South Laos

While enjoying the magnificent views along the jungle-covered shores of the river, my fingers could feel the water outside of the small wooden boat. There was only six centimetres between the water and the side, but this did not refrain the sailor from steering its unstable vessel uncomfortably fast past sharp rocks or trough shallow waters and challenging rapids. Carrying equipment worth the Lao GDP per capita with me, did not help feeling at ease either.

But we made it, dry, alive and kicking.

This boat trip and the jungle trekking afterwards were one of the highlights of the tour we booked in Pakse to discover South-Laos, and it was truly amazing.

We saw tea and coffee plantations, swam in waterfalls, slept in a village, kayaked the Mekong and ended with a lazy afternoon, getting acquainted with our hammocks and sipping drinks while enjoying a beautiful sunset on the balcony of our riverside bungalow...

The first day mainly consisted of sitting in the car and visiting the plantations and some waterfalls. The Bolaven plateau is known for its coffee beans, which are counted among the best and most expensive in the world.
At night we stumbled upon a birthday party, where we taught the locals some moves, as their dancing only consists of standing on the dance floor, feet glued to the floor and moving their hands a bit. Next year you will be able to see all of them putting their finger on their head while turning around, and maybe (God forbid) a slight move with the hips. It was fun! We were not too keen however about their drinking culture, as they use only one cup per table for drinking beer, which is past around and drunk ad fundum. It is nice to see, of course, ut also beneficial to spreading all kinds of germs.

Apart from sitting in the car, we also did quite a heavy jungle hike, as the water level was too low for the boats to drop us of far enough, and we had to find our way through the thick jungle.
I had a romantic view of jungle trekking, which was partly eradicated by reality. It is not just about cutting your way through lush green plants while keeping an eye for big, dangerous tigers and snakes. In fact you have to crawl past climbing plants and bushes, which ALL have the most sharpest and biggest thorns you can imagine, while keeping an eye for thousands of ants in varying sizes and painfulness of their bites. The organization of the tour was just plain bad, and no one told us about it, resulting in scratches and oodles of mosquito bites, as we conquered the jungle in shorts, sandals and spaghetti-strapped tops (only Eline!!!). Eline counted 140 bites on her the last day. We got lost a few times, and our animo dropped to lower levels. But the waterfall we saw after 1.5 hours of walking was totally worth it! It was the most impressive we had ever seen! See the pictures when online (will take a while).

Afterwards we stayed in a home stay, which was a bit disappointing. It wasn't that authentic, and our guide was not that good either. Eline also got immensely sick from the food they made themselves. (among which fish soup with heads in it...)

On our way down to Don Det, an island on the Mekong river, we also did a short elephant trekking to a hill top where we had a great view.
At dawn, we finally arrived at Don Det, only to find out there is no hot water to be found anywhere. We persisted, encouraged by the knowledge that cold showers help keeping breasts from giving in to gravity.
The last day we went kayaking on the Mekong, which was also quite an effort. We saw some more great waterfalls (from the shore!!!), but unfortunately, not a single irrawady dolphin. In the afternoon, we just chilled out in our hammocks, reading a book, enjoying a beer, and watching the beautiful sunset.
At night, we went to our favourite restaurant, ran by a Belgian. Unfortunately, the bastard had just sold the last portions of his Stoofvlees we ordered the night before to others. Damn you West-Flemish emigrant!!!

We left Laos the day after, starting a 36 hour living hell past rocky roads, bad busses, suspicious looking tourguides, ferry boats out of control and the more. We'll keep that one for the next post.

See you soon!