Dry season

Back in Vientiane, and it's hot. It actually rained several times, in the south and when I arrived here in the capital, but it's still hot and dusty. Besides that, not much news. The last week in Laos I'm going to spend in the north, it's cooler there, and it will be quite different from the flat south...
I got two rolls of film devellopped. and the result is quite disappointing. First, and that was clear, with this camera there are no wonders to be achieved. Second, because during develloppment they more or less messed up the films, they are full of dust grains and fuzz. I have the results on CD and I might mount them on some internet page if I find a computer where to do it (internet cafes are a little too expensive for that, as it would take me a long time, first the selection, then...). In the worst case I would do it back home, treat the pictures with Photoshop and get them on a website afterwords... then at least it would be a decent selection...

The special bus

From the "4000 Islands" I had returned to Pakse, a small town in southern Laos. To get back to Vientiane, I chose to take a night bus. Without really knowing what it meant, I booked a "sleeper"... supposedly with beds, and I was curious what this would mean...
When I came to the terminal, I could see the bus already: indeed, it was equipped with beds, fantastic... Then we could enter the bus, and I began to get a strange feeling. I wondered about the stack of alarm-red plastic bags close to the door, but maybe they didn't mean anything. In the bus there were not many choices of what to do: everyone had to lie down immediately. There were upper and lower bunks, but not only one at either side... it was 'window' and 'aisle'. Mine was 'window' and 'upstairs'... the width of the bunks on either side was about 40 or at the most 50 cms, per person. I felt somehow glad about not being to tall and not being equipped with too many kilograms. I was even more happy when the guy who joined me had about the same size...
It seemed that many people took this bus the first time: most of them were looking around with a mixture of confusion, disbelief and - in the end - resignation. We jumped into our beds. The ones on the upper beds could enjoy the loudspeakers, being about 30 or 40 cms above their heads, and the Thai karaoke music that came blaring out of them... fortunately only for about one and a half hours. A stewardess was walking through the bus, handing bottles of water to everyone, but apparently no one opened them... one problem was the simple fact that what gets in, must come out, and this would have meant some trouble, especially for the ones with 'window beds'... the other problem was, that drinking while lying down would have been somehow "uncomfortable", let's call it that way...

So we were swinging through the night... the main roads in Laos are fairly good, fortunately... The entire trip back to Vientiane took about 9 hours, and I was glad when it was over. It wasn't altogether bad or terrible, but spending the whole time lying down, with practically no space to move, isn't too comfortable. And this is saying someone with the body size you all know... anyone larger or heavier must feel tortured after some hours on those buses. I don't know if some of the readers of this post will end up in Laos in the future... be warned! Don't say later that you didn't know...

"Sabaidee"

I wrote in the post about Si Phan Don, that people on Don Khone were greeting me all the time. This wasn't actually something unusual. Wherever you are in Laos, there's always someone smiling at you and greeting you. "Sabaidee" means hello, welcome, and it could be this country's second name. It's simply marvellous, unlike any other country I've been to so far...
It's almost impossible being in a bad mood here. The country's slow pace, the absence of traffic, noise, aggression of any kind, and above all the Laotians themselves... If someone needs a time-out or to recover from whatever, doctor Micha recommends you one month Laos: it's the perfect cure from any kind of hardship or stress...

Si Phan Don

In southern Laos, close to the border to Cambodia, you can find a unique landscape during some time of the year. When the water level falls back in the dry season, thousands of small islands rise from the river, giving the area the name Si Phan Don, "Four Thousand Islands". The biggest island is Don Khone, a peaceful and quiet place, two smaller ones are Don Det and Don Kon.

As Don Det is, at least in the high season, getting overrun by tourists, I decided to spend Pi Mai Lao, the Buddhist New Year celebrations in Laos, on Don Khone. It was more than what I expected: not only quiet, but practically "dead". I felt sort of lonesome...
As I had set over to Don Khone around noon, I had plenty of time for the rest of the day. I rented a bicycle and cycled around the island, a 32 km-trip on a quite good road with almost no traffic. It was nice, too hot, of course, but interesting. I was passing all kinds of villages, smaller forests, dry land, and even some rice paddies, where people were harvesting right now (dry season!) thanks to irrigation systems. As everywhere in Laos, nearly everyone was greeting me... there really don't seem to be too many tourists here...

In the evening I had to take a decision. Other three days were waiting ahead of my, before the festivities would be over. So I thought it would be the best to go where at least a few people would be. The problem was very easy: I've been to very remote places in Latin America, but there I could talk to the locals, as I spoke their language... I just didn't want to shut up for the next three days.
Next morning I waited at the ferry landing, where the longboats would cross the river. Suddenly a German girl showed up, she was sort of lost here and wanted to go to Don Det. Just perfect... One of the locals brought us in his longboat directly to the landing point on Don Det. It was much easier and only slightly more expensive then the regular crossing, taking then a bus to the next ferry point some 20 kms south, then taking another boat... and it was definitely much more spectacular: the whole ride took one and a half hours, we were passing through hundreds of small and smallest islets, sometimes only rocks, sometimes overgrown by bushes... this trip alone made it already worth coming down here...

About Don Det there's not much to say: it's a backpackers hangout, in a few years it will probably be a light version of Bangkok's Khao San Road. There are plenty of small bungalows to rent, most with a veranda overlooking the Mekong, equipped with a hammock to laze the hottest hours away. The rest of the time one can swim in the Mekong, hang around with other folks or walk about the island... it's a very small place, it took me only one hour to walk all around.
South of Don Det is Don Kon, one can get there by ferry or just walking over an old railway bridge between the two islands, built by the French in colonial days... Don Kon is supposedly quieter and has some nice waterfalls... but as it was really hot these days, and as I have seen plenty of waterfalls in my life, I committed myself to staying on Don Det. Besides, also here it was quiet, not too many people, most spend the New Year festivities probably in bigger cities...
I had ended up in a guesthouse with only five straw-thatched bungalows, overlooking the Mekong towards sunset... but as every afternoon clouds turned up, we had to live without sunset...
Anyway, I did what I described earlier: lying in the hammock, reading, swimming in the Mekong, or just sitting on the veranda of our guest house's "restaurant"... and as the other folks who occupied the bungalows, were from Switzerland, Austria and Germany, there was definitely no language problems...