It's Raining on the Mekong

This is my 4 th day on the Island (3rd night). The river is almost etherial after the rain. There is no real difference, or should I say there is no difference really. The river flows unempeded, ever the same swirls appearing in the same place. It is timeless. The rain blankets everything in a beautiful warm coat. When it finishes the air is clean and fresh for a while. The pace of life here is so slow. Nothing happens fast, any task taking at least twice as long as anywhere else. This is not frustrating however as itis easy to fall into that "oh well  Bo Pan Yang". It is like being constantly stoned without the buisness of smoking. Maybe that's why I feel so at home here.

My third night was very entertaining I had Sunday roast at the King Kong Bar and Resteraunt. It was lovely, roast Pork and Chicken with roast potatoes and carrots with greesn and gravy. I wolfed it down accompanied with Beer Lao and pepsi. A few people turned up so it was a convivial night. A good celebration.

I have resolved my ongoing travel worries. The Cambodian border won't let my bike through so I'm going to leave it here for when I come back. It will be safe here, sparingly used to keep  it alive but safe and under cover. I will fly on wednesday to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Meet up with Jacqui Elizabeth  who arrives from Australia on the same day. Then we have to work out how to do all the things we want to do from there. I am hoping I can either hire or buy a bigger dirt bike for the trip onward. We'll see. Onwards campers.

Don Det at sunset

I am sitting in my hammock out the front of my oh so cutest banboo hut. It shakes and it rattles and it rolls. It is threatening to disintegrate around me but I have complete faith in its capacity and after all it is the last season and these"heritidge" buildings will be compost. As I speak the new ones are being created next door. I am witnessing the most gloroius onset of evening. You couldn't really call it a sunset because I am on the sunrise side of the Island. It is glorious though. You could cut the tranquility with a knife. It's like an overripe stilton cheese stinking in full maturity. The image is assisted by the reality that it is also stinking hot. I am at peace, this is my nadir, my bliss, my nirvarna. You can take all your religions, your sects, your covens of Kharma give me good old tranquility any day. It puts the whole business in perspective. They have a saying here, a catch all phrase "Bo Pan Yang" (I'm not sure about the anglisied spelling). But that says it all. And that is all I'll say today.  

Return to Pakse The photos

What follows are the last shots of Tad Lo. See the previous post. They are mostly taken from where I went for a swim. And from my guesthouse

Return to Pakse

So the journey continues. After 4 days of indolence, of sheer indulgent laziness I am now in Pakse trying to assimilate the "vibe" of a large and vibrant Lao city. This means lots of dust and oppressive humidity powered by intense heat. By comparison my stay in Tad Lo was paradise. The little village has become a very special place for me. After the first night I moved into the Famdee Guesthouse. Its's a new one since I was there last. It is run by a French guy by the name of Louis (pronounced Lewys in the french way). I think he is a close friend of the Austrian guy who used to make organic coffee. Anyway Louis is now making the coffee and the Austrian guy is in Vientianne. I know where I'd rather be. The atmosphere in Tad Lo is incredibly relaxed. If you just sit in one place for a full day you actually get to see the true rythmn of the place. It is very subtle but there is a definite storey churning out each day. I got a very nice and deep feel for the community and how it operated over the four days that I mooched from resteraunt to coffee stand to water fall to  resteraunt etc. In the morning there is a steady drift of kids toward school always impeccably dressed in the required uniform, sisters and brothers would ferry younger siblings on the back of the ubiquitous Honda Wave. No one wearing helmets confident in thier community that traffic would not hurt them. Later in the morning after the guesthouses have finished thier breakfasts and those that were leaving have gone, Senior women (those that run the guesthouses) would gather at a resteraunt, usually Louis's and discuss the day and any matter that needs sorting. One day it was about the water going off and who was going to fix it down at the bridge. They would sit and chat, drink excellent coffee and smoke these huge and horrible cigar-ettes hand rolled from what looked like banana leaves! It was quite magnificent to watch all this. The women would move away to prepare for lunches and Louis would have a nap in the hammock. After lunch is siesta time. All the locals lie down and have a nap. I joined them. Late in the afternoon the new tourists would start to arrive and they would filter through selecting the assorted guesthouses for the night. They have this air of expectation and fear that there will be no room at the inn. No worries there is always somewhere no matter how basic. The prices are all within the most strained of budget. Once the sun sinks the resteraunts begin to fill with new and old clients consuming spring rolls and other delights. "Mamapaps" is always full and the new clients sit there in shock as MamaPap delivers huge meals stacked high that they will never be able to consume. She never changes the portions. It is always gargantuan. By 8:30 everyone has ordered food. By 9:30 everyone has finished thier food and generally people move off to bed. All the locals are well asleep. That's the rythmn of the day. Wonderful. I wallowed in this for four days. This is the reason that Tad Lo will always be a destination for me. It is still off the beaten track and people have to be resourceful to get here. You have either to hire a bike or struggle valiantly with buses to be found 2 kilometers on the main road (some way away). On my second day I got a bit of a taste of what could be once the message gets out... 4 absolutely huge and very packed luxury buses turned up in convoy. One was full of Koreans, one full of Vietnamese and the other 2 I did not look at. They were all gawping at us tourists/hippies lying around reading and whatnot. I thought  "Oh No this does not look good" the face of time and the future. So don't tell too many people about this place and maybe it will keep it's essential quietness. 

As I said before I' m now in Pakse. I am here to get a service on the bike and then I'm off to the 4,000 Islands. I have contacted the place I have stayed before and they have a room for me. I hope it is the same hut as before..... paradise. More chillin coming up folks

A Chillin in Tad Lo The photos part 2

These photos are from my first day in Tad Lo. Most are taken from my first hotel. I only stayed one night. They have gone right down hill, no hot water, no air conditioning, no toilet paper and no soap! ! And they wanted to charge 80,000 kip a night! Not htis littel black duck. Anyway here are the photos. The last one is looking back at my hotel from the bridge.

A Chillin in Tad Lo The photos part1

What follows is a chronology of my ride from Attepeu to Tad Lo so tie this to the previous text. This is also broken into 3 parts to publish

Chillin in Tad Lo

Now this is the second iteration of this blog. I tried to publish text and photos but it would not let me. So now you get text followed by the pics in a new post. Here goes nothing.

The motorbike ride from Attepeu was uneventful and straightforward. Despite the absence of maps or road signs, even those concrete milestones had been painted out, I found my way quite easy. There were only 2 major cross roads and my memory served me well here as did my fleeting sense of direction. The countryside on one side was flat as a tack. It was very scrubby with very few big trees. At home you would call it poor country and I think the locals do the same here. No major signs of agriculture. It was later replaced by what you would call good country and everyone seemed to be harvesting rice. On the other side of the road 1there was the massive of the Boleven Plateau rising directly some thousand of feet. It is ever present, thrusting about a kilometer or so from the road. It dominates the view wherever you look on that side. The dominant colour is green and the effect is dense forest, a welcome relief to the monotony on the other side of the road. The Paddy fields were a golden brown and there were groups of people rugged up so only the eyes were uncovered busily gathering the grain. I tell you the people who fear the Hijab and the Nicab would have a field day here. The only difference is that here people cover up not because of religion but  because of the sun! They want to stay white and the sun turns them brown! Or should I say that is what they think. People here are naturally dark of skin so they will always look tanned. There are an amazing amount of products in supermarkets here claiming to whiten the skin. People pay crazy rates to whiten thier skins. It is sad what fashion will do. If you are dark it means you work outside all day, therefore you must be a farmer and they are poor people. If you have white skin you must work inside, therefore you are rich and more marriageable. That is the logic or lack of it. It seems to me to put all our fears about covering up into a different perspective. Here everyone does it male and female. It would be far more easy for someone in South East Asia to conceal who they were than the poor bloody Islamic women at home. What would parliament do with a bunch of people from South East Asia trying to avoid the sun in Canberra. It makes a laughing stock of us and shows what such stupid policies as we have to be really the racist crap that it really is!

Tad Lo is still as lovely as ever. Nothing much has changed in the last few years. There is a new  guesthouse at the end of the street away from the river. It looks new and fresh and they make the same coffee as the Austrian bloke did the last time I was here. I had dinner there last night. A lovely family affair where everyone sat down together. The food was great (chicken curry with sticky rice and a very nice side dish of fried spinach or some kind of greens. The whole thing was lubricated by a couple of bottles of Beer Lao yumyum. I am hoping to move into this place tomorrow as the standard in my hotel where I have always stayed before leaves a lot to be desired .... like hot water and airconditioning both of which worked before and don't now. I don't mind paying a premium for luxury but I expect it to work! It is a minor irritation that I am sure I will be able to cope with.

This morning I notice that the river is much lower that it was yesterday. It must have dropped by at least a meter. It has taken on a more tranquil aspect, not raging loudly as it passed over the falls with a roar but more like a constant reminder that it is there. Seeing as upriver there is a dam (hydro electricity) they must have done a release of some kind yesterday and now it has gone back to normal. I notice also that one of the pylons on the bridge has fallen down probably  a result of some huge downpour in the  wet season. Rather than replacing it, a huge RSJ has been slipped under the bridge across between the 2 pylons left in that section. Dodgey Brothers bridge repairers at work. I wonder what it will look like in a couple of years. I've not seen any huge buses go across but there have been four wheel drive trucks and the whole thing sways a bit.

I'm going to be staying here for a few days. The atmosphere is very relaxing and there are a lot of backpackers here from all over so I get to talk to people in my own language. Last night at dinner there were A New Zealander, an expat Aussie from Melbourne who lives in Scotland, several Poms from the north of England, a couple of Swiss who spoke Italian and a couple of French people presumably from France. It was conversation heaven. For the prevoius 3 days travelling  from Hoian I had been virtually mute because noone spoke English. It was steadfastly Vietnamese or Lao. In some ways this is good and in others it is bad. It is good because it teaches me humility and silence. It is bad because I get lonely. As always six of one half a dozen of the other. Sooo I don't know how much more blogging I will do here before I move off. We will see. I'll attach all the photos so far and maybe just add new ones each night. Catch youse later campers.  

Across the Border and into the Trees.

I am now in Laos in particular I am in Attepeu. This quiet dusty town is on the southern edge of the Boleven Plateau. I arrived here at midday after a long ride from Bo Y on the Vietnamese side. The journey began this morning at about 8:00 am from the town of Pleican (or Ngoc Hai). I motored all the way to the border on this new development road. Not a single other vehicle passed me on the way. It was almost surreal. I thought there might be something wrong or that I would suddenly encounter a motorcade full of dignitaries and such like. No such luck. When I finally got to Bo Y it became clear that the road I came in on was  not the one most used by the plethora of timber trucks that were to be found parked everywhere  waiting for a driver to clear immigration/customs.

I parked up and went into this huge empty hall. It was only empty in the middle on one side there was a hive of activity around 2 windows. One was customs and the other passport control. I presented my passport to Customs only to be told to go to Passport control. The man took the passport sliding the $5:00 US into a convenient drawer beside him. He did the usual with the stamping and then asked me with very obvious signs where my bike was. I pointed in the general direction. This was when the problem started. They told me with sign language that I could not take the bike over the border. Apparently I could not import a bike into Laos. It took another 45 minutes going back and forth between customs and Passport control. Eventually I was able to convince them that I was not importing the bike but was a tourist and was planning to take it from  Vietnam into Laos and then into Cambodia.I did not mention my intention to come back into Vietnam.... that is another story for later. Anyway suddenly It was all OK and I was allowed to leave Vietnam. The Laotian side was a completely different storey. They didn't ask about the bike and I didn't mention it either. I got my visa, I got on my bike and I got the hell out of there as fast as I could go. Yeeha! For a while there Icould see the trip grinding to a halt prematurely. I give thanks to my natural luck!

The trip to Attapeu was fantastic. At first it was jungle clad  mountains, incredibly steep and quite fantastic. The views were awesome  and  I was constantly drawn to these huge vistas. The road was a disaster. Potholes and 30 meter long swathes of rough potholey gravel. Speed was kept to about 25Kph. I had visions of arriving in attepeu in the dark after a 9hour slog. Once I got to the flat the road and the country changed. The road improved remarkably and the country got dry and scrubby. A wierd contradiction but that is Laos. I got to Attepeu at lunch time and found this quiet guesthouse that is  very pleasant. Tomorrow I head to Tad Lo and chill time.

Pleican or should I say Ngoc Hoi. A waiting game

Here I am at the end of my Vietnam tour waiting for a room so I can wait till tomorrow to head to Laos at the Bo Y border. The room they showed me had no power so they asked me to wait. I am waiting, but only for so long. There are other hotels in town, 2 very close. I arrived here from Kham Duc at lunchtime so I am also hungry.

There is probably less to Kham Duc than meets the eye. Certainly when I arrived there last night I was underwhelmed. Mind you I had spent an extremely frustrating morning trying to find road 14B. When I finally did I only had some 2km and I was onto the Ho Chi Minh Hwy. It had been a very unpleasant experience because the whole saga unfurled while it was pissing down rain by the bucket load. I know I should be phlegmatic, I know I should be patient, that it is only the weather and I have no control over this but it depressed the hell out of me. If I could have pressed a button and zap I would be back in Ha Noi I would have. Once back on Uncle Ho's road things got markedly better, number one the road surface. Potholes dissapeared and the countryside began to open up. The rain remained but took on a less dominant force. I began to relax and enjoy the ride damp tho it was. As I got closer to Kham Duc the road became more of a mountain thing. I was still in the valleys but the surrounding hills had become mountains and they were covered in green. You come thundering into Kham Duc and are immediately aware you are in a bigger town. I motored the main street and identified 3 "guest houses". I picked the biggest of the 3 and booked in. Conditions were par with the tariff 150,000 dong/night. I walked down the street shrouded in my poncho to the biggest resteraunt a small town can have. Upstairs there seemed to be some kind of Kareoke club. Or the live band had a series of very bad singers. Either could have been the case. I ordered some spring rolls and some sauted/caramelised pork with steamed rice. It was ordinary, but it was Food. The food was quite dry so it took me some time to consume it. Job done I retruned to my room to listen to the rain and the television.

In the morning there was a power failure and the town went lightless. It also meant that there was no fuel to be had either. I decided Kham Duc was a lame duck for me and left as quickly as I could. After about one and a half hours of snaking round slippery roads the clouds parted and the sun shone through. The coungryside became a picture again with huge rolling hills and long valleys. You certainly got the feeling that you were in the Central Highlands. Villages got really pretty. Houses changed from concrete blocks to lovely slabsided wooden structures some adobeised with mud. The whole thing raised my spirits greatly. Then I started to see these dramatic meeting houses of the ethnic minority up here. They just appeared without warning on the side of the road or just above on a hill. A very very steep roof A-frame style sat on poles so the floor is about 2 meters above the ground. The roof is thatched, some kind of rice straw I imagine. Fabulous. There were also some oval shaped "houses" again thatched with straw.

Before I expected it I had arrived in Pleican or should I say Ngoc Hai. The first thing that indicates this is an administrative park made up of huge empty government buildings. I knew they were government buildings because of thier colours, the number of flags flying and the complete and total absence of people anywhere. I did a drive around this avenue that obviously played a big part in the official opening and then moving on into town and reality.

I am in my room now finishing off the blog. The power has just died again, bugger!  I'm going for a walk to check the town out. Next post should come from Laos, from the town of Attepeu. I'm headed there tomorrow. Cheers Campers.