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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
And welcome to another one horse town. No falang to be seen here, despite it being hailed as the 'coffee capital of Laos' they should have called it the 'one Dutch guy who owns an overpriced coffee shop in Laos' where the portions are outrageously small and the price of a western coffee. Naturally we went there twice.
So our journey to Paksong, well, it's the first time either of us has been on a bike since the traumatic Goa incident. This time we had a semi-automatic bike, with gears, so even more to think about during those tricky maneuvers; the 1kmph U-turn. Sean and Mikey took the bikes for a spin while Leigh and I waited. And we never saw them again.
Then Sean woke from the dream, back to reality and Laura was still there. Groan.
Lucky for me, my beautiful Laura was still there and I whisked her away in her chariot of dreams. And we were on the road.
The roads in Laos aren't quite as mental as India, but there aren't any more rules than there either. Driving is on the right, which complicates things, right of way is given to vehicles moving onto a roundabout, there isn't actually a 'right' side of the road at all, its whichever you feel like driving on. Turning right is easy, if there is nothing on your side of the road coming at you. Turning left is a challenge, but luckily you can turn onto whichever side of the road is easier for you, it's just getting across the buses, jeeps, tractor-engine-pulled-carts, bikes, bicycles, trucks and wandering animals that's the tricky part.
So we first stopped at Tad Fan, or at least what we thought it was, we were actually on the wrong side of the road and ended up at Tad Champa, but lucky for us that we did. We arrived just as a few people left and we had the whole waterfall to ourselves. It was only a small one, about 20m tall, but we had the whole pool to ourselves and decided to cool down with a dip. Cool doesn't even cover it. "Come in the water's lovely" say Mikey and Leigh, well they're more hardcore than we are, must be all the Scottish weather because I have never been in colder water in my life. Swimming was tough as my bones literally ached. Lovely though it was, my bones ached.
We did have a nice relax and recover from hypothermia out in the sun after though. Then we popped across to Tad Fan, which is a much more impressive waterfall in terms of height, we couldn't even see the bottom from where we were. But we also couldn't get down to the bottom to swim either, and it was full of tourists snap snapping away. Not the privacy and VIP treatment we are used to.
Next stop was Paksong. A place so happening we drove right through it still looking for the town centre. We stopped just outside the 'town' in a guesthouse not unlike the Bates motel. Lovely wooden building with creaky floors and skeletons in the bedrooms. No, only rooms we were sure we were going to get trapped in and fed bread and water for days as the manager cackled from outside the door. We went to the street that is Paksong to eat and drink overpriced coffee, and it was here we met Philippe and Chinous from Quebec, who told us about the happening New Year's Party just across the street. So party time arrived and to be fair, it looked like the whole town, and many from nearby towns were there for the festivities.
It was a small night market next to a huge stage with what we think were some pretty big acts performing, or at least playing all the hippest Laos pop songs. And four dancing girls. rather non-enthusiastic, dancing and swaying. Correction, three dancing girls and one unconvincing lady boy. Every 2 or 3 songs, they and the band departed and a small Laos man read from a script for ten minutes. With the occasional cheer from the crowd seated at tables around the dance floor, which flooded when the music started (or Sean and Mikey started dancing) and emptied at soon as the last beat was heard.
Leigh and I met some other falang who had all congregated (again under the impression that there was slightly more in Paksong than this) so we chatted for a while before the big countdown. Once the excitement (and our Beerlao) was finished we toddled home for a few hands of hearts (oh, you can hardly contain us we're so wild) and to bed for the next day's riding.
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