Passing thru Sydney

On March 10 we left Asia behind for the land down under. Our time in Sydney was brief - only 3 days - and for the most part felt dominated by our attempts to get over how much everything cost and take as many pictures of the Opera House as we could. Aside from this and some general wandering around the CBD we did manage to take a ferry ride to Manly where we dodged the raindrops as we explored the beach and nearby National Park. Jess particularly liked the many spiders that have made the park home.

That is a lie. Jess did NOT like the spiders.

Our final day was spent out in the Bondi Beach area where the weather was much more accommodating and we even managed to find a reasonably priced lunch, some tasty fish and chips. We didn’t spend any time actually on the beach, but we enjoyed soaking in the rays walking along a path that followed the shoreline.

Bondi Beach

Do you think we look like tourists?  Do you think it has to do with Jess's hat?

Our last night consisted of a fun visit to the Hero of Waterloo pub where we even got to taken in a solid live acoustic 70s/80s rock cover duo. In hindsight they really weren’t any good but our standards weren’t too high at the time having spent the past six weeks without much Western culture. Unfortunately this was followed by some of the worst food of the trip so far, and the worst pizza either one of us has had in some time (or ever). But, as Jess's dad would say, at least it was expensive.

For us, Sydney was a bit of mixed bag. In the end we really liked the look and feel of the city and surrounding beaches, and our experience at the opera certainly makes the list of overall trip highlights. However, following our time in SE Asia where everything was so unique and inexpensive, and coming before our much anticipated time in New Zealand, poor Sydney had its work cut out for it before we even arrived!

Mmmm... Soup.

This post is for my dear friend Jill Dexter, and for Joey Tribiani.

You may have picked up on the fact that we ate a lot of soup in Asia. 

More often than not, we ate noodle soup. We ate soup with ramen noodles, rice noodles, egg noodles. Thin noodles, thick noodles. Flat noodles, round noodles. Occasionally rice, not noodles. And sometimes nooples.

Soup menu in Hue, Vietnam

Noodles with chicken, Noodles with pork. Noodles with pork belly. Noodles with beef.  Noodles with mystery meat that we hope was beef. Noodles with dumplings.

In 40 days, we had 33 bowls of soup - each. On 11 days, we had no soup, meaning some days we had multiple soups. One day, we had 3 soups. The majority of days (65% of them), we had only one meal of soup.

Soup 1 of 3 on Feb 13 -  Angkor / Siem Reap, Cambodia

We had soup we helped make, and soup we rather wished we couldn't see being made. 

Soup we helped make on our first Lao trek

We had soup for dinner 8 times, soup for lunch 19 times, and soup for breakfast 5 times. We even had soup for an afternoon snack once. 

Soup for breakfast on our second Lao trek

Soup for lunch in Hoi An, Vietnam

On leaving Asia we thought, "Won't it be nice to have something other than soup?" Then we got to Sydney, we were looking for quick and easy lunch, and before we knew it we looked at each other and said, 'Isn't there some place we can just grab some soup?!"

Change of Pace - Bangkok & Singapore

Our second trip on Lao Airlines took us to Bangkok on March 3, where we met up with our Italian friend Max. Max moved to Bangkok about a year ago, and has recently gotten married to his Thai girlfriend, Jeab. Max & Jeab were gracious hosts, even giving us use of an extra empty apartment they own – so we enthusiastically moved in for a few days of luxury living in our very own place.

Our very own Bangkok apartment...

...complete with a swimming pool!

Because of our comfortable digs, we spent quite a bit of time lounging around and enjoying modern amenities, but we did manage to tear ourselves away and see some sights. We found out the hard way that Bangkok is not a walking city, much to our dismay, but at least taxis are dirt cheap. Our exploration of this sprawling city took us to a couple fascinating markets that sold everything from goldfish to refrigerators, underwear to power tools, antiques to used sneakers. We also visited 2 temples, one on either side of the Chao Phraya river, Wat Po and Wat Arun. While we had visited innumerable temples in our previous travels through Asia, these stood out both as being in more pristine condition and for some truly unique features.

Wat Po has an extremely impressive larger-than-life reclining Buddha, complete with toeprints:

Do you think he's ticklish?

… and Wat Arun is beautifully decorated with shells and ceramics, and has dozens of guardians supporting the steeply sloped walls of pyramid-shaped temples.

I was so surprised at how ‘normal’ Bangkok felt – I think it was a combination of being back in a large, cosmopolitan city, along with the fact that it was nothing like I imagined it would be. Naively, I envisioned ladyboys and sex shops on every other corner, and in reality these things seem to confine themselves to a few neighborhoods as they do in almost any other city. We did seek out the rather insane ‘backpacker’s Bangkok’ area around Khao San Road in search of black market travel books, but we couldn’t stand to stay long in the area, and it made us even more grateful for Max & Jeab’s apartment!

The hustle & bustle of Khao San Road

Contrast that with the view from the apartment we were staying in

Of course the highlight of Bangkok was having the chance to catch up with Max and getting to know Jeab a little better! Jeab was kind enough to hook me up with a 2 hour Thai massage with her favorite masseuse… which was a similar torture session to my Lao massage experience except twice as long. Max took us to his favorite Italian restaurant (which after weeks and weeks of noodle soup we were very happy for), and we also spent an evening at their apartment, having a mix of simple Italian home cooking and a sampling of Thai street food.

After a short 3 days, we hopped back on a plane (with an upgrade to business class!) and headed off to Singapore. There we were hosted by my friend Janice, an English girl I worked with in London who is doing an expat stint in Singapore – working on Ben & Jerry’s, no less… a far cry from the world of Flora/Becel spreads. Janice took very good care of us, not only letting us use her washer & dryer to our hearts content, but also taking us for dinner two ‘school nights’ in a row – including one with a fellow ex-pat and ex-margarine junkie Simon – and helping us to make sure we got the most out of our short time in Singapore.

If we did a small amount of sightseeing in Bangkok, we did even less in Singapore, but there isn’t too much specifically to see anyway. Rather, we uncharacteristically spent some time at the very large, modern mall near Janice’s, including having lunch in their ‘Food Opera’ food court. This may seem like something not worth noting, but mall food courts are frequented dining spots in Singapore, so we wanted to find out why. We found ourselves spoiled for choice among tasty looking and reasonably priced options – I had a yummy laksa soup, and Jason opted for yam balls.

Upscale food court dining at the ION Orchard Mall

Yam balls & dumplings

Frog leg porridge in claypot... actually from a Chinatown food court, but I thought I'd share it anyway!

We didn’t expect much from Singapore and we were surprised to find that we enjoyed the city very much – it was unusually clean, extremely modern, and had plenty of good dining options – it felt very livable. We were even venturing to say it’s a place we wouldn’t mind trying out for a short time… until we tried to find a glass of beer one afternoon.  It seemed the starting price was about $10 and went up from there, even getting more expensive as the night went on. On that point alone we quickly dismissed this city as an option for the future.  Remember, this is the land of subtle yet strict control on any vices that might disrupt social order or public pleasantness – the outlawing of chewing gum is the most infamous of these rules, and you can’t even drink water on the subway without risk of a $1000 fine!

Also you cannot ride your bike through the pedestrian underpass.

All in all Bangkok & Singapore were the perfect end to our Asia travels, helping us ease back into the western world.  But more importantly, seeing some friends was a treat – and it meant we got to talk to people other than each other for a change!

Laos Part III: The Cities (Vientiane & Luang Prabang)

After our 2 trekking adventures in central / southern Laos, we agreed we had had enough of the countryside for awhile and were itching for the civilization of an urban landscape… we had 6 days remaining in Laos, and we decided to split them between the capital city of Vientiane and everyone’s favorite Luang Prabang. Upon return to Tha Khek after our second trek (way back on Friday Feb 25), we made a beeline for the bus station and bought tickets to Vientiane, called a hotel to book a room and told them we’d probably be there between 11pm & midnight.

A couple hours into our ride, it became apparent we would not be arriving anytime near 11pm or midnight, and we made the decision to cancel the hotel room and wait out the night at the Vientiane bus station.  So, from 2am til dawn, we hung around the surprisingly nice station – and we were in good company, too.  Around 6, the sun started to come up, and we decided it was time for some noodle soup breakfast and to find ourselves a place to crash for the next couple nights.

Lounging in the Vientiane Bus Station

We had a pretty chill and relatively uneventful time in Vientiane, which we enjoyed very much. We spent some of our time in holistic pursuit. We rented bikes and ventured a few km out of the center to a temple/monastery that holds open meditation sessions each Saturday afternoon.  For about 90 minutes, we learned about and practiced seated and walking meditation with a group of about 25 people, 3 monks, and a Dutch moderator/translator. On Sunday morning Jason gamely joined me for a yoga class, which I enjoyed very much but unfortunately he cannot say the same. On Monday, I subjected myself to the wonderful torture of a traditional Lao massage, which included having my limbs pushed & pulled every which way, feeling grateful that my regular yoga practice meant many positions that to me were odd for massage were not completely foreign (e.g. when my masseuse stood on my lower back and pulled my arms behind me, lifting my torso off the ground, I was happy to be comfortable in a bow pose!).

Other than our quests for physical and mental wellness, we spent a good deal of time at cafes and bars, drinking Lao coffee (thick black coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk) and large bottles of the ubiquitous Beer Lao. We visited the intriguing temple Wat Si Saket, which houses over 2000 miniature Buddha statues in tiny nooks, and we took our bikes out to Laos’s very own Arc de Triomphe, which upon reading its plaque, seems to be both a point of national pride and embarrassment.

Just a few of the mini Buddhas at Wat Si Saket, Vientiane

The 'Gate of Victory' at the end of Vientiane's main boulevard

Some honest information about the eyesore arch

On the night of Monday Feb 28, we sadistically booked ourselves on the overnight bus between Vientiane & Luang Prabang. We thought we were very clever by arriving at the bus station early and claiming some choice seats, only to find out that this was the first bus service we had taken in Laos that had pre-assigned seats. Ours were all the way in the back row… 2 of the last 3 actual seats to be sold. We were cursing our bad luck when, after the bus seemed full, plastic stools were brought on for the center aisle and those with ticket numbers higher than ours spent the next 12 hours perched on 6x6 inches of plastic. It was a fairly miserable 12 hours of little sleep and being subjected to unintentional snuggling from the Lao man next to me, but thankfully there was no horrible Thai dance programming blaring as there had been on our bus from Tha Khek to Vientiane!

The view from our seats

We arrived in Luang Prabang with all the rejuvenation of our time in Vientiane pretty much erased by the bus ride, and mercifully our hotel had a room ready for us to crash in and even offered us a complimentary breakfast upon our arrival – we must have looked desparate!

We had heard so much about Luang Prabang – a city with a heavy French colonial influence, the former governmental palace, and many lovely temples – before we arrived, and  everyone we met who had been there absolutely loved it. Maybe it was due to raised expectations, but we thought it was just okay. We found it overtouristed and a little too done up for the industry with tour hawkers on every corner, especially compared to the rest of Laos, which was so clearly untouched by crowds and just finding its footing in its burgeoning tourism. At this point in our trip, too, we were ready to be done with SE Asia and find something to eat besides noodle soup, so I can’t put all the blame on the city for not being as charming as we would have liked.

We toured temples, the old palace, and wandered around town and to a nearby village. We ate noodle soup, market food, delicious pastries (thanks to that French influence!), banana shakes, and put our Lao BBQ skills to use again – we even had other tourists coming up and asking us for advice on what to do.  I have to admit we felt pretty smug that we were self-taught on the streets of Savannakhet.

Luang Prabang Night Market, overlooked by Wat Ho Pha Bang

Wat Xieng Thong

Jason crosses the annually-rebuilt bamboo bridge to the village of Xang Khong

Our most unique experience in LP was watching the monks make their rounds to collect alms at dawn one morning. Given the quantity of temples in the city, there is a multitude of monks, and each morning they silently flood the streets in their saffron robes and bare feet, collecting balls of sticky rice from devout old ladies, among others. The participation of tourists is highly discouraged as they try to maintain the sanctity of this ritual, so we tried to stay out of the way and take a few snaps subtly.

Offerings of sticky rice

Jason watches the monks from the stoop of our hotel

In total we spent 17 days in Laos, which ran the gamut from exhilarating to exhausting and often both. By the time it was time to leave for Bangkok, we were ready for a change of scenery, but all the same thoroughly satisfied with our time in this little-known country. So much so that we entrusted our lives to their national airline once more…

Oh boy! How I love flying random airlines!

Laos Part II: Getting Dirty (Trekking in southern & central Laos)

Before we left on this trip, my friend Jocelin gave her honest assessment of our plans: “I think it’s awesome that you guys are going on this trip, but I wouldn’t want to do it. It sounds dirty.”  Well, I can easily say that we haven’t maintained levels of hygiene in accordance with US social norms during our travels, but the middle part of our time in Laos really takes the cake in the dirt department.

One of the attractions of visiting Laos is that it is relatively untouristed, especially in the center of the country.  Our travels took us mainly up the Mekong, which runs mostly along the western border, but we detoured into the center of the country through 2 treks.

Dong Phu Vieng NPA – Katang Village Trek

The first trek we took was a 3 day / 2 night trek out of Savannakhet into the National Protected Area of Dong Phu Vieng. The focus of this trek was to visit 2 villages of Katang, a minority tribe. The total walk wasn’t much to speak of – probably about 25km (16mi) in total over the 3 days, and the landscape wasn’t much to write home about, partially due to the illegal deforestation of the NPA, which we saw in action as we encountered logging trucks minutes after stepping into the forest.  We also encountered a UXO (unexploded ordinance) shell shortly after entering the area – a scary reminder of the little-known participation of Laos in the Vietnam war: the Ho Chi Minh trail ran through Laos, making it a target for American bombings, many of which did not activate til well after the war (we were promised that all in the NPA had been deactivated).

Bare countryside

To get to the NPA, we took a 4 hour sawng thaew ride from Savannakhet with our guide, Sinakhone, a  26 year old Lao girl.  The last hour of the ride was down a dirt path into the forest, and after about 5 minutes of that ride our newly cleaned clothes were covered in a fine coating of dust that we wouldn’t shake for the next few days.  We met 2 guys from the first village (truly local guides who would make sure we found the village) at the entrance to the forest path, and about 30 feet in we stopped for lunch.  Sinakhone and the guys gathered some large leaves and made a mat on which we sat and dined – on chicken on a stick, steamed vegetables, sticky rice, meat laap (thinly sliced meat marinated & cooked with mint leaves, cilantro, and chilli peppers among other flavorings) and some very bony river fish. I think the village guys found it funny that we were so particular about removing the bones from our fish and trying to keep our fingers clean, and we were quickly thrown into the world of living on the ground, eating without utensils, and dealing with a bit more dirt than we would have ordinarily chosen to.

Getting lunch from the market

Sinakhone preparing our lunch (actually on day 2)

During our 2 nights in the villages, we got to know a bit about village life in Laos in general, and about the Katang people in particular. The defining difference between the Katang people and the majority of Lao people is religion – the Katang people are not Buddhist, but rather practice their own religion that worships the spirits of ancestors. In general this practice follows the standard lines of worship (sacrifice, prayer), but the spirits are also guardians of the house and keep very particular rules. For instance, other than married couples living in the house, men and women cannot sleep side-by-side. It is forbidden to sleep with your feet pointing to the outer walls of the house. You are not allowed to clap in the house for risk of offending the spirits, but you can ask their permission (which someone must have, because there was a low level of clapping in the evenings). The spirits live in ‘spirit items’ in the house – anything from an empty soda bottle hanging in a corner to wind chimes to a clay jug – the reason for this belief becomes apparent when a subtle breeze blows through and creates an eerie howl or twinkling.  You cannot touch the spirit items.

My bed is seen at the left edge of the picture, while Jason's is out of frame in a corner (village #2)

Other than trying to avoid offending the spirits – we would have hated for our hosts to have to sacrifice a chicken or a more costly pig or bull for our unintentional indiscretions! – we spent our time learning about and participating in life in the villages. One of the more memorable bits was bathing, which we did both nights before dinner. In the first village, bathing is done at one of the handful of public water pumps. Women wear a sarong and men can do the same or wear shorts.  After Sinakhone pumped a bucket of water and helped me change from my clothes into my sarong without exposing myself too much, we scooped up water with plastic bowls and poured it over our shoulders, tossed it under our sarongs, and attempted to soap up and rinse off as best as possible in the conditions. I should note, the conditions included nearly all the children in the village gathered around us to watch.

The second village bathing experience saw us more discreetly 1km away from town in a fresh-water river for a dip and a soap, accompanied by a nice sunset. Slightly less awkward, and quite scenic!

In much need of a wash down by the river

Enjoying the sunset, post-bathing

We also had the chance to participate in cooking dinner both nights, which I really enjoyed – especially learning how to make fish laap, which we might just try at home. Cooking did require the ability to do the ‘Lao squat’ – the position all Lao people seem to adopt when they want to rest or do anything near the ground, but to me is a too-precarious balance that makes my knees ache. Fortunately a 3” high stool helped a great deal in my ability to participate in meal prep.

Prepping vegetables, village 1

Making sauce, village 2

Our meals along the trek ended up being really tasty, and nearly all were accompanied by the Lao staple sticky rice. Many countries in this region have sticky rice at the center of their cuisine, but in Lao the custom is to eat it by balling up some in your left hand, then using it to pick up bits of other food.  We also learned to enjoy dipping it into a mix of soy sauce and chilli powder (or silly powder, as Sinakhone endearingly pronounced it) – adding a great deal of flavor to even our most basic meals.

In the villages, the preparation of the rice is a day-long event for the women, who wake up at dawn to begin threshing rice (beating it in a large mortar with a massive wooden stick to remove the husks). This continues through the day and one day’s worth of threshing equals one day’s worth of rice for a family. Even the cooking of rice is a round-the-clock experience, as I discovered the first night when I tried to creep out of the stilt house to use the bathroom around 2am. Not only did I wake up the goats and pigs sleeping in the yard, but also the lady of the house who used the disruption as a chance to get the rice cooking started for the day before nodding off again.

Late afternoon rice threshing

Our hosts' house, with the kitchen at left beyond the ladder

I could go on and on but I will share only one more story about this trek. The biggest difference between the 2 villages we visited was that the second one had gotten electricity in the last year, whereas the first one had none. As a result, we were a huge novelty with the children in the first village; in the second, many were glued to the TV which had inevitably been installed in their house in the last year. Not that we minded, but it’s an example of the impact of ‘progress’ – a less socially interactive environment. It’s probably something my grandparents’ generation could reflect on first hand, but we wouldn’t even consider today. Of course, electricity also makes house-building, knife-sharpening, and water-getting much easier! (Comically, one or two of the stilt houses had massive audio systems with 5ft-high speakers on their porches which pumped out dance music in the afternoon and far too early in the morning.)

After lunch on day 3, we made our way back to Savannakhet where we promptly showered and I proceeded to try to scrub dirt out of our trousers – with a toothbrush and in my newly adopted ‘Lao squat’ position. Because after all Dirt is Good™, but clean is better.  Then we went for a burger & fries – the first Western food we had since arriving in Asia 4 weeks prior – and it was just what the doctor ordered.

Creative cleaning

Phu Hin Bun NPA Trek

The morning after we finished our trek, we took a bus from Savannakhet to Tha Khek, a town that has very little to offer other than being the jumping-off point for various trekking opportunities. We made the tourist information office our first stop, and signed up for a 2 day / 1 night trek starting the next day.

This trek was into another NPA with a village homestay, but was completely different than the previous one. In this case, the trekking was the highlight, with a couple long days of walking through fields flanked by limestone hills, checking out caves and swimming in some beautiful locales.

Looking out the mouth of the Sandalwood Buddha Cave

A nice place for a dip: Evening Gong Lake / "The Blue Lagoon"

It was also different because we were on the road with 3 other couples, whereas on the first trek we were alone with our guide. The village stay was fun although they seemed more accustomed to having visitors pass through, and in this case they were not a minority tribe of people, simply Lao country people.  However, Jason got try out his petang skills, and I watched the ambulance chase of a goat having his cajones sawed off prior to slaughter.  I could not, however, stomach watching the slaughter.   

Jason plays petang with the local boys

This poor creature met an unfortunate end

After dinner, we were the honored guests at a baci ceremony, a welcoming cerermony in which guests are offered – in this case – balls of sticky rice, candy bars, and bananas – along with a chant from elder men of the village. The chant goes something like (in Lao, of course): Zaaa zaaa zaaa, may you have safe travels, good health, good husband, many children, long life, long life, long life… and anything else they wish to add. A piece of string is tied on your wrist, which you must maintain for 3 days in order for the blessings to take effect. And finally, you do a shot of lao-lao, a rice wine which I politely sipped a bit of but Jason managed to down much more readily!

Receiving my well-wishes

Jason enjoys the lao-lao

We had a similar ceremony on our first trek, although in that case it was much more solemn. Afterwards, one of the men played a song on a pipe-instrument, while another sang a local tune about lost love. We were then asked for a song. I drew a blank and Jason suggested I sing the national anthem. So I did. It was a little awkward, and I was thankful I did not have to repeat that on the second trek.

The second day of the trip included a long walk through the jungle, a rather dusty & uncomfortable tractor ride, and finally a few last kilometers of very dusty walking, leaving us once again covered in dust and feeling fairly unpresentable to the outside world. But rather than check into a hotel and clean up upon return to Tha Khek, we headed straight to the bus station in search of city life in Vientiane. And we’ll get to that next time!

At least we were smart enough to get in the first of the 2 tractors! (The view looking back...)

Middle of Nowhere

We were just here:

It was pretty random. And pretty awesome. But more on that another time.

Laos Part I: Settling In (Pakse – Champasak – Savannakhet)

On February 15, we took our lives in our hands and boarded a Lao Airlines flight from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Pakse, Laos.  The airplanes are the same as those used on American Eagle services between Boston & NYC, so at least I felt the machinery was legitimate. We were 2 of about 12 passengers aboard (all Western), and we made it there with no problems other than a small freak-out on my part when on the descent I noticed we seemed to be flying through a very narrow mountain pass.

We arrived in Pakse, a non-descript town in southern Laos along the east side of the Mekong river, without much of a plan of what we were going to do or see during our stay in Laos, so we sketched out a rough itinerary and then booked our ticket out (yet another Lao Airlines flight) from Luang Prabang, a city in the north, for a date 17 days in the future. It took us some time to adjust to the uncertainty of what the upcoming weeks would look like – and even more so of how we’d make it happen – but after a few days we settled into a groove of going with the flow (especially with respect to transportation) and started to enjoy this particularly unusual leg of our trip.

After our overnight in Pakse, we hopped a sawng thaew (similar to the dala dala we took on Zanzibar) to the town of Champasak, grateful that they had recently completed a new road that made our ride a smooth 45 minutes instead of a bumpy 2 hours. Champasak is a very sleepy town on the west side of the Mekong, but we happened to be there during the annual Wat Phu Champasak festival, a 3-day to-do when people from around the region make a pilgrimage of the Wat Phu temple about 8km outside of town. We were worried about finding lodging during this ‘very busy’ period, but if what we found was the busy period, I can’t imagine what the low season (i.e. the other 362 days) look like.

Just us & the piggies

We wandered the ‘sights’ of Champasak – a couple temples – and especially got a kick out of 2 things: 1) the Unfinished Palace, a shell of a building left behind after the last king of Champasak was ousted; and 2) a shredded papaya salad we ordered for lunch, which sounds benign and potentially refreshing but to our surprise was full of chili heat!

Jason imagines what he could do with this space

The next day, we hopped on some bikes and made our pilgrimage to Wat Phu, finding the remains of the previous night’s partying alongside the remains of the temple, which, having just been in Angkor was fairly unimpressive; although it is a contemporary of the Angkor temples, it seems in a pretty bad state. However, there were no other Westerners in sight, and we became the subject of a photo shoot, first with some local girls who wanted their picture taken with me (a monk facilitated the conversation and acted as photographer), and then between Jason & the monk himself.

The grounds of Wat Phu Champasak

My photoshoot

Jason and the monk-photographer

After we rode our bikes back to our hotel & collected our bags, we set our sights on Don Daeng, an 8km-long island in the Mekong river comprised of 8 tiny villages, a 10-minute boat ride away from Champasak. We arrived there believing we could find a homestay for the next night or two – that is, we would be invited to stay in someone’s house. We were spotted and were brought to a woman who would host us for the night in her modest, 2-room house on stilts. We couldn’t communicate with her or her family at all, which made for some difficulty, but we were provided lunch and dinner (which were the same fare), and given a woven straw mat on which to hang out in the meantime. We thought we were expected to shower before dinner, so we did – using a scoop bucket out of a basin of fresh water in the detached ‘bathroom’. 

Homestay lodging - our bed is at the left; the host couple at right

Kitchen area

Jason just hanging out on our mat

The homestay was a fascinating introduction to village life in Laos, but frankly we (ok, I especially) felt really awkward about the whole thing, afraid of doing the wrong thing, upset about not communicating, and when we woke up in the morning we decided to hit the road and try to make it to our next main destination, Savannakhet.  We did this by the following route: 1) arrange boat back to Champasak; 2) hail sawng thaew back to Pakse; 3) wander a few kilometers up the main road of Pakse looking for the bus station; 4) hail passing bus (on advice of locals) by shouting ‘Savannakhet!?’; 5) kick back and relax for a couple hours on what turned out to be a very decent local bus experience – clean, comfortable, not stinky, relatively quick.  About 6 hours from the start, we arrived in Savannakhet, a characterful little town north of Pakse along the western border of Laos, so from here the views across the Mekong were of Thailand.  And having successfully navigated our way there, we proudly felt like we had become experts in the ways of Lao transportation.

We spent a very enjoyable day and a half in Savannakhet, doing little things like getting laundry done (less than $1 for about 3 lbs of laundry – I felt like I was robbing the woman!), seeing a couple temples, wandering out to the market, and drinking Beer Lao while watching local men play petang (think: boules) at a river-side shack of a bar.  It was hot & sticky so we were happy to have a couple days of moving slowly without much on the agenda.

Beer Lao is a good thing

Some intense petang, fueled by Beer Lao

We also discovered 2 culinary delights (aside from the ubiquitous bowls of noodle soup on offer). First, Lao-style barbeque, which we had both nights. We just pulled up a plastic stool alongside the locals and although we made a few mistakes (managed to put out our bucket of coals with a teapot of broth the first night), we enjoyed our delicious meal of table-prepared meat, seafood, eggs, noodles, and vegetables.  We also found a real treat: the Lao version of egg sandwiches.  Scrambled eggs in a crusty baguette were familiar enough – and ultimately the original draw to these roadside stalls – but topped with soy sauce, hot sauce, and garnished with cilantro and slices of cucumber, they are a surprisingly delicious eastern/western combo that we hope to recreate at home!

Just waiting for the lumps of fat to melt so we can get cookin'

No sal-peppa-ketcha here...

The most important thing we did in Savannakhet, though, was to arrange our first multi-day trek.  That experience needs space all its own, so that will have to wait for Laos Part II! Stay tuned.