The alarm went off
at 5am this morning and we were packed and out of the room by 5.25am.
When we walked out to the road, the elephant guy from last night was
waiting at the gate on his motorbike, which was a good sign. We
walked with our bags to the visitors centre, passing an extremely
large black scorpion on the road, and when we got there, we shoved
our bags under the day bed behind the desk in the 'office' and walked
over to the special stairs that had been erected to allow passengers
to climb on board the elephants. The elephant guy then asked to be
paid. I handed over 240,000 kip – the amount indicated on a price
schedule on the noticeboard in the 'office'. However, the guy
immediately indicated that this wasn't enough – he wanted 400,000.
Given the way that things are in Southeast Asia, we figured that we
were being ripped off and aborted, apologising to the elephant guy
and walking back to the visitors centre. As we walked away, he pulled
out his phone and called someone. Not long after, the girl who
shielded herself yesterday when I asked if she organised the elephant
rides turned up. And yes, apparently, she does indeed organise the
elephant rides. She went into the 'office', unlocked a drawer and
pulled out a book of tickets, which showed that the price of a ride
was 200,000 kip. We showed her the piece of paper on the wall and she
pointed to a line of text at the bottom saying that it was from 2008
– we suggested that perhaps it was time to take it down from the
wall; the elephant guy agreed.
We went back outside
and climbed up on our elephants – Kate and Sarah on one and Zoe and
I on the other – and set off on our ride (which was a birthday
present to the girls from my mum). The animals had a slow, rocking
gait and we swayed from side to side in the little wicker 'sofa' that
had been placed on the elephant's back, the handler sitting in front
on the elephant's neck. After walking down the road a short way we
took a turn-off that took us past rice paddies in which farmers were
already at work. The road then started to climb up and into some
thick rainforest, where huge, ancient trees rose up on either side of
us. Zoe and I were on a smaller, faster elephant and its handler had
to force it to take a weaving path so that it didn't overtake Kate
and Sarah's elephant.
After about half an
hour, the road took us up and out of the forest onto a big rock
outcrop, where we got some great views down onto the plains, over
thick rainforest where early-morning cloud lurked among the trees.
The elephants dropped us off at another set of stairs and we walked
up to where there were some ancient ruins – essentially a series of
dry-stone-wall-style pillars built for reasons that are now unclear,
whether religious or military. We wandered among them for a little
while and then climbed back aboard our elephants for the journey back
down to the visitor centre.
We arrived back in
plenty of time to meet the bus to Pakse – indeed with enough time
to walk up the road and buy some more snacks (breakfast) from one of
the little village stores. The 'bus', when it arrived, was less bus
than covered truck with some benches in the back. We chucked our bags
in and climbed aboard, finding some space among the locals and their
belongings. These included a big bag of what appeared to be large
freshwater snails balanced on a large covered tin pot. When the owner
of the bag got off, the 'bus conductor' removed the lid of the pot to
reveal a huge squirming mass of small brown eels.
We eventually
arrived in Pakse at about 10am. We ignored the crowd of tuk-tuk
drivers around us and went to the ticket office in the bus station,
only to learn that we were, naturally, at the wrong bus station to
get a sleeper bus up to Vientiane. So, we found a driver and asked
him to take us to the bus station where we could catch a VIP
overnight bus. Rather than taking us to a bus station, he took us to
what appeared to be a bus office, on the main road, where there was
indeed, a big sleeper bus. When we enquired within, they assured us
that the bus was going to Vientiane, so we grabbed our bags, bought
our tickets and settled in for the long wait – the bus wasn't due
to leave until 8pm.
To kill some time, I
ventured out into the prodigious heat to see what Pakse had to offer.
On first examination, the answer was not much, but then I found the
entrance to the central market, which proved to be a very big market
indeed. I wandered around for a while, through the clothing,
jewellery, luggage and packaged food sections and eventually emerged
into a huge hangar-like area that housed an amazing food hall.
Walking back into town, I found a supermarket and a coffee shop and
then went back to the bus office to report on my findings.
It was about
lunchtime by now, so we all walked back to the market to have lunch
in the food hall and then walked up the road to the check out the
supermarket. Through force of habit, I perused the wine section and
was amazed at the range – classed-growth Bordeaux, top-quality
Champagne and premium Penfold's, including a bottle of 2005 Bin 707
for the equivalent of about US$500. We then went to the coffee shop
and sat for a very long time, savouring the air conditioning and
using the wi fi to try to find somewhere to stay tomorrow night.
After a while, I started to get nervous about our bags, which were
just sitting in the waiting room at the bus office, so I headed back
through a light shower to go and sit with them.
Then, finally, at
8pm we were given the signal to board the bus. As we climbed aboard,
we checked out the other passengers and it looked as though we were
the only Westerners. Our beds were up on the top floor near the back.
When we settled in, we had a closer look at the bus. From what we
could see, it hadn't been purpose-built as a sleeper bus – someone
had gutted an ordinary double-decker bus and rebuilt the inside to
create a series of little compartments on either side of a central
aisle. Not only were the compartments very narrow (making the thought
of sharing one with a stranger a little flesh-crawling – and we had
heard some stories...), they were also mostly very short. Thankfully,
we had been given one of the few longer ones – we had planned for
Kate to sleep with Sarah and for Zoe to sleep with me, but Kate and I
were both too tall to sleep in one of the compartments and had to
sleep together in the other. We did have quite a while to closely
examine our surroundings as the bus didn't leave until 9pm – we had
apparently been waiting for another connecting bus that was running
late, as when one last couple boarded, we finally got under way.
Unsurprisingly, the road wasn't the best, potholed and bumpy, and
neither Kate nor I slept very well.
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