Communism... The Next Generation

The Lao People's Democratic Republic is a funny place... In the center of the flag there is a huge white circle said to represent "The guiding light of communism". In contrast to what I understand of communist principles, the streets are filled with signs extolling the virtues of Pepsi Corp. I don't really understand how communism and Pepsi go together other than, of course, their interest in the spiritual (and physical) nourishment of the proletariat. That said, it does make for a nice change from the Coke nation of Cambodia.

Laos is strange in many other ways but in general its laid back nature makes it difficult to dislike. It's almost like a drug, as soon as you hit the border everything starts to move very slowly. We started our journey in the most laid back place on earth, Don Det. I recommend Don Det for anyone who has a stress/blood pressure problem as there is nothing to do except relax... not that fake 'relax' that we do in front of the TV but the real deal that only comes hand in hand with no electricity. We spent our days laying in hammocks, reading, floating aimlessly on the Mekong in inner tubes and hanging out with Yaiza and Jordan, the couple we met on the journey from Cambodia. We planned on spending 3 nights in DD and ended up staying 5... On the 4th night as we were having dinner and lamenting about leaving, Yaiza, Jordan and the other people at the table were able to convince us to stay yet another day. Amy promptly walked to the travel agency and changed our tickets. Don Det is such a fantastic place I think I could have stayed there forever. I can safely say, in our 5 months of traveling I have NEVER felt so horrible upon leaving a place.

After Don Det we took a very dusty ride on a sangtaew (Lao version of a gigantic tuktuk) to the town of Pakse, gateway to the Bolaven plateau. The Bolaven is a flat bit in the middle of some mountains (hence plateau haha) and is the home of most of the farms growing Lao coffee. From Pakse we caught a death-trap/local bus to a very small town called Tad Lo. The bus dropped us off at the turnoff and we had to hoof it 1.8km to the town.

Arriving in a town with foreigners is a strange experience... Where once existed a kind of camaraderie forged by being the only few tourists on a bus packed with Laotian farmers, a competitive spirit seldom seen, except on The Amazing Race, emerges. Here's how it goes... Everyone gets off the bus, tries to act all nonchalant when retrieving their bags and then sneakily starts to power-walk down the road in search of the cheapest guesthouse. All this must be done with minimal eye contact and complete secrecy about where one wishes to stay. This minimizes the ugly feeling of sinking to an animal level over something as silly as a guesthouse listed in the Lonely Planet. Upon arrival at said guesthouse one must try as hard as one can to acquire a room, at this point anything goes. Amy and I generally try not to get sucked into these shenanigans but sometimes I feel my competitive spirit surfacing and must remind myself that I am NOT on the Amazing Race and one million dollars is NOT riding on my ability to get the last shitty bungalow at Tim's Guesthouse. All is fair in love, war and budget travel in Laos!

We spent two nights in Tad Lo, a very sleepy town with more pigs than people. On the first night we ended up meeting some people and arranging a tuktuk tour that would take us to three waterfalls, a market, a coffee plantation and an ethnic village. The waterfalls were really beautiful, one was over 100m high and another was set amidst dense jungle. The coffee plantation was interesting although it was disappointing to find out that the villagers sell the hand-picked coffee beans for 60 cents a bag and the companies then sell it for ten times the price. The ethnic village was shocking, as usual. This particular village was dubbed the "smoking village" as there were toddlers smoking tobacco from a huge water pipe. I won't even go into how I feel about that.

From Tad Lo we set off with a man named Jon, from Seattle, and a crazy Belgian guy named Louis. Up until this point I don't think I believed that you could actually catch a bus by standing by the side of a random road. Turns out, in the south of Laos you can stand pretty much anywhere on the side of a road, with bag in tow, and get a bus going in that direction. We ended up on a bus bound for Savannakhet feeling very proud of adventurous selves.

We arrived in Savannakhet after a dusty 7 hour bus ride with ONE pee break. Savannakhet bills itself as a cosmopolitain city with beautiful "crumbling French colonial style architecture". When we arrived we opted to walk from the bus station just to spite the rude tuktuk drivers (this was a bad choice). Next we opted to look at a room in a creaky old Chinese hotel (also a bad choice). After 2 hours of walking we finally found a place that was half decent but not before almost sharing a room with Jon and losing poor Louis to a guesthouse that looked like a slum house. In short, Savannakhet was filled with the promised architecture and little else. Thus ended our 2 week tour of Southern Laos!