Yesterday we decided to take the road lightly and only drove for a couple hours before bunking down at the Sabaidee Guest House. The lodging is surrounded by eery, semi submerged trees from flooding in years past.
We spent the afternoon eating overpriced and under portioned fried fish and playing petanque in the garden nearby. Once again, we were the only people in the hostel until one other group arrived as the sun was setting.
I spent the night drinking beers with a Belgian couple and their English travel buddy. We laughed about the pothole filled roads and I emptied Beerlaos into my gullet.
Today was a day of driving. The motorcycle has given us complete freedom in terms of where we can go, but we are now completely tied to daytime travel. We have a lot of ground to cover before we sniff Cambodia.
Our pit stops today included…
- sipping an ice cold rice milk milkshake
- pulling off to watch local women fish for small silvery fish with their rhombus bamboo framed nets
- eating yet another noodle soup at yet another place where we had no idea what we were ordering
- seeking shelter from the rain in a restaurant where we communicated with a little boy in robotic beeps, boops, and karate kicks
Our road weary asses got to Savannakhet at 4:30, kicked around a soccer ball to get some blood flowing after sitting on a rumbly motorcycle all day, and left for the night market downtown.
The market had some of the best food we’ve had thus far. I finally got to taste the famous Lao papaya salad; a criminally spicy cold dish made with peanuts and green papaya. Afterwards we found room for two fried chicken legs, a supersize me sized avocado smoothie, two spicy meat skewers, and a waffle. Life is good.
One interesting thing we’ve noticed traveling in the Mekong region is that there isn’t much parity in the way that things are priced. For example, an average street food meal costs from 15,000 to 25,000 kip. After you finish eating, you can rent a clean hotel room with a double bed and a private bathroom for 50,000 kip a night. In North America there’s no chance you’re bedding down in a hotel for double the price of the burrito you ate for dinner. What causes discrepancies like this?
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