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Mar 19 - Salavan to Attapeu - After checking out of the Saise hotel, we headed out to our bike. I'd stupidly managed to park this under a tree that must have been holding a cicada convention! As well as keeping us up all night, they'd also left our bike covered in a kind of sticky, sap-like secretion. I don't know what it actually was, and I don't want to! Anyway, we cleaned it all off, and set out. As we drove out of the hotel, I was struck again by the wierdness of some devlopments in Laos. The hotel, which appeared to only have one or two people staying every night, seemed to support a staff of about forty or fifty, accomodated in a large building at the bottom of its ten acre grounds. The women would sit talking in the shade, while the men played petang and drank beer ... the games were well underway by the time we left, and that was only nine o'clock in the morning. I'd love to know the story behind this place - a big white elephant in the middle of nowhere, with twenty palatial rooms, and a small army of staff with nothing to do.
We headed to the Tourism HQ to find out about Nong Bua. The first trick was finding the place, as the guidebook described it as being 'opposite a large, empty field'. Well, the field had since been filled up, with a huge NGO headquarters. It had some ridiculously pointless name, the "The EU / Lao PDR Joint Holistic Centre for District Partial Support of Improved Administration Nework" or something along those lines, which sounded like a pretty fluffly title for a group whose headquarters was bigger than any school or hospital we'd seen yet or since in Laos. There was also a huge phalanx of gleaming, new Toyota Fortuners parked out front, plastic still on the seats. I'd love to know what it is that those guys actually do, but it seems to leave a lot of time for petang!
Anyway, the main government headquarters were opposite - and we managed to track down Mr Sinachak, who runs the place. "Oh!," he raised his eyebrows. "You want to go to Nong Bua? OK, I guess. Better to go on bicycle, sometimes the bridges are broken and you need to carry the bike, but is possible, if you take it slowly." He then drew us a map of how to get there, but strangely oriented it with South at the top. We thanked him for the map, and were about to leave, when I said "So, this lake? It's a very beautiful place?" "Oh, no," he said. "Not at all. No water this time of year. All empty." "Ah," I replied, seeing a grin appear on Cheryl's face, "and how about the crocodiles?". "No, no," he shook his head, grabbing the map. "See, the crocodiles," he said, drawing a rectangle with teeth, "they don't like dry season. Prefer river, they go here." He added in a not-to scale river, and scrawled in some crocodile footprints leading off the map. "Maybe it's better you go to Tat Lo?" We didn't have the heart to tell him we'd already been there, so we thanked him for his time and left.
"Ok, just say it," I said as we walked out to the car park. "Say what?" replied Cheryl, but we both knew what she was thinking, and she was right! I was probably a little bit optimistic about the sights that South-Eastern Laos had to offer. We dejectedly set off back in the direction of Tat Lo (well, I was dejected, anyway), as we had to backtrack a bit to get to Sekong and Attapeu. We tried to stop off at a place on the way for breakfast, but they weren't serving, so we decided to go all the way back to Tat Lo, which added 20km to the journey, but at least we knew we'd get a good banana pancake.
We stopped in at Tim's guesthouse, which was quite a chilled little place. I hadn't brought any reading material, and so was excited to see that they had a great collection of books. This was short-lived - they wouldn't sell them; they only took trades, and wouldn't part with any of their collection for any amount of money. Oh well. After a really, really good breakfast, we refuelled, and headed south across the dirt road connecting the villages of Ban Beng and Tha Taeng. This was a reasonably bumpy ride, through small farming hamlets. The villagers in this area build their own carved coffins long before they expect to die, and store them underneath their houses. I couldn't work out if this was morbid or not, but it was bizzare to see them stacked in there, along with extra firewood, spare tires and bags of cement. The villiage of Tha Taeng is quite pretty, and we turned left here, rejoining Route 16, and heading east out to Sekong.
Sekong is a slightly charmless town in quite a scenic location. As its name suggests, it sits along the banks of the Se Kong river, which winds its way north from the Bolaven Plateau to the Se Xap NPA. The town was expanded post-revolution, and sits on a large grid, making it very sprawling for the low population that it supports. We found a little restaurant on the banks, called VangXang, which looked like a good place to stop. No-one spoke any English, but there was obviously something going down that night, as a huge sound stage was being installed by a team of young Lao guys. We managed to order some fried rice with chicken, which was not bad, and sat out on their huge tiled balcony, watching the ferries below shunting passengers and livestock across the river. We cleaned up and left, just as they were starting to test out the mikes ...
We had about another seventy kilometers to go to Attapeu. The day was still pretty hazy from smoke, but the smooth tar road twisted through some beautiful mountains covered with thick jungle, and about an hour later, we got to the outskirts of the city. As an aside here, the town of Attapeu apparently gets its name from the local word for buffalo crap, 'itkapu'. I got that little gem from the Lonely Planet, who follow it up with a quick disclaimer that Attapeu is "not a s***ty town," However, they are clearly deranged or pathologically dishonest, because it is. First impressions were that it's dirty, dusty and (apart from a couple of little bars on the river) not nice to look at or be in at all. A grey pall from some heavy slash-and-burning hung over everthing like a hot, scratchy fog, which probably made it look worse than it would on a clear day. Again, it had been my call to come out here, so that brought the score to Cheryl-217 : Troy-0 ...
We checked out the Attapeu Palace hotel, which should really have been called the Euthanasia Palace, as one night in its clammy, smelly, yellow rooms would be enough to give any terminally (or mildly) ill person a Kervorkian send-off. We left with our tails between our legs, and rode the streets till we found a place called the Phoutthavong Guesthouse, which looked OK, with small but clean(ish) rooms. We had a quick shower, and leapt onto the bed. This was a mistake, because although the matress looked brand new, it was stuffed with what could only have been solid wood, and was harder than sleeping on the floor! Slightly bruised, we ventured out to find some food.
As a silver lining, dinner was pretty good. We pulled in at the Kamsay Restaurant, on the banks of the Se Kong river at the fringes of town. This little place seats about 40-odd, and was already full of local revellers eating, drinking and talking. We ordered a couple of Beerlaos and sat down to watch the sunset, which was spectacular. The kids were playing on the beach, and in the river, and three little brothers who were obviously huge fans of WWE wrestling spent about an hour practicing the full nelson, the piledriver, and a range of other wrestling manoevres, flinging each other around on the sand, and performing some pretty impressive acrobatics. It did make me realise that it sucks to be the youngest sibling - he definately spent more time with his head buried in the sand than the other two; but seemed to love it, and kept coming back for more! As the sun got lower and lower, the whole river, which is wide and slow-flowing at this point, turned a sort of blazing bronze colour. The cottony kapoc seeds floated across downwind, as egrets flapped lazily in the opposite direction, and the whole place took on an other-worldly glow.
We hadn't brought our phrasebook, so ordering was a little bit of a problem, as the owners spoke no English, and had avoided coming over to take our order, I think for that reason. Anyway, they warmed up a bit once we tried to make ourselves understood, and eventually we settled on pointing at the dishes that the people next to us had ordered, and then at ourselves. The food was plates of herbs and vegetables, dipping sauces, rice and bits of barbequeued meat. I don't know what they put in the sauce, but I at a large lump of it by accident, and started hiccuping and sweating uncontrollably! It was way hotter than any Asian or Indian food I've ever had. It was also so delicious that you had to keep on eating it, and we wolfed some more of it down with large Beerlao chasers to extinguish the flames, to applause from the other diners. They were obviously a bit more used to it than us, but not much! I have no idea what the meat was, but we later read in the guidebook that they are famous for their barbequeued goat...
So we were feeling slightly happier about Attapeu as we headed off for bed. We lay down on our prison-style matress and eventually dozed off. I woke up with the strange feeling that something was nibbling my arm. I opened my eyes to see a mouse ... nibbling on my arm! I jumped up, almost flinging Cheryl off the bed; she woke up with a scream. We flung on the lights, and threw off the bedclothes. Lifting up the bed, we couldn't see any mice, just the pleasant surpise of a whole lot of torn condom wrappers under the bed. Nice. We remade the bed, convinced ourselves that it was a one-off, and drifted off back to sleep.
About an hour later the same thing happened again! This time we were taking no prisoners. We lifted the bed up on it's side and blasted the floor and bed with the high-pressure bottom-washer from the loo (those of you who've used an Asian bathroom will know what I mean, and luckily it was positioned near the bathroom door). At this stage, I think the mouse gave our room up as a bad job, and scampered wetly under the door to the balcony. We jammed it shut with a wet towel, and (fitfully) got back to sleep. That was it, despite the restaurant and the sunset, Attapeu was going back to the bottom of the list. I guess if you stay in a town called 'Bulls***', you probably get what you deserve...
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