the moon guides our steps...

14/4
The breakfast is quite busy this morning. We're all here, with Ingrid, Wolfgang, Oliver and Beatrice. Ingrid and Wolfgang are leaving this morning. It's been another very interesting and rich encounter. After breakfast we hire a motorbike and we're off to the northern part of the island which makes a 35km loop. Cycling would be far to difficult with the heat, we are not as brave as our friends here. We see the small villages, the North East town getting ready for celebrations of Pi mai, the Lao new year. Rice fields, shacks, villages, water buffalos. Heat. We go to see a temple in the middle of the countryside, with many black rock formations in the fields, nothing much but there are dogs barking that scare Val so much. Back to our village, we walk to try find the celebrations and to see people washing the buddhas, one of the ritual for new year. The village is sleepy, as dead, no adults around, everyone hidding from the heat!!! then an ambush in front of us, we get soaked on the way by the water thrown by the kids, squirting water guns and emptying buckets on people's heads. It is part of the Lao new year festive moment:throw water at people to wish them happy new year! Very joyful and fun! We retaliate to their surprise, I run around the little kids, throwing water at them! We laugh. Lunch at our guesthouse, relax. Around 4pm we leave the guesthouse to the nearby temple to see a very important ritual of the Pi Mai celebrations. Villagers gather around to take all the buddhas out of the temple and wash them with lotus leaves and rinsing them with plenty of water. We're invited to join in and Val lowers herself to the ground to help the girls wash a small buddha figure. So nice to join in, the be partb of the celebrations. We stand out as we are the only farang (westerners) in the temple, people look at us, kids smile, say hello, we sit with people in the shade. Today the women, girls and kids look after the statues and men are supporting them by bringing the water and carrying the heavy buddhas. The entire process goes on with laughter and a jolly mood of happiness and joy. Later there will be parties, huge amount of lao-lao (rice whisky) drank, games, music (blastying from stereos as they like it here), dancing...
The buddhas are then placed on a big table, some sort of temporary altar, where a head monk presides the prayer. He then blesses the buddhas with more holy water. Pi Mai is also thecelebration where all the kids and teenagers throw water at everything, or everyone should I say, that moves, big water battles start now. But this time we leave at the right moment and do not get soaked again...
We come back and get ready for dinner with Beatrice and Oliver who are still around. We chat until late at night and Val and I come back through the little alleyways, the night is pitch black, our path only lit up by tremendous thunderbolts...

15/04
A bit late for our breakfast, we miss our friends who left to go up north with their bikes, good luck guys!! Enjoy the cycling! We go for a last stroll around the banks of the river, a little stray dog comes along, we watch the village life, it is quiet today as it is the holiday, people with their family, we take some photos, relax before leaving the island. A truly scenic place, we both loved it, so much to see, a relaxing stunning place: wooden houses, small villages, riverbanks, lush forets, the magical river, a labyrinth of islets, rocks, beautiful tropical islands. After a short ride on the boat, we ait for a bus to come, we wait then we have to put up with a bad smell in the bus, a young traveller forgot to wash..for a very long time..I sit next to him, nice, Val hates the smell, but laughs about it, we are bohemian but not that hippish...Dirty clothes, sweat, dirt...We laugh and listen to some REALLY cheesy old 80s music (Europe: the final countdown, so appropriate right now!!)Only two and a half hours, could be much worse!!The German couple behind us hates it so much and she feels sick so they spray some deodorants in the van, even nicer!!! Another funny encounter: when we jump in the van, Val recognises a girl from a previous school Science Po, she is living in Vientiane and works in Laos since 2 years, amazing to meet here!! We agree to meet her and her partner for a coffee at the end of the day. We finally reach Pakse at 3pm, go for a shower, browse the net, we are off to thailand tomorrow and needs to sort out some admin stuff. The all town is celebrating, and we get soaked every 5 minutes, ambushed by kids and adults, nice to get soaked as it is so hot, water battles in every street, music blasting, people drinking and dancing! We meet with Elsa, the Scpo girl and her boyfriend for a drink, chat about life, development work, Europe, nice for Val to see her here, they then exchange emails and they have to leave to take their night bus. we have a quick Indian meal (preparing ourselves!), then back to our guesthouse...we want to get to bed as tomorrow we ae leaving the country for Thailand early and want to get up to celebrate at 7am with the family from the guesthouse, they are holding a family celebration and the guests are all invited!!Our last night in Laos, soon the chapter Asia will be closed.