-late the same night, i was sitting on the balcony watching the nightlife from afar, when the power went down in the whole town, and a middle age austrian man and his vietnamese girlfriend came out in their undies cause the room was too hot. that was strange...
2/26/2011
-slept in, enjoyed the aircon and hot water shower, luxuries i haven't had since...
-had breakfast with the dutch girl, Patricia, all the days are blending together, i took too long to update...
-walked to the market, didn't succeed in finding it, until we had walked for a couple hours in the sun and sat down for lunch at a lao place, where no one spoke english but they were really nice and showed us the way to the market.
-pretty typical market set up, beautiful hand rolled beeswax candles, weird clothes and lots of friuts and dead animals.
-went back to the hotel with some dark beer lao, which is an excellent black lager, played cards and talked music with the Finns and made plans to catch the bus to Pakse the next day
2/27/2011
-woke up early headed to the bus station with the fins, lucky to catch the bus right as it was about to leave. made it to Pakse around 1 took forever to find a hotel that wasn't booked solid, Pakse is a big throughfare for travellers headed all over southern lao.
-wound up in a nice guest house down a dirt road, went for a walk around town, beautiful monastary right on the river, sat for a while and watched fishermen on the river and monks doing monk stuff.
-patricia went to check her email, and i went with the fins to a river barge to have a beer, sat on a boat on the river, really nice.
-ate tasty dinner at one of the myriad restaurants in Pakse, then chilled on the upper deck of the guest house and played cards and drank more beer lao, mellow day.
2/28/2011
-had breakfast at a cafe with free wifi, i had lao sweet blood sausage and sticky rice, which was suprisingly good, despite appearances to the contrary:
-i wanted to wander and see Pakse, Patricia went back to the guest house, so i went solo down to the river, found the bowling alley/ movie theater, sat on the river for a while and watched the happenings.
-walked along the river to these weird french colonial buildings looming in the distance, turned out to be a very odd new hotel under construction.
-went to the nearby market, typical fare, but one huge section of wonderful fresh rolling tobacco, didn't buy any but one of the ladies rolled me a most excellent cig of a dark tobacco
-Had delicious indian food for dinner. and another mellow night on the balcony.
-Joined briefly by an awkward middle aged Finnish guy the fins had picked up at the Indian place, but he didn't stay for long.
3/1/2011
-Caught a 9 o'clock van to go down to the four thousand islands, stopped in Sai Phan Dong, caught a boat from there, we avoided the big island, Dome Kong, and the party island, Dome Diet, in favor of the smallest and most mellow Dome Khone, after walking up and down the road (i use the singular intentionally, there was only one dirt track), and being shocked at the prices of the floating bungalows where i wanted to stay ($50 US, i've been spending less in a week), we found a nice place overhanging the river, with bathrooms in room for a more realistic price.
-there are two waterfalls on Don Khone, we decided it would be nice to go to the big one and have a swim, as we're walking along, we get stopped at a random spot in the road, apparently falongs need a ticket to venture out of the tiny town of Dome Khone, we grudgingly paid the 20,000 kip ($2.75), and proceded on our merry way.
-it was a long and sweaty walk to the waterfall, fallow fields and no shade to be had anywhere.
-when we finally made it the waterfall was remarkable, didn't have my camera so no pictures unfortunately. but fenced off and over run with Lao and Thai tourists, we asked where to go swim and were pointed to a path by a nice Lao guy.
-walked down the path, ended at a huge sand bank with no apparent place to swim, so we walked back and asked again, and had an illustration drawn in the dirt, turns out it was exactly where we were, we just didn't go far enough.
-so we walked back, and went for a swim at the "beach", more of a big sinkhole where the fast current was slightly muted, we all tried but couldn't reach the bottom.
-swam for a while, until a bloated and sun-bleached dead snake floated up and wrapped itself around this german dreadie who was also swimming.
-swam for a while, until a bloated and sun-bleached dead snake floated up and wrapped itself around this german dreadie who was also swimming.
-i decided to take a break from swimming until the snake went on its way, the german girl however had other plans, and fished the snake out with a stick.
-swam a bit longer, then walked back to find dinner.
-every restaurant on Dome Khone had literally identical menus, so it was not a difficult choice, more of a coin toss, that one or that one, who cares... as they say here frequently, "same same"
-sat on the balcony and watched the river and played cards for the rest of the night.
3/2/2011
-rented bikes with the Finnish guys after a hearty breakfast, i believe of chicken sandwiches
decided to explore the opposite side of the island, which was much better then the side you needed a ticket for anyways, in my opinion.
-found a nice indiana jones bridge, and a frog over and in the first waterfall respectively:
-Right by this waterfall was an abandoned guest house, left late in construction, it looked like it was shaping up to be real nice, guess somebody ran out of money:
-some hammock time
-took the bikes out again to go check out the other island (the party island) Dome Det
-for future travellers, once you buy the ticket on Dome Khone all you have to do is flash the pink piece of paper after and they don't bother you, so its a onetime fee.
-due to shitty bicycles, (a consistently de-attaching chain) the fins were forced to turn back, so i ventured on alone, actually not alone, with some crazy russian guy, who had a safari hat and john lennon glasses, a solid look.
-back to Dome Khone for dinner, and another night of balcony card games.
low battery, more soon, catching up!
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