Pakse, ປາກເຊ, the ghost town

Arrived to Pakse at six a.m. We got a ride from the bus station to our hotel Phi Dao, it was only a five minute drive. Pakse, with a population of 88,000 and a home to many ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese people, is a really small place and very quiet at this time of the day. We had to wait to get our room for an hour and a half, and spent it in the hotel restaurant. After resting in our hotel room for two hours we decided to see the city on foot.

Pakse was founded by the French as an administrative outpost in 1905. It was the capital of the Lao Kingdom of Champasak until 1946 when the Kingdom of Laos was formed. Even at ten a.m. it was a ghost town. There wasn't traffic and we saw only a few people outside. It was the hottest day on our travel so far, so that might've kept people inside for now. Soon we also found ourselves sitting in the shade having breakfast. We only found one nice looking restaurant, it was by the Mekong river. The river Xe Don also runs through the city. The restaurant didn't understand much english. We had french fries, soup and spring rolls, because they didn't seem to have much vegetarian food. Kari's tomato-sour cream soup upset his stomach, but my food was ok.

Our first breakfast in Pakse.

We walked some half an hour back to our hotel. Pakse was even more ascetic than Vientiane, so we didn't want to spend much time here. In the evening we had dinner at the hotel corner restaurant that served good Indian food, and didn't upset our stomachs.

The street pavements were in better condition than some in Finland.

 

Ghost town.

The next day we had a breakfast at a Chinese owned restaurant called Panda close to our hotel. He made us good müslifruit yoghurt, tea, toast and some souplike porridge. Then we rented bicycles and cycled to the Lao-Nippon Friendship bridge and over the Mekong river to the other side. While cycling over to the vendors to buy some drinks we found a long flight of stairs that led to Phu Salao, the Golden Buddha, looking over Pakse. We sat down for a while to drink and started talking to the Jersey couple who sat on the same table and seemed about our age. Time flew by really fast with the likeminded Steve and Jemma, and we must've sat there about two hours!

View to the other side of Mekong. The Golden Buddha is the yellow spot on the hill.

Lao-Nippon Friendship bridge.

Mekong river.

Pakse.

Golden Buddha.

The climb up to the Buddha was some 300 steps. We didn't mean to climb up there with Kari's broken leg, but were tempted by the views, so guess what, suddenly we were climbing! And it was a very hot day, even hotter than the day before, about 32 celcius degrees with the humidity levels somewhere in 80, which is normal for Pakse this time of the year. It was pretty rough to climb up in that heat, but Kari managed quite fine with his leg. We were up in no time and the view was about 270 degrees over the flat Pakse. We didn't go all the way up to the Buddha, where the view would've been 360 degrees. We've seen too many statues already, so we didn't want to bother for another one.

Cows at our resting area.

Stairs to the Buddha.

View from top of the stairs.

Other than the view there wasn't much to see, so we cycled back to the city and to a bridge that crosses the other river, Xe Don. An old man by the river was on a funny mood and decided to spray some river water on me with a garden hose and laughed to his great trick. Well, it was a hot day so it cooled down well, but I wondered how dirty the river water was. Mekong river at least is quite polluted. The water dried fast, so it didn't cool too long.

Wat Tham Fai on the back, also known as Wat Pha Baht.

Wat Tham Fai is the oldest Buddhist temple in Pakse.

Funerary monuments.

Pakse has a catholic church, although the population is predominately Buddhist.

Nothing but walls.

We had some laundry and a hotel near our hotel took care of them. Then we booked a bus to Ban Nakasang in Champasak province, the city near the island of Don Det, for the next morning.
In the afternoon we visited the Indian restaurant again. That evening we had a big thunderstorm, which gave us a great show in the skies with huge lightnings that lit up the little town.

Not the best picture, but the lightnings were huge and in a big area.

View from our hotel room in the evening.

Our mini bus left at eight a.m. for the near 2,5 hours trip. We stopped for some breaks. And what a coincidence, on the same bus with us was an American couple we'd been wanting to meet, Lance and Donna. We wanted to meet them as they seemed to be an interesting couple with an adventurous life. You can find them from the internet. They are musicians, who lost everything back at home, left to see and tour the world with their music and now have lived at Don Det for years. How strange that they happened to be on the same bus with us!

A new country! From Kuala Lumpur to Laos

On June 14th it was time to leave Indonesia for two months. Our next destination was Laos. After Lembongan, Kuta and Tanah Lot we flew from Kuta to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and had to wake up at an inhuman hour at 3.30 a.m. for the flight! After a few arrangements our taxi finally arrived at four a.m., but we didn't get the desired taxi company, the Blue Bird. Instead our driver was one of those asking way too much money from the ride to the airport. In this case it was 100,000 IDR, which is not much (about seven euros), but when you're travelling long you have to be cheap. We got the price down to 60,000, which was also too much from a ten minute drive knowing what the real prices are. Our flight left at six o'clock and was just three hours. It took an hour more to get to KL city by bus.

The bus station was located neatly close to our hotel near the Brickfields area. We walked to our hotel in ten minutes, although moved slowly, because we had so much to carry. The metro station was also close to our hotel and we used that a few times. The ticket cost about 2,10 MYR depending where you were heading to, and the bus ticket from the airport was cheap too.

Monorail in KL

Bukit Bintang station

Because I can't sleep at the airplanes I had a rough day. As we couldn't get our hotel room immediately after arrival we couldn't have a rest after flight, so we decided to head out into the city in the meantime. We spent some three hours there in our sweaty clothes. It's so frustrating when you can't freshen up before you head out to see the sights. We had been to KL before, but still wanted to see more of it.

Brickfields, the little India.

Our most visited shopping mall in KL, Berjaya Times Square,
which had a huge capsule vending machine now at the lobby.
This place has a great supermarket, a cinema and an indoor
theme park (formerly known as Cosmo's World) with a great
rollercoaster.
http://www.berjayatimessquarekl.com/

The pleasures of being in a big city, sweets!

Berjaya Times Square theme park.

The KL sunset was at 7.45 p.m., which was nearly two hours later than in Lembongan, although the timezone is the same. It was so weird having all that light after being used to steady sunsets at Lembongan around six o'clock every evening. Being Finnish I always miss the summer sunsets and more so the midsummer, when the sun goes down for about an hour. Finnish summers are the best in that way, we have so much light. Winters of course are completely different. You might not see the sun at all during the winter, depending where you live in. You go to work and it's dark and after work it's dark! But it's kinda exciting too.

Shopping at Petaling street.

KL is one of our favourite cities, mainly because of the many cultures that bring so much colour into it. KL also offers so much for a tourist, there are great restaurants and sightseeing and the city is easy to travel in. Our favourite Middle Eastern restaurant Tarbush is located right in the tourist area close to the big shopping malls in Jalan Bukit Bintang. Tarbush doesn't serve much vegetarian food, but we've been able to ask them to make us dinners to our wishes. Also Simple Life Healthy Vegetarian on the same street is good. Radhey's Heavenly Delights is also a good restaurant near Brickfields, at 6 Lorong Padang Belia, but it's pure vegetarian/vegan.

Tarbush restaurant at Jalan Bukit Bintang.
http://www.tarbush.com.my/

Vegetarian dinner with falafel.

Having dinner in an Arabic restaurant is sometimes a bit troubling, as some men stare at a European woman for whatever reasons. Sometimes the stares can seem annoyed. I try to ignore them and I'm quite used to it - being a blonde in Asia - but I still don't like it. On this dinner we noticed a family whose dinner was completely decided by the dad. I wouldn't like someone deciding on my behalf what I'm going to eat.

Another early wake up was ahead, as we had to leave by bus at 5 a.m. We reached the airport at six and our flight left at 7.30 a.m. after the plane had been refueled. We were on board while refueling, which is usually not allowed due to safety reasons, so that was exciting. My imagination was running wild again; the plane blowing up and our body parts scattered all around the area. Not that I was too worried, but my imagination keeps my head busy all the time with cartoonlike pictures. The flight took 2,5 hours, so we reached Laos and Vientiane's Wattay airport at ten o'clock.

With a little panic in mind we entered the country. We had read various stories from the internet on how you have to pay for your visa with the exact right amount of dollars and none other currency is excepted. You also had to have extra passport photographs with you with the exact right size and fill out a whole bunch of forms. We had the photographs as we'd printed different sizes for different countries before leaving and also had them on our memory stick, but we didn't have enough dollars, as Kari had lost his somewhere. We ended up filling two forms and gave the photographs which we actually wouldn't have needed, as they scanned photos from passports from the people who didn't have extra photos with them. As for the money, we offered the dollars we had and the rest we tried with euros. We were a bit nervous on how it all would go, but look at that, they accepted our euros! Our visas cost us a bit more than normally though, but now we had a full month ahead to explore the country.

We took a taxi from there, they all have fixed prices. Our fifteen minute drive cost 75 000.- KIP, which is about 7,5 euros.

Our internet was working again, after we bought our own card. The hotel internet was very louzy, so we bought a seperate card for it. We actually mostly paid for the internet ourselves during the year trip, because most of our hotels didn't have any, or had a louzy connection you couldn't use. Well, the paid internet wasn't very good either, but the best from all choices. Even the cafes had terrible connections.

Vientiane is the capital city of Laos and sometimes capitals aren't what you expect them to be; huge, busy, noisy and convenient for shopping for all your needs. Vientiane's first impression showed ghostly empty streets by daytime, which I didn't mind, and strangely large amounts of butterflies everywhere. I can't remember a city with that much butterflies. You could make a movie from this city with its surreal environment.

Not a butterfly, but a parked car in a quiet daytime.

Kari wasn't too impressed by the city, but I found good things from it; that deserted feel to it, the butterflies, beautiful temples in every corner, the local park is nice and there's other sights. Also the local dogs are actually owned by someone and are in great shape and well looked after! I saw a beautiful husky and a pug at least. Sadly we also saw a dead cat right on the street. Maybe it had been buried and some other animal had dug it up, because it was half buried in the sand.

In 2010, to coincide with the 450th Anniversary celebrations of Vientiane, the Lao PDR government created Chao Anouvong Park. Located at the tourist area and the central district of Chanthabouly by the river, people gather to the park on a Saturday evening for group aerobics! There are all ages and men, women and children.

Group aerobics by the Mekong river.

A nice night market is kept at the park, but the prices are high, and they don't want to bargain them down much. We bought a lock to our hotel rooms drawer, because there was no safety box anywhere.

Night market.

The park is a nice place to walk in and see the sunset and look across the Mekong river to the other side to see Thailand. It's so close that you could probably swim there in no time.

Don Chan Palace hotel on Laos side.

Mekong was quite dry in June. Thailand side isn't showing in this picture, it's on the right side.

Balloon vendor by the river.

A building in the park.

The Anouvong park is big.

A girl in the park.

King Chao Anouvong's 6 meter tall bronze statue at the park.  Anouvong fought for the independence of Laos from the Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) and though he won several victories, was finally defeated by King Rama III of Siam.

We spent four nights in Vientiane. First two were spent in Mixay Guesthouse near the river and cost 15 euros per night. We had AC, TV and an own bathroom. A shared balcony situated right behind our room facing the street, but luckily not much people spent time there, otherwise we couldn't have slept much. It was hard to sleep well though, because some ladyboys gathered every evening below our room on the street and they were very noisy. Because of them and the non-working internet we decided to change the hotel, as we needed the internet badly to plan our China trip.

A ladyboy below our room.

Around the corner from our hotel we found Paradise Guesthouse and because their internet worked we changed hotels, all in ten minutes.

This "paradise" cost 13 euros per night. It wasn't paradise though. Their elevator worked strangely, it didn't pick up people while going down. Also the hotel was covered in rulenotes; don't bring your own food to the hotel, wash laundry in the room, bring your laptop to the restaurant, the internet shuts down at 11.30 p.m. and the front door closes at the same time. One lady in the hotel was scary. She seemed insensitive and kept staring people with a straight face all the time, not even blinking her eyes! Again my imagination started running wild...

Some rulenotes.

Geez, what curtains!

Trying to recharge a tablet. These electric outlets
had seen their best days.

Bars on our window. Probably to keep thieves away.

Laos quiets down around 11 p.m. and the places close down then, even hotels. That's probably the reason why our hotel also close down at 11.30. Our internet connection was still working after that though. This closing down can sometimes be tricky. People haven't been able to access their hotels for the night, if they arrived too late. A couple we met later in Laos told us they had to sleep one night at a local hospital, because they arrived too late to their hotel. There's a good side to this too; the hotels do get very quiet after this. These hours may change depending on the place though. The island of Don Det closed down at ten p.m. And then there's the ladyboys of course, they work through the night!

We had a really good dinner at an Indian restaurant one night. Vegetarians easily find food here. There are even vegetarian restaurants, although Vientiane isn't a big city. Another Indian dinner we had, at a place called Fathima on the main street next to Mekong river, wasn't so good. The service on both restaurants wasn't very good. People in Vientiane seemed inexpressive and unkind, but this only seemed to be the case here, everywhere else in Laos we met very nice people. We also ate at a French owned restaurant Via Via, which was expensive. Their falafel was good, but the artichoke pizza was tasteless. Unlike in Thailand, the Lao people haven't yet discovered the importance of spices, herbs and sauces. Everywhere in Laos the food lacked these and they are very important for food to taste good. Not being born a vegetarian I know this also applies to meat dishes.

Chokdee Cafe, Belgian beer bar.

Vientiane is a nice city to rent a bike or a motorcycle and do sightseing that way. Cycling in the city is nowhere near as crazy as in Kuta or Lembongan in Indonesia. Funny how a small island such as Lembongan can be more crazier with traffic than the capital of one country!

Cycling in Vientiane.

First stop was That Dam, black stupa, in the roundabout
and center of Vientiane. Many Laotians believe it is
inhabited by a seven-headed nāga who tried to protect them
from an invasion by the Siamese army in 1827. Nāga is a
deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a
very great snake—specifically the king cobra.

We rented bikes for two days. Before that we had already walked around in the center, but with bikes we saw the main sights in three hours, taking some breaks at coffee shops and a cooldown at a Talat Sao shopping mall for cold drinks. We tasted durian waffle for the first time, and it was surprisingly good. The heat outside was unbearable, so we had to drink a lot. There's a lot of dust in the air cycling next to the cars and your skin gets very dirty from it, not to mention it dries your mouth too.

Durian waffles at the Talat Sao shopping mall.

We saw the Pha That Luang stupa from outside (you see enough of it from outside), the Unknown Soldiers Monument close to it, Patuxai Victory Gate, the Presidential Palace and a whole lot of temples.  

Patuxai Victory gate.

View from Patuxai.

View to another side to a government building.

Patuxai roof from inside.

Patuxai park. Unlike European, the Asian people use
parasols in the sun.

Pha That Luang stupa, the most important national monument and officially a national symbol of Laos.

A gate to the stupa.

Unknown Soldier's monument.

Pha That temple.

The entrance to the temple.

Inside the temple.

The temple Wat Thatluang Neua, located a few metres north
of the great stupa of Pha That Luang.

A detail of the temple.

We planned to get our visas to China from Laos, so that was one thing to do here. It's not easy here, but we had to get them, as China was our next destination. When we finished our plans for China and had our passport and photocopies made we cycled again, now to the Chinese embassy a little out of the city, some twenty minutes away by bike. When you get your visas for China you also have to show them your flight booking out of the country. We first planned to leave China from Shenzhen by ferry, but couldn't book the tickets from the internet and the embassy said you need flight bookings. We wanted to try and see if we could get the visas without the tickets, but they demanded them. So we cycled to the closest internet cafe to book flights out of China. The embassy didn't have no clue where the closest cafe would be, so we searched and found it in ten minutes. Now we had flights from Shenzhen to Kuala Lumpur.

Back to the embassy and the rest went smoothly, although we were waiting for them to ask more questions and forms we had with us; account balance was one of them. What they actually needed was the travel plan with hotel bookings and ticket to and out of the country, visa form, photos and passport. The visa form had some peculiar and even funny questions. We had booked hotels from China for the whole month, but weren't sure about using all of them and on those dates, as we wanted to leave some space for improvising. We weren't too sure about all what we wanted to see in China and sometimes you might come across something unexpected you want to see. But you still have to have your hotels booked for the whole stay. When we didn't use a hotel we just cancelled the booking before having to pay from it. The internet bookings can usually be cancelled without pay, if you cancel in time. The lady at the counter was really nice and informative. We were gonna pick up our passes after returning from Don Det, Pakse and Thakhaek in about a week.

We went to a massage once in Vientiane and it was very good. Magichand was located on the same street as Mixay Guesthouse close to it. It's always an experience to try massages in different cities and countries and the routines can be very colourful. Here the customers used locals clothes and I wore oversized mens clothes! In Kuta they smacked a cold gel mask on your eyes at the end of the massage and in Ubud you wore disposable underwear. With all the massages I have been to I'm used to all sorts of things, but sometimes I still get surprised and have a laugh. The mens clothes was a hilarious moment. The massage was great though.

Dhavara Boutique hotel.

Don Chan Palace hotel.

Wat Chan area.

Inpeng temple.

A lizard close to the street.

Local tuk-tuk. The name changes depending where you are (in Laos and elsewhere in Asia) and how big the three wheeled taxi is.

Next we travelled to Pakse, which is located 685 km away South from Vientiane. The bus left outside of the city and we were picked up by a minivan from our hotel at 6.30 p.m., also picking up other customers after us to the bus station. We reached the sleeper bus in an hour and again drove to another bus station in that. We finally left at 8.30 p.m. It was frustrating to wait all this time knowing that we could've taken our own ride to the station later and not sit that extra two hours in the bus for nothing.

We picked some food from the station while waiting and went back to the bus, where we just sat somewhere and didn't notice they had seat numbers in the tickets. This seat was good for Kari's broken leg with room to stretch it. But soon a local girl came demanding her seat and even when we asked her nicely to change seats with us because of Kari's leg, we again were faced with a very common thing in Asia; the locals are very keen on having the seat booked for them, even if it's a bad seat. It applies to many things. Maybe it's superstition or something else, but I never found out the reason behind this. They don't really care if you can't sit well on your seat, while they would fit just anywhere, being small like me, and be nice enough to change seats.

Our seats were upstairs. I liked being upstairs, you could see the views better, but even that we had a bed there I couldn't sleep at all during the twelve hour drive on the bumpy road. The time still went fast while watching the scenery and a movie from the laptop. Also having a comfy bed and the toilet in the bus eased the trip. You don't always get as comfy busses such as this. 

The bus aisle.

Our beds. Kari was not able to fully lie down. I was. That's
one good thing in being small.

More stories about Vientiane coming in the future, as we return to the city within the same month.
Next destination: Pakse.