Phonsavan

As I thought to need some better photos for the story about UXO, I had decided to make another stopover in Phonsavan. The last time the end of my visa simply forced me to leave, although I only would have needed two or three days more. In Vang Vieng I had teamed up with David, an Englishman living in Singapor. Quite interesting to learn about this part of the world. I actually met a lot of people living in Singapor, and they all had different backgrounds and roots, Chinese, Malaian, Indonesian, European... and this all makes me wish to visit this city one day...
The two days in Phonsavan were little spectacular, but worth the detour. I managed to meet again some of "my English-students"... As they were on vacation, they agreed to guide us through some H'mong-villages. Tommy and Duong themselves are H'mong, so the communication with the villagers was no problem, although the main part consisted in asking permission to enter their yards to take some photos of war scrap, used as fences, flower pots, and more...
One evening we went to the English-school (it's a private school, so no vacations), they all were surprised and happy to see me again...
Although I was not completely satisfied with the scope of photos I could take, I decided to leave after two days. Several reasons, one of them that the clock was running faster and faster and the date of my return flight getting closer and closer...

Vang Vieng

I made a one-day stopover in Vientiane, because I wanted to buy a book or two. Here also it was mainly hot and the city made a "dead" impression. Not many people were on the streets, a few times the wind was blowing clouds of dust around. In the evening I ended up again in these two blocks which are in my opinion the most "authentic" in Vientiane's center, Chao Anou Road and the night market. After a dreary and sweaty day I liked the city again...

Early sunday morning (10\07) I took a bus to Vang Vieng. I didn't hear a lot of positive things about a part of this town, but more so concerning the landscape. Both turned out to be true. Vang Vieng lies at the bank of a river and is surrounded by magnificent limestone mountains with many caves, which are easily accessible. You can do some hiking there, climbing, rafting, and more. This turned Vang Viengs center (it's a very small town) in the course of the years into an endless row of guest houses, restaurants and the usual "travel agencies", who all offer exactly the same. It's like a light version of Bangkoks Khao San Road. Fortunately there are some guest houses on the other side of the river. In one of them I got my own little bungalow, next to a creek, and from its small veranda views over fields and some mountains. It was one of the best places I ever stayed on this journey. Butterflies everywhere, birds, lizards, one or the other mean looking spider, and besides that almost complete silence... I could have stayed there one week without problems, but as I mentioned in another post, the expiry date of this journey is getting closer...
This ambience did of course not incite to move around a lot, more so as the weather remained hot. Yet I managed to climb into a cave and to "explore" the surrounding area on bicycle. One afternoon a gorgeous rainstorm swept over the valley, I sat on the veranda and enjoyed the force of nature. There was only one flaw: it didn't really make the temperatures descend...

Air Con

I took the night bus from Pakse to Vientiane, because my time is running out slowly but steady. Again a not so nice surprise: the air condition was turned up so incredibly high, that means the temperatur so incredibly low, that everyone was freezing. It must have been something like 18 degrees inside the bus, maybe even less. Outside 33, 35... In central and northern Europe fogging of the inside of windows is a common phenomenon: cold outside, warm inside, in a car, for example. Here it was the other way around: the windows were partly fogged on the outside... I've never seen that before, and hopefully it will be the last time in my life...
I know that in hot countries cool temperatures are something desirable and often a luxury, the same as warm temperatures for northern Europeans. But I never understand the attitude of turning down the temperatures to such an extent that it makes people feel uncomfortable or even get sick. Maybe I don't have to understand it... In Spain this brainless behaviour is more normality than exeption, and I just hate it. Apparently it's a universal behaviour...

Real heat

It's at the edge between dry and rainy season, but the rains are not very frequent at the moment. That means that all still have to suffer, because it is still hot. In Cambodia it was sometimes almost unbearable around noon. In Champasak the temperature reached some 42, 43 degrees during the day, I don't even want to know it exactly, together with a very high humidity. At 9 o'clock in the morning the sun is already burning relentlessly, and some hours later there's not much one can do than to wait for the "cooler" afternoon hours to arrive. Hardly anybody can be seen on the street, the fields are deserted, everyone is looking for shadow... even at 4 o'clock in the afternoon it requires some efforts to start moving again...
The nights are also very warm, I don't manage to sleep well for quite a long time now, and I feel like it, being somehow tired almost constantly. That's not what I really was looking for when I went on this journey, but I can't change it... I must admit that I simply didn't expect it to be that hot... next time I'll know...

Champasak

Back in Laos... finally...
The journey from Stung Treng was as uncomplicated as it could be. We just had to hop on a minibus which brought us to the border. On the other side another bus waited to pick us up. The border is in the middle of nowhere. A few shacks where the passport controls are carried out, and some more shacks and houses where the people, who work there, live and probably are bored, because it's really the middle of nowhere...

I then stayed two days in Champasak, a very small town in southern Laos, on the western side of the Mekong. It's described as a "lazy one-street town", and that's what it basically is... a scenic ferry crossing, and then houses lined up several kilometers along the only street. Close to Champasak is Wat Phu, some Khmer ruins, they are the reason why most people make a short stopover here. The ruins are quite nice, on a hill overlooking the region, and the view is truly fantastic. I have to add that the Champasak region has been declared a "world heritage site", and this not only because of Wat Phu.
The best thing one can do is to rent a bicycle (almost all guesthouses offer it) and take off into the countryside. There are a lot of water canals and along these canals some fairly decent dirt tracks, where one can drive on bicycles for endless kilometers, at least in the dry season. Now, after the first rainfalls, the fields were full of people working there. The rice already had been or just was being planted, and many paddies shone in this very special green which only rice plants have to offer. I went out there either early in the morning or late afternoon, because the rest of the day it was incredibly hot. Especially the afternoon sun made the fields appear in such a stunning and beautiful light that it is almost impossible to describe.
It was one of the most scenic regions I came through on this journey, one of the true highlights. Nothing spectacular, but of a quiet and intense beauty. Most people miss this, because they just visit the ruins and then leave again.
Fortunately I also ended up in a great guest house, with a terrace overlooking the Mekong. I really enjoyed being out there early in the morning, "listening" to the silence, watching a few fishermen on their tiny boats. The same in the evening... it's hard to imagine this silence, but as I explained, one has to cross the Mekong to get here, and after nightfall there is nothing which could be called "traffic"... it's human voices, birds, cidadas and nothing else...