First, we flew from Luang Prabang to Pakse on Monday morning.
relief after having survived our flight in the teeny, tiny airplane
Then we booked a couple of day trips in the area. On Tuesday we visited the Bolaven Plateau. We and 3 fellow travelers had a great guide who spent all day with us teaching us about local life. We saw a tea plantation, a coffee plantation, 3 waterfalls, a local market, a local elementary school and a couple of villages. Although the trip was fascinating, it was also quite sad. People live in incredible poverty here. The environment is quite dirty with lots of trash and the constant rain and, hence, mud turns everything into a dirty mess. What I liked most about this trip were the few minutes that we were able to talk to some local women through our guide. They wanted to know how old we were, whether we were married, if men have to pay for the honor of marrying women, and whether we have such white skins because we have clean water to shower with. One young woman was breastfeeding her 6-month-old baby while smoking from what can only be described as a huge homemade bamboo bong.
a muddy Bolaven Plateau
a misty Bolaven Plateau
On Wednesday we took a boat to Champasak to see Laos' second UNESCO World Heritage site (after the city center of Luang Prabang): the Khmer-era ruins of Wat Phu Champasak. These ruins are situated a little outside of Champasak in a green valley. The Wat Phu itself is on a hill and from this hill you have a beautiful view over the valley and Champasak all the way to the Mekong river. The ruins are covered in green moss as if nature has reclaimed some territory. The Wat Phu is said to have been a blueprint for Angkor Wat, but what makes What Phu special is its intricate water network. It was a beautiful sight and I'm glad that we took the trouble to visit it. Another special thing about that day was the fact that we were both able to wear our jeans because it's been decidedly cooler around Pakse than it was in Luang Prabang.
rain, also, at Wat Phu Champasak
I loved this beautiful, 'organic', staircase at Wat Phu Champasak
On Thursday, then, we took a bus to Si Phan Don, also known as Four Thousand Islands. Si Phan Don is a collection of islands in the Mekong river in southern Laos. It is said to be one of the most beautiful places in Laos - red-earthed islands with green rice fields and surrounded by turquoise waters. I should've known that it was too good to be true, because this is the kind of weather that we experienced while there:
Now, a word on the rainy season. I'd like to think that I'm quite smart. I know that it's the rainy season and that the Mekong has been brown ever since I first saw it. But one always hopes that, for some inexplicable reason, just as one is arriving somewhere, the weather is suddenly beautiful. This belief is not completely fueled by naivité - we did have nothing but sunshine in Luang Prabang, after all, rainy season or not. But, alas, we had no such luck in Si Phan Don.
When we arrived on Thursday we heard from our proprietor at the River Garden Guesthouse that there had just been a flood and that we were the first tourists in days. We tried to walk downtown to find an internet café on the island that we were staying at, Don Det, but it took us hours to dredge through the mud. It was almost exactly the same situation as at the waterfalls of Tat Kuang Si, except that I wasn't in the mood. The worst part was walking back, in pitch darkness by now (no streetlights on idyllic islands), with a thunderstorm overhead. I was ready to leave the place and so we arranged to leave a day earlier than planned.
On Friday we rented a bike to explore Don Khon, another island connected to Don Det by bridge. There was no rain while we biked through green rice paddies to a deserted beach where we finally enjoyed a couple of sun-kissed moments: playing with some local children, bathing a water buffalo, and swimming in the Mekong river.
You can't tell from this picture, but I'm getting seriously burned here!
I offered one of these girls (who kept following me and staring and smiling at me) a couple of chips from our bag. She pressed her palms together at her chest, made a deep bow, and then quickly snatched the entire bag from my hands and ran away to her friends, with whom she shared the contents. It was magical!
This grateful water buffalo actually turned onto her other side, as if to say: "Now this side, please!" Naturally, I happily obliged. I can never keep myself away from animals, no matter what my mind and common sense say is best.
swimming with clothes on in the Mekong river
If I had to say anything final about Si Phan Don, it would be: Go, but go in the dry season. Going in the rainy season is like going to coastal Spain in the winter - empty, abandoned and quite depressing. The whole point of going to a place like this is to enjoy the weather and the natural surroundings - something that is very hard to do when it is almost always raining and there is nothing else to do but read at your guesthouse. All of Laos (heck! all of South East Asia!) is probably best appreciated in fine weather, but even when the weather is horrible, you can still see the potential that it has - you can still see what a beautiful country it is. Or maybe it just all depends on how many umbrellas and ponchos you're willing to drag along. All I can say is that I loved Laos and that I love South East Asia, but that it is quite hard to travel during the rainy season. I could do with some sandy beaches and blue seas by now!
And now we are in Cambodia. We arrived here yesterday by bus. Kratie is a small town on the Mekong river that offers delectable vegetarian noodles but not much else, it seems. The weather is sunny again, though (but perhaps I should mention that I think I hear a thunderstorm coming as we speak). We decided to make a stop here on our way to Siem Reap for 2 reasons: to see the endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins, also known as Mekong river dolphins, and to participate in the Mekong Discovery Trail.
We were unable to charter a boat on Don Khon in Si Phan Don to see Irrawaddy dolphins, so today we got up at 6 AM for the sixth day in a row to travel to Kampi, from where we took a beautiful boat ride over the Mekong river and saw, up close, Mekong river dolphins.
spotting Irrawaddy dolphins in Kampi
Tomorrow we want to take a ferry to the island of Koh Trong. There we want to hire bikes in order to bike 9 kilometers of the Mekong Discovery Trail. The trail actually encompasses 190 kilometers of walking and cycling trails linking Kratie with Stung Treng in northern Cambodia and with the Lao border, but such endeavors leave no room for noodle eating. 9 kilometers it is then.
And then on Tuesday we're off to our next stop: the temples of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap!
Jochem has been having some troubles uploading new pictures into our picture gallery, but keeps trying and seems determined to make it work, so keep checking out our pictures here!
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