Turtles, Monkeys and another homestay!

22^nd November

After a long night on what I'm convinced was a mattress-less bed, we left our disgusting hotel and the cockroach infested shower behind and were on our way to bigger and better things. We had an early and pretty average lunch stop but we stocked up on niceys and headed to the market where our Stray guide bought the ingredients for our dinner. Once again this is the first time the Stray bus has stopped at this particular market town and you could certainly tell. I would say that most of the people had never seen a white person and if they had, it was a rarity. As we walked the streets were were stared at and whispers of “falang”, the Laos would for foreigner, followed us. The children in particular were completely fascinated and most seemed quite unsure about us.

After getting our dinner ingredients, which was an experience in itself (they don't use cartons here, so if you buy a chicken you get a dead chicken in a plastic bag filled with blood), we made our way to Turtle Lake. The lake has been around for 100 years and some of the turtles have been there since the beginning. It was pretty difficult to take a good picture but it was nice to see them and even nicer to know that the locals refuse to eat them and instead treat them with a lot of respect!

We then stopped off at a Buddhist library. Despite wearing long shorts we weren't allowed into the sacred library so we paid the small rental fee of 40p and borrowed a Laos skirt and shawl. The money was well spent for the experience and pictures alone! The library, Hotay Pidok, was built in the 17^th Century and rebuilt in the 19^th Century to house and protect sacred scriptures which are written on palm leaves. There are 219 stories, comprising 326 sets of manuscripts with a total of 2,391 volumes and they're written in various languages even the ancient Khmer language.

Once we looked around the library we made the short drive to our accommodation for the evening, a village! We had to leave the bus behind and walk cross the river which was quite the experience especially as we were greeted by monkeys on the other side! We were carrying our evening meal which included a big bag of bananas so we were closely followed but we made it to our home for the evening without incident. After settling in we took a walk to the village temple where a pack of macaque monkeys all hang out and this time we even had bananas specifically for them! I was a bit apprehensive at first, there were so many monkeys and I really don't want to get rabies, but they were completely fine. I thought they'd be, excuse the pun, cheeky monkeys but they were quite timid and while they took the bananas they didn't climb all over us!

To pass the evening we played charades which is actually really fun and I'm pretty excellent at it – mainly because I watch far too much television and far too many films! We then had dinner which our local guide and the family made together. The tom yum soup, sticky rice and vegetables were ok but for the first time in my life, I ate chicken off the bone with my hands and it was top notch! I had watched the chicken being prepared and the families dogs were licking the utensil and stealing the uncooked bits so despite telling myself that I wouldn't eat any of it, I gave in and would happily have eaten more but for some reason we got a measly helping of chicken so there was none left!

Later the group played drinking games and I befriended some puppies! They were full of flees and probably rabies but they were just so little and so skinny that I just had to sneak them food and strokes! Our beds for the evening were pretty basic but we all bunked in together and they did the trick – even better, we didn't have any snorers so a full nights sleep was on the cards!  

Thakek

21^st November

We left Kong Lor at the usual early house and headed towards Thakek.

This was another new stop that Stray failed to tell us about and to be honest, they could have done with missing it out! We checked in at the hotel and only had a few minutes to drop off our bags before we got back on the bus and headed off to do some activities. When we drove up to the hotel it looked pretty flash and at 110,000Kip a night we thought we would be getting a night of luxury. We were very wrong. They didn't know our group was coming so it was a mad dash for whatever they had available. Our twin room absolutely stunk and was filthy. The bottom of the bath was covered in rust and the taps were caked in limescale. I know we're in Southeast Asia and shouldn't expect a lot, but all our other hotels, hostels and guest houses have been cheaper, cleaner and generally of a much higher standard. To make matters worse, there was no mosquito screen and we were right beside the Mekong River! Our Stray guide told us that while he had never been to this town before his boss had told him there was nowhere else to stay so we decided to grin and bear it, well, Rory did, I just sat fuming on the bus!

It didn't take long to arrive at our lunch and activity stop which was nice but tailored to rock climbers so within about five minutes we had completed all the activities. After our lunch, a sort of chicken stir-fry with rice thing, I was nominated as tour leader and made the executive decision to go swimming! While there wasn't anything to jump off, it was nice being able to swim in relatively deep water!

After a good dip we went back to the disgusting hotel where Rory and I moved to a new room which was beside the karaoke room (yes karaoke is popular here and yes, I did spend the evening listening to Asian ballads) but it had a mosquito net. Unfortunately it was still dirty and there were three or four wormy centipedes in the bath! The room even attracted cockroaches which was pretty bleak but the internet did work so I was able to get on Facebook and see pictures of my brand new cousin/nephew! Massive congratulations to my wonderful cousin who has given us a little boy to completely spoil and who I can't wait to come home and meet!

Kong Lor

20^th November

The thing with an early night is an early morning and we were up at 6am for a breakfast of stale bread and fried egg! We spent the morning driving and arrived at our destination of Kong Lor at around 2pm. We got our room, dropped off our bags, changed into our swimwear and were on our way to the Kong Lor caves. I didn't know a lot about the caves but we were told that the cave extends seven kilometres along the Nam Bin Hun river and at points it goes up to 100m high.

We took a small boat through the caves and hopped off for a look around. It was pretty impressive and well worth it at only 45,000Kip per person! After a few hours looking around the cave we walked back to the guest house, got cleaned up and had dinner. We all ate at the guest house as the town seems to consist of our guest house and nothing else but it was surprisingly good, especially when it was finished off with a cheeky cornetto!

Tad Leuk

19^th November 2012

Our day began with another early start which was fine by me – less time in our rubbish and super expensive hotel! We didn't get to do our city tour yesterday so we stopped off at the Cope Centre on our way out of town. The centre was set up to help those affected by unexploded ordinances. From 1965-1973, 414,920 cluster munitions containing around 260 million sub-munitions were dropped on Laos and it is estimated that up to 78 millions did not explode on impact. In comparison, in Vietnam 5-29 million and in Cambodia 1-8 million sub-munitions didn't explode, so as you can see, Laos got absolutely hammered. One of the worst things was hearing that the The centre had a map with red dots depicting areas where bombs were dropped and the entire country was pretty much covered.

It is estimated that one third of the country is still contaminated and at the current rate, it takes ten days to clear an area the size of a football field, sometimes longer if the terrain is hilly and forested, which most of Laos is! All the clearance work is done manually and people are trained but scrap metal is a big deal over here so untrained people and even children go looking for the mines to try and earn a little money. Around 24% of accidents occur for this reason but some people are just unlucky. While it was sad hearing these stories, it was worth visiting the centre to see all the positive work they do for those affected. Even simple things like supplying modified wheelchairs which can be used in the hilly terrain.

After an hour of so in the centre we saw a few other sights and made our way to our accommodation for the evening – Tad Leuk waterfall. Rory and I were really excited about camping in Laos, it was one of the main reasons why we got the Stray pass, but there seemed to be a change of plan. Well, we think our guides couldn't be bothered with the effort of putting up tents, so we were sleeping on mats in the visitor centre! I wasn't too pleased about this, especially when I saw the massive spider running where my head was meant to be, so Rory and I commandeered the display tent! We paid to camp, quite a lot actually, at 120,000Kip per person, this was the most expensive place we've stayed, so we camped!

We also took a dip in the waterfall, which was nice but the water was quite shallow, meaning that any proper swimming was pretty impossible. Instead, we walked up river and did some exploring. By the time we were finished everyone had went back to the accommodation centre so we decided to sit by the waterfall and just relax, when all of a sudden Rory started shouting something. I thought there was a snake or a spider but no... it was a monkey! A real life, completely wild monkey who had made his way down to the river for a drink! We sat and watched him for a few minutes and I got a video of him jumping across the river which was really amazing to see. I've seen the monkeys at Gibraltar and when we're over here we're going to some monkey park but it was really nice seeing this one just chillin' in the jungle!

After a pretty average dinner of chewy buffalo, spicy egg plant, watery cabbage and sticky rice, we had an early night which is totally acceptable in the jungle! Hurray for no electricity!