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!