Another two days of long driving. Yesterday we ate breakfast sandwiches and left from Savannakhet around ten.
The day was humid and the sun strong. The sweat that accumulated on our skin as we prepped the motorcycle was quickly seared off by wind and heat.
By the time we reached Pakse at 6 I was struggling to keep my eyes open. We wolfed down stir fried rice and another avocado smoothie before falling asleep.
Todays workload was lighter. Our internal clocks have been set to wake up at 7:30 daily (definitely not correlated to the lack of drinking on the trip) and we were able to hit the road early.
We drove an hour to the Vat Pho temple and scaled the steep, uneven stairs to the main area of the ruins. A large sat next to the largest Buddha and I took great pleasure in hitting it with the mallet laying nearby. Incense burned and vendors sold small birds in small cages to be ceremonially released. After a rest on top of a large boulder we returned to the road just in time for my phone, and thus our map, to poop out once again.
Another backpacker let us take a glance at his map before we set off so we had a general idea of where we could find the boat ferry. We followed the river and came across a market. Louise hopped off the bike and tracked down the guy with the boat. The one armed man took a while to locate his half submerged vessel. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous as we wheeled the bike onto the makeshift catamaran.
The boat held and we exited on the other side of the Mekong. A road stand fueled us with murky tasting noodle soup and we continued on.
One interesting aspect about the signage here is that nearly every restaurant, guesthouse, and corner store has the same BeerLao branded sign displayed proudly outside their business. Half the sign advertises the business with the name in Lao and roman script, and the other half is entirely occupied by an ice cold BeerLao. Many restaurants even sport identical BeerLao branded menu covers. It’s an interesting strategy, although I think most Western businesses are too well versed in branding strategy to don the same sign as their competition. Or maybe cost prohibits a customized sign here and it’s the BeerLao branded sign or nothing at all.
Eventually we stumbled on the ferry from the shore to Don Det, one of the southern most of the thousand islands.
We bunked down in a wooden bungalow (complete with a hammock) in the Go Easy Hostel down a narrow dirt road. For dinner I ate my first Western meal since the start of the trip: a pumpkin burger. Our table was low to the ground and we sat on mats overlooking the sunset. The stars here are the brightest we’ve seen thus far.
Recent Comments