Pakse - Southern Laos

My first day in Pakse, Laos. When I first arrived here yesterday evening, I walked around the tour agencies but to go anywhere or see anything of the area, it was an expensive business. I found out why Laos is not for the budget traveller. But there are always ways around and always local transport. So walking around I asked the various motorbikes and other forms of transport on three wheels if how much it would cost me to get to the nearby towns and the ruins of Wat Phou, an old monastery ruins. Luckily I found a guy who was ready to take me for $10, a bargain and so I decided to go with him. The next morning was an early rise and at 6:00am I was waiting outside the Great Wall hotel where I was staying. By the way for $3 I have a beautifully clean and spacious room at the very top with a huge balcony overlooking the whole of Pakxe. It's an absolute bargain, especially when the other hotels start at $12. Did I not already mention that everything in South East Asia works in dollars. Even though the currency is plummiting, here it is as strong as it ever was.
Anyway, so my guy was late turning up and so I made a deal with another motorbike driver and as we set off the guy from yesterday turned up, following us and chastising him for nicking his day's owrk. Anyway, I swopped back to my original driver, he rode the motorbike and I sat in the umbrella seat that was attatched to it. But he asked if I'd rather sit on the motorbike as a passenger and we could get rid of the umbrella seat and I was all YES. So on our way to the village of Champasak and War Phou we made a detour and stopped at his friends house. A local house on stilts, built in the middle of a forest clearing> I wasn't going to get these experiences sitting on a tour bus. And as the driver and his friends set about detatching the umbrella seat from the motorbike, I sat and watched the daily life. The grandfather and grandmother sat with the daughter-in-law and the grandchildren on the verandah watching from high up, all the excitement of a foreigner being in their compound. It was very early in teh morning. The kids were getting ready for school, sitting with mum eating their sticky rice for breakfast. The teenager who wasn't going to go to school till the afternoon, sat on a bed on under the shade of the house carving himself a spit bullet gun out of wood. And teh grandmother chewing bettle nut. It seems like a lazy life, but I guess the hard work comes when it's time to sow or harvest and not much to do in between.
So leaving the umbrella seat behind, we went on the motorbike, not a moped or anything like that, it was a proper motorbike, on our way to Champasak. It was just the best way to travel. As we got to the river we had to cross over and to do this the locals have built ferries for teh motorbikes. Two wooden canoes, joined together by a platform made of wooden planks and at the end of one of the canoes, a small motor to whizz us across. The same sort of system works for the big ferries that transport cars and buses across too, except instead of two canoes, they join together three.
On the other side we came to the small village of Champasak. Very quaint and very rural at the same time. Bufallos cooling off in water pools, children studying in open air classrooms (schools are just big huts with partitions and holes for windows and doors. beautiful Khmer houses, with ornately carved banisters and people, mostly women again, walking around with their vietnamese cone hats and their tools on their way for some hard work at the rice paddies. The ruins of Wat Phou, after having been to Angkor were just a big disappointment, but nothing is ever that disppointing. I sat down and talked to the local women there, using gestures and drawings of course, and they showed me how they made their banana leaf and flower decorations that they use in their prayers. And then I got blessed by one of the old women with some orange thread around my wrist. Why is orange such a symbolic colour?
And since the day was still young, I decided that we could go to the village of Ban Pha Pho. I had read somewhere that this was where they had working elephants and the ethnic Suay group of people. The driver had never been there before either and so thinking that it was just a few more kilometers away, he agreed to take me there. But we rode and rode and soon the tarmac road turned off onto narrow, jungle dirt trek and we kept going and going. I loved every second of it. It had rained heavily the day before so the dirt track in places had just turned to huge puddles of water, the small hills going up and down were covered in mud and in other places the trek was so narrow that we couldn't help but brush into all the flora and fauna. It was two hours and a water stop at one of the local forest dwellings before we got to Ban Pha Pho. The driver was exhausted, especially since we had been riding in the midday heat. I was exhausted but at the same time absolutely thrilled to have had the ride. The village itself was beautiful, set in the middle of a forest. Buy there were no elephants around and certainly the people did not look any different to the people in Pakse. We were directed to the elephant school where I was told that the war and the bombing had pushed the Suay further into the forest near to the border with Cambodia. The elephants....there used to be 90 of them.....loads for such a small village....but once again with the bombing, there were only 10 left now and they were in the forest. For a small fee, I could go trek and see them, and even though I was hot and tired and completely exhausted, I had come to see elephants and I was not about to leave without seeing them. So one of the trainers/keepers took me into the forest and there were two majestic looking beasts. The elephants were deep in the forest and got a little nervous as we entered their territoty. We could only stay for a short while without disturbing them too much and the leeches were getting to me anyway. So I had seen my elephants, not the way I had pictured in my head, walking around the village carrying wood, but instead in the forest.
After a lunch of sticky rice and vegetables, it was time to make our way back and this time we know the road, if I can call it that, that awaited us. Before we got to Pakxe, we had to pick up the umbrella seat and this time it was the end of the day. All the neighbours had come around for an end of the day gossip and to see what all the excitement was in the compound. The kids were all playing, boys football and the girls jumping rope, literally. Two of them would hold a string stretched out and the the others would jump over it to get to the other side. the string got higher and higher and the acrobati abilities of the girls more amazing, especially since they were jumping with bare feet on a dirt floor. With the umbrella seat back on, I was glad for a proper seat, having ridden on the motorbike from 7 in the morning till 6 in the evening meant that my ass was a little sore:) Not that I am complaining, every second of it was thrilling. Back to Pakxe and all I could think of was a shower and my bed.
Next day was going to be another early start. I had to be up before 6:00 am because that is when all the monks leave the monasteries to go and collect their alms from the local people. Dressed in their orange robes, with their vessels they walk in a line along the streets collecting stick rice and other food and blessing the locals. I walked along the street and found a group of women waiting with tehir baskets of sticky rice and water and a white scarf around their shoulders. I asked if I could wait with them and take a few photos and they were more than happy for me to sit with them. A minute or two later along the horizon we saw appear a line of orange, the women picked up their baskets and went to kneel along the roadside, and tehy asked me to join them. So I did and as one by one the monks walked past opening the lid of their vessels, I put a handful of sticky rice in it. Religious or not it was a very nice way to start the morning. I could take a few photos but at that moment I guess that wasn't so important. And then I spent the rest of the day just walking around town and taking it easy, catching up on my journal and getting ready to take the bus the next morning to the capital of Vientiane.
But this morning, I found out that I did not check my ticket properly and my bus left last night. So I have had to pay for another one and just hang around here a bit more. It's okay I guess, I would easily spend 7 quid on a few drinks back home and this way I get to catch up on my blog.