Pakse and 4000 Islands

It was fortunate for us that we had come to really understand the nature of life and travel in Laos because otherwise, our day of travel from Konglor village to Pakse would really have felt hellish.

We knew it was pushing it a bit, to say the least, to visit the amazing Konglor cave in the morning, then leave quickly thereafter to make our way south to Pakse, a journey that even if you believed the listed times would see us barely arrive before the calendar day flipped over. But we had counted up our remaining days in SE Asia and wanted to hoard precious time for adventures in Cambodia. So off we went…

First mode of transport was truck taxi from Konglor village to a larger village with our traveling companions - a really friendly couple from Spain and their two amazing kids. For half of this ride, Ben was standing on the rear platform of the truck, hanging on to the steel bars as the vehicle bounced around on country roads, villagers jumping on and off along the way. Really fun and great natural air conditioning! We hopped off this truck at its final stop and jumped on another one that was heading to Tha Kaek. Tha Kaek is the only town of any size in the area and conveniently located on the main highway used by the public busses that troll up and down this stretch of the country. Before leaving, Ben haggled for a bag of sticky rice and some strips of beef jerky dangling from thin pieces of bamboo like a meat-mobile. Delicious! We’re pretty sure it was beef, although none of the local dogs would look us in the eye…

Now, in Laos, it’s possible to flag down a bus in virtually any circumstance imaginable, whether a public bus or a cushy looking VIP bus. And it just so happened that as our truck rounded the bend onto the main highway that a public bus was stopped and loading on passengers. After shouting a few words at our driver he pulled over and waited as we went to check out the price, destination and state of the bus. The first two items met our criteria, however the last was clearly below expectations as all the seats were filled and people were sitting up the central aisle on tiny plastic stools. After chuckling at this scene, we hopped back on our trusty truck and continued at a slow pace down the road.

About an hour later as Ben was engaged in a fierce competition of Crazy Eights that he had taught the kids, a beautiful shiny bus came roaring up from behind with the door man waving frantically in our direction. Assuming that he wanted to pass us, it was only after the bus pulled ahead that we realized it had a card in the window with the destination, PAKSE, in big bold letters. Crap! This guy was definitely trying to ask us if we wanted a ride and we missed our big chance for a comfy ride to Pakse that surely would have arrived several hours before we bumbled our way into town.

No use dwelling on what could have been. We did make it to Tha Kaek after many card games and we did get on a public bus for Pakse that was leaving right away. This ride was quite the experience. The bus itself looked pretty mean from the outside with its two flaming skull stickers on the front and random junk strapped to the top. We made uncountable stops along the way seemingly whenever anyone needed to answer the call of nature, got a bit hungry, wanted to stretch their legs, needed to deliver a parcel, wanted to say hello to friends, and every other reason under the sun. We took these stops in stride and wandered around outside of the bus with the locals, sometimes haggling for street food and stretching our legs. We finally arrived in Pakse at 1am and after a long and melodramatic bargaining session with a tuk-tuk driver involving many instances of us walking away indignant with arms held high in the air, we got a ride to a hostel and stumbled gratefully into bed. Haggling is important (and kind of fun) at any time of day!

We awoke the next day to discover that our hostel, Sabaidy 2 Guesthouse, was actually quite nice and had a great breakfast. The effort of the previous day was worth it! Our two main reasons for staying in Pakse were first, because it was as far as we could get in a day and still make it to a bed, and second, because the Xplore Asia company was in town and they specialized in adventure tours in southern Laos and northern Cambodia. We were impressed after meeting with them when they recommended that we wait until reaching Cambodia, where conditions were much better, to realize our kayaking dreams. Armed with this info, we decided to spend one day in town and buy a ticket to the 4000 Islands, in southern Laos, departing the following day.

This gave us one day to give Pakse a try. Since we really weren’t too interested in package tours to temples or river boat rides and we were tired, hot and sweaty, we decided that a pool day was in order. There were two hotels in town with a pool and our first stop was a serious luxury palace, whose front desk staff assured us, after appraising the two sweaty travelers in front of them, that their pool was closed for renovations. No matter, we moved along to option two deeper into the “real” Pakse and were treated to a nice look at life in this city. Certainly we were the only travelers in this area of town and we received a lot of curious stares. This next hotel was a dream as the pool was outside right by the river and there were no staff around to impress. We jumped in gleefully and splashed and lounged the afternoon away.

On our way back through town we had noticed some fun looking restaurants perched along the banks of the river and chose one that looked reasonably popular. We really got lucky with our choice as after starting in to our food and refreshing Beer Lao, an acoustic guitar performance began. Up until that point the music we had heard in Laos was truly terrible, like pots being banged randomly together over a techno beat and high pitched vocals. But the musicians on stage this evening were really good and you could have imagined hearing songs by artists like Bob Dylan and Credence Clearwater Revival. Our neighbours even struck up a friendly conversation with us, which led to Ben receiving an email from his new best buddy in Laos “Lord Zone”. Despite the unique name, we’re not sure that this friendship has a long term future…

All in all we had a great time in Pakse doing none of the usual things people do there. It was refreshing and another great lesson learned regarding the road less traveled. We happily boarded our minivan the next morning for the 4000 Islands, a string of little islands where the Mekong broadens in its southern approach to Cambodia. We decided again on only a one day stop to break up our journey and to spend some time checking out the area and more importantly, the hammocks. One of the ladies in our minivan actually worked at one of the small bungalow operations on the island of Don Det where we were heading and so we were inexorably pulled toward their accommodations at Paradise Bungalows. Paradise came cheap at about $4 per night and the hammock was as good as advertised, with a view overlooking the Mekong River.

After some relaxing, we set off on a walk with the lure of a waterfall at the end of the road. Since we had left this escapade a bit late in the day, the huge and threatening thunder clouds stopped our advance before the final destination. However, it was definitely fun to get a glimpse of rural life on the island.

The Don Det experience itself is actually quite touristy. When you arrive at the island’s harbour there are literally bungalows along both sides of the shore for more than a kilometre and the small harbour town is littered with restaurants mostly blasting Bob Marley and one winning the noise competition with its non-stop movies. It was fun to relax for a day in the hammocks and go into town for dinner that night for a chat with other travelers, but we had no regrets about moving on the next day and crossing the border into Cambodia.

We made it through the border that next morning, after the expected hassling and bribing, and were dropped off in Stung Treng, a place where only two other people jumped off the bus with us. We smiled, once again enjoying the great feeling of a fresh start in a little visited part of the world!