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Mar 18 - Tat Lo to Salavan - The morning light filtering in through the curtains woke us up gently. We strolled up to the restaurant and, after talking to the manager, decided to take a quick ride on the elephants that we'd seen bathing the day before; as they looked like they actually had quite a good life here. We wolfed down a quick breakfast, and walked out to the front of the lodge, where they'd constructed a mounting block of sorts - a wooden structure that looked a little like a guard tower. The mahout jogged up from the village, with a whole branch of bananas slung over his shoulder. This was obviously a breakfast treat for the elephant, who lumbered up after him with her trunk swinging from side to side. He enticed her over to the tower, and handed the goodies over, whereupon she stood quietly for us to get on, gently picking the bananas from the stalk one by one with her trunk, and then delicately popping them into her mouth.
The mahout, whose name was Lang, had already fitted his mount with a homemade howdah. This little structure had been cobbled together from wood, and was tied on with an old rope. We scrambled on, and crossed fingers that it would hold, at least until we got back from the morning's ride. Our guy climbed on in front of us, hanging onto the elephant's neck with his legs, and we were off. We crossed the river, and climed a steep, thorny hill, with almost no variation in pace. Elephants have a wierd gait; they look like they're moving in slow motion, but when you raise eyes to your surroundings, you realise that they're actually travelling at quite a pace.
We circled through the forest around Tat Lo, and crossed through a couple of small villages a bit further afield in the district. They had a strange system of agriculture, growing certain crops in little patches around particular trees, and using ground up stone and river weed as a sort of improvised fertiliser. The patterns of planting in the village were quite elaborate, and reminded me of the sort of micro-crop-rotation that you often see in places like southern Italy. Juxtaposed with this, there was a lot of streambank cultivlation, with planting directly on the sandy banks of the river, and you could already see the effects of the erosion starting to occur. We crossed the river upstream, and circled back to the lodge through mixed areas of pristine forest, and land that was being slashed for burning.
As the lodge came into view, our guide turned around. "You want me to take photo?", he asked? "Sure," I said. So he grabbed my camera and shouted some command at the elephant, who stopped and stuck out her leg. He used this improvised step to leap down to the ground, and clambered up a rock. "Have to get the right angle," he said, smiling. "Now you climb down in front." I climbed onto the elephant's neck - not as stable a position as the little guy had made it look. She twitched her ears a bit as I stuck my feet behind them, and I kept my fingers crossed that she wouldn't throw me off. As it turns out, there were some more bananas in the offing, so she ambled up to the mounting tower to let us off. I've got to say that an elephant is not the most comfortable thing to ride around on. I was glad we'd just gone for a short circuit, rather than a couple of days. We stretched our legs a bit, got packed up, and checked out.
Before leaving Tat Lo, we headed up to Tat Suong falls, which flow over a huge cliff about ten kilometres upstream from the lodges. We filled up with petrol before setting off, and I had a panicked moment where I thought I'd accidently put diesel into the tank instead. Luckily it was OK, and for future reference; petrol-red, diesel-yellow. Phew! We rumbled up the dirt track on our bike, past the huge hydro-electric dam which they've recently built just north of the town, and wound our way several hundred metres up to the top of the cliff. There was no-one there, the road just came to an end in a sort of clearing, with some steps leading down the side of the cliff. A couple of local kids rocked up and offered to show us around, leading us down a shady tunnel cut through the bamboo forest, and out onto the steep lip of the mountain's edge. You really would not want to get caught by a flash flood here, as it's a looooong way down! This is the height of the dry season, so not much water was flowing, but there were some swimming pools at the top, and the derelict remains of a thatched lodge that never took off.
The two kids leading us around had heaps of energy. They raced around the place in their flip-flops, shooting at each other with catapults. The older boy (I think they were brothers) was showing us the path across the falls, when a bumblebee started buzzing around his head. He leapt up, pulled out his cattie, and blasted it from the sky with a clod of earth. Clearly he'd had a lot of practice, and I guess this is part of the reason why you tend not to see a lot of birdlife in Laos!
We walked across the falls, where we could see the water sheeting over a huge cuttaway in the rock. It was at least 3-400 metres straight down; not the sort of place that you want to be if you don't like heights. I was definately still feeling a little edgy from my Don Det experience, but the boys showed us a path down the far side of the falls, with a couple of bamboo railings lashed together to form a sort of ladder. I gingerly followed them down, and after a twenty metre climb straight down, we came to a ledge in the face of the falls. Actually, it was more of a lip than a ledge, and we edged out across towards the middle of the cliff face. Before the ledge widened out, there was a very sheer drop that you had to walk across, where two further bits of bamboo had been lashed across fresh air to bridge the gap. This was not a good place to look down, and I was very relieved to get to the other side! This was a flat shelf, with a couple of inset stone alcoves containing Buddha images, incense and offerings; clearly somewhere the locals come to pray. You could also look out through the curtain of water flowing over the edge twenty metres above - the view was awesome, with the hydro-dam, rivers and falls in the distance.
Going back was also a bit of a deep-breath moment, but we got back to the top, and slowly picked our way down to the main pools. We clearly weren't going fast enough for one of our little guides, as we came under a bit of catapult fire as we neared the bottom. We looked over, but he put on an expression of such pained innocence that it seemed harsh to call him on it! We gave them a tip, and headed back to the main town on our bike for lunch at Saise Guest House (the food was better than Tadlo by a long shot!)
After lunch, we carried on out on Route 20 towards Salavan, which was a bit dry and hot, but still an OK trip. Little farms and villages were dotted all the way along the road, and I still find it hard to get used to the amount of tree clearing that goes on here, both for logging and farming. Some areas we drove through were so smoky that visibility was less than one kilometre!
Anyway, we got to Salavan, which is about 30km down the road. This is a not-very-bustling town which is mainly shops and services for the local farming communities. We stayed in a guesthouse which was also called Saise (although we never found out if it was related to the one in Tat Lo). This was a set of three buildings in a huge, run-down property. The rooms were enormous, and cheap, but I don't think anyone else was there; it looked like the kind of place that had started off as someone's beloved project, with great layout, proportions and some furnishings, but was now clearly a bit unloved and underfunded. The place didn't have a working restaurant, so we biked off into town, and found a place called Denuxa, which the guide book recommended. Actually, we'd have to agree with them here, this place was a bit of a find. The owner was really friendly, and we had a couple of BeerLaos, and a sort of Japanese BBQ style dish that you cook yourself at the table - they bring you a clay pot full of coals, which sits snugly in a hole in the middle of the table, and (with a bit of assistance) we managed to cook everything in the right order ... it was delicious! We did some planning for the next day; I wanted to head a bit further out on the dirt roads and find our way to Nong Bua, which is apparently a huge lake, populated with Siamese crocodiles. Cheryl was not convinced that this would be everything I'd imagined it to be, so we thought that we'd find our way to the tourism office the next day, and ask around for some information. We wobbled back to the hotel on our bike, and turned in early .... it's crazy, but we're both easily sleeping nine or ten hours a night here, which I haven't done for years.
- comments
xayadeth thank you for visiting my restaurant(denuxa) now we moved to the west of the town( on the raods no.15 not far from Teacher College) your are welcome again!