Stung Treng- Cambodia

From 4000 Islands we caught a minivan to the Cambodian border. The road was unsealed with enormous potholes. A local told us later that the 7 or so kilometres between Laos and Cambodia is in dispute - both countries claim different parts of it and cannot agree who owns what. The Chinese Government offered to pay to seal the road while the countries decided who owned what but neither country wanted that, so it remains unsealed. It is possible now to get a visa at this border and there was a new immigration office under construction. Our guide book says that an airline company pays the local government not to improve the road so people will use the airline between the two countries!

At the border crossing we met a backpacker from Nepal- the first Nepalese backpacker we have ever met! He studied in Bombay and had been travelling for 5 years and had visited 54 countries. His parents had property in Pokhara, Nepal that they had left to him and he wanted to be penniless by the end of the year!





We spent a night at a cheap ($2us) and basic guesthouse in Stung Treng. It is on the banks of the river and a bridge built by the Chinese is a few kilometres outside the town and due to be opened at the end of the year. We had to cross on a diesel-fume filled crowded ferry enveloped in blue tarpaulin to keep the rain out!





Cambodia is noticeably poorer than Laos but the people seem so happy especially compared with the Thais!



We met a young man (Tear) who teaches in the north of Cambodia and if we have time and the wet season doesn't stop us we would like to visit him later. His English was very good and he stopped tourists whenever he saw them so he could chat and improve his language skills. He said his salary from the government was not enough and he had to get some money from his parents at times. He wanted to do more study so he could do some kind of management work and earn more but was having difficulties getting enough money to do that!



Tear at his sister's stall with the porters who are drinking medicine after a hard day's work- rice whisky and bark!

We met his sister who had a stall on the side of the street and she served food and drinks to the porters who carried goods from the boats. He said it was a good business for her and her husband worked across the street repairing boat engines. They both worked from 6am to 10pm 7 days a week. Her mother looked after their child during the day.
Weighing a pig on the street to sell at the market! You can imagine the noise!

4ooo Islands, Don Khong, Laos

From Pakse we caught an air-conditioned minivan (full of backpackers) to The Mekong Delta area. We caught a local longboat ferry to the largest island in the delta called Don Khong. It rained everyday and we stayed in a lovely old wooden guest house with a small garden full of beautiful butterflies. It was so peaceful and it was a good place to read and chat with other travellers.

We got a boat around the island and visited the smaller island of Don Det. We saw weaver bird nests hanging from the trees and a floating bamboo petrol pump. Life on the islands is the same as on the mainland and the locals grow rice and fish.

There are enormous rapids between the two islands so the French colonists built a railway bridge and very short line so goods could be transported between the two islands. Today there is not much left of this.

The locals have built fish traps in the rapids

Savannahket and Pakse- Laos

From Vientiane we travelled by local bus to Savannahket. There was not much to do so we watched the unloading of the ferry from Thailand. All the tuk tuk and motorcycle drivers carried the goods from the boat and were paid per load so there was a flurry of activity as they got as many loads as they could up and down the slippery steps.

We did not see many Laos - produced packaged groceries in Laos but many from Thailand.

After one night here and a noisy storm we caught a crowded local bus to Pakse. At every stop the local food stall holders leapt onto the bus trying to sell their food.They had lotus flower seeds, fried crickets, barbecued chicken on bamboo skewers as well as dried beef. There were also skewered hard boiled eggs and pig intestines.

The locals like to shut the windows and curtains and sleep so after they have eaten they throw the rubbish on the floor or out of the window and in the heat the bus smells like the inside of a stale rotisserie cooker! In Pakse there were many fish farms like this one along the river bank.

Vientiane - Laos

Cultural Hall sponsored by China
Spent a few days in Vientiane to relax. We managed to stay at a very nice guesthouse recommended by Pieter from Switzerland. John was able to lie in air-conditioned comfort and watch cable TV and view, soccer, tennis, formula one racing...

There were many western tourists about and it seemed that many crossed from Thailand for a short stay. We also saw many ex-pats who worked in the city for various organisations. An enormous new building for the United Nations offices was being built in the city centre.

Tuk Tuk

We wandered about the city and visited the Victory Monument which looks like a kind of Arc de Triomphe. China gave Laos the money to buy cement to build an airport but they used it on the Monument instead. It has never been finished either!

We saw many places that had been sponsored by other governments: roads by the Japanese, bridges by the Dutch and water pumps by the Australians.

Laos has just opened its first shopping mall and it was full of young children playing on the escalator and enjoying the air-conditioning as the store owners were trying to stock their stores. The air - conditioning was going while the food court had all the windows open and the cooks were cooking their dishes on charcoal stoves. A mix of old and new.

On the banks of the Mekong we saw the Chan Palace Hotel: the first skyscraper in Laos (about 12 stories high).

If we had crossed the Friendship Bridge to Thailand we would have gone full circle as we spent Songkran (Thai New Year)on the other side of the Mekong back in April!

A Mekong sunset!

Vang Vieng - Laos

What a place! It was full of young Western tourists and most of the locals spoke English. It is beside some limestone cliffs in a beautiful setting beside the river. They offer tubing, kayaking, rock climbing and caving. Along the river are bars with boom boom boxes where the tubers and kayakers stop to drink. We saw some of the drunk ones tubing past our hotel in the dark with no idea of where they were going!

The town has cushioned seats where the tourists lie down and watch reruns of the American Sit-com 'Friends" or "The Simpsons" or DVD movies. The restaurant\bars compete with each other and the more flashing lights and loud music the better they are noticed!

Anyone for a haircut?

We could not get a direct bus and had to stand on the side of the road at a junction town and were entertained by the locals trying to sell their produce to the passing buses. The young children around 7 -10 were persistent! They had containers of cooked corn cobs.

These ladies in traditional dress were selling a rooster and vegetables. They were so proud to have their photo taken!

This is the ticket office we bought our onward bus ticket from.

Plain of Jars, Phonsavan - Laos

After a 5 hour journey on a real bus (the most comfortable we have had in Laos) and not a tuk tuk, we arrived in Phonsavan. The touts were there to meet us at the new bus station about 4 kms from the town centre. They offer free rides to guesthouses and are really touting for you to take one of their tours to the Plain of Jars. We did a tour to Site 1, 2 and 3.

There are many theories as to what the jars were used for- distilling bodies, burial, storage of rice etc. Some bones were found under some jars and they hope more evidence will be found to shed some light on the purpose of the jars.

We saw many signs of where our NZ tax dollars went. In Luang Nam Tha we funded a tourist office, in Luang Prabang we funded a building for monks and here we funded the clearance of unexploded ordinances. According to our guide book, it will take 100 years to clear Laos of

UXOs (unexploded ordinances) with the resources available.

Our guesthouse had these in the foyer! The bird (a falcon?) was in the yard tied up.

We had a noodle soup lunch cooked here in this kitchen!

This lady with all the barrels was the local lao lao (rice whisky) maker, and this is the inside of her still.

Luang Prabang - Laos

Luang Prabang is a city full of Western and Asian tourists. We used the time to rest up as Lil was blocked up with hayfever and we needed time to relax after some pretty exhausting tuk tuk (ute) rides. The utes have narrow bench seats along the sides of the vehicles and they jam in anyone who wants a ride as well as all their bags of rice and boxes of goods. We even had to push a tuk tuk uphill as it had lost some of its gears!
We stayed in a nice modern guesthouse and were able to catch up on the news of the car petrol bombs in Glasgow and John was able to check on the golf,the All Blacks rugby games and the yachting!
Anyone for street-dried rice cakes!
Some of the buildings from the time of the French occupation.

Sorry we cannot turn the pictures for you as we take them directly from our camera and onto the blog.
The main street.
These sparrows in cages could be bought at the bottom of the temple on the hill in the middle of Luang Prabang and then released at the top to gain merit.

There were trips to caves, temples and waterfalls but we had our fill of these so stayed in town. It is raining more and more everyday with some amazing storms.