Day 311: Taken for a ride

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. 

Day 310: Where are we going to sleep tonight?

This morning we had breakfast at a place opposite Mr Mo's, having a giggle as a little tabby cat jumped onto a nearby table between two French girls and they struggled to find a way to get it off (just pick it up!). After packing and checking out we walked down to the pier and sat for some time in the stifling heat, chatting to Josh and his girlfriend, a British couple who had been on our horror journey up from Cambodia and had moved into the same guesthouse as us on our recommendation. When the boats arrived we all hopped in and made the short journey across to the mainland, then shouldered our packs and trudged up to the ATMs and bus station. While we were waiting for our bus, we bumped into Laura and Sam from Chi Phat, who had been staying on Don Khon, and the Dutch girls we had met a few days ago during our walk around Don Det. 

Most of the people on our bus were heading up to Vientiane, and they were visibly surprised and perhaps a tad concerned when the bus stopped and dropped us off in what certainly appeared to be the middle of nowhere. But this was Kilometre 48, location of the turn-off to our destination for tonight - another CBET (community-based ecotourism project), set up by a group of conservation NGOs in the village of Kiet Ngong. After we got our bags off the bus, we started trying to figure out how we were going to make the journey up into the hills to the village. But although there was a sign pointing up the road to the CBET, there was no other information and not that many other people – just a few women cooking chicken over charcoal grills. We had read that there was a national park office where you could organise a lift, but there was no sign of the office nor any indication of how far away it was. 

Just as we decided that our only options were to walk (not appealing, given the heat and the uncertain distances) or to hitch a ride, a van with a load of bricks in the back came around the corner. Kate ran over and convinced the driver to stop – and to give us a lift – and I chucked the bags in the back and jumped in after them while Kate and the girls climbed up front with the driver. As we drove up through forest-clad hills along an alternatively dusty and muddy road (passing the national park office several kilometres from the turn-off), Kate had a rudimentary conversation with the driver, ascertaining that he was from Vietnam but not much more. He dropped us off at the turn-off to the village and refused to take any money from us. We still had a kilometre to walk along a very muddy road, so the girls changed out of their flip-flops/thongs and into shoes and we set off. 

When we reached the village, we walked past a few houses, a guesthouse and some very basic shops and then arrived at the visitor centre, where there were some displays about the animals and activities in the area, and group of people watching some sort of lurid Asian costume drama on television. A lanky man with a slightly gormless expression on his face came down the steps and greeted us with wide-open arms, saying Kate's name and introducing himself as Toui, with whom Kate had been corresponding about a possible guesthouse stay. He apologised profusely for not replying to her most recent email, but, he explained, his wife was in hospital and had just given birth to a son via caesarian section. And then he apologised again, and explained again. And again.

He suggested that someone went with him to look at the guesthouse, so while I joined him on his scooter (he first suggested that I drive, but not being terribly experienced at riding a scooter on a paved road, let alone a slippery, muddy one, I declined), Kate and Zoe set off to walk a kilometre further along the road to the Kingfisher eco-lodge, which was the other accommodation option Kate had been exploring, and Sarah stayed in the visitor centre to look after the bags. When we reached the bungalows, Toui took me up some stairs to the middle one, but then discovered, to his evident surprise, that it was locked. He went off and got some keys and then stood there looked at them in confusion for a while before handing them all over to me. I miraculously found the right key first go, unlocked the lock and went in. The bungalow was nice enough – very basic, with a double bed, a fan and a small bathroom, bit evidently quite new and clean – but with only the one bed, it seemed too small for us, and as the price was pretty steep, we couldn't really afford two. The two of us then stood around awkwardly for a little while before I headed back downstairs. Was I supposed to walk back now? Thankfully not - after a while, Toui rejoined me and we hopped back on the bike and rode back to the visitor centre.

When I got back there, Sarah and I wandered around the gardens for a while, trying to get away from Toui's incessant babbling about his wife in the hospital. Sarah tried to ask him if his son had a name yet, but although his English seemed pretty good, and although she tried phrasing the question in a number of different ways, he just looked at her blankly. I also asked him about the possibility of doing an elephant ride, and although he agreed that yes, he could arrange elephant rides, he said nothing more about it and refused to be drawn further on the subject. By this stage we were beginning to wonder if Toui was all there...

We wandered away again and finally managed to successfully detach ourselves, and were looking in a bush at a lizard Sarah had spotted when we noticed some movement nearby and looked up to see several elephants ambling into the garden and offload their passengers at a sort of elephant passenger terminal. Sarah could barely contain her excitement and it only got worse when Toui called us over and invited her to touch one of the elephants. As we watched the group disembark and head for their cars, I noticed a young local girl who seemed to be in charge of the operation, and as she made to leave the centre, I asked her if she organised the elephant rides. As I started to speak, she turned to me with fear in her eyes, raised her arm as if she was trying to shield herself from me and hurried away, saying something in Laotian. Weird...

A little while later, Kate and Zoe arrived back. Their shoes were caked in the sticky red mud that we had done our best to walk around on our way here, but which they had had to walk through to get to and from the Kingfisher lodge. They reported that the lodge's were too small and very expensive, so we were going to have to find something else to stay. There were two places on the road opposite the visitor centre that had signs saying that they were guesthouses so Kate and I hunted about for someone to show us the rooms. While we were looking, we saw Toui ride past on his scooter. What we saw in the guesthouses was so grim that we walked back to the visitor centre to ask some of the people we had seen earlier about other places to stay, but when we got there everyone had disappeared. So now we were alone in the village with nowhere to stay and no-one to ask about alternatives. We walked around for a while trying to find someone who spoke English or knew Toui, but without success. After about an hour or so, it occurred to me that Toui may not have locked the bungalows – perhaps we could just let ourselves in and stay there.

I walked back and just before I got to the bungalows I saw a group of people standing around a big woodpile, with big sticks in their hands. I figured that there was probably a snake in there somewhere, and the hand signals the people frantically started making to me confirmed my supposition. Indeed, it looked from their signals as if it might be a cobra. I immediately set to work helping to move the wood, the locals all looking at me as if I was crazy and making frantic biting signals. I nodded to let them know I understood and went back to work. I eventually lifted a large piece of wood and saw a large striped snake underneath – not a cobra and, I was pretty certain, not venomous. I quickly put the piece of wood back down and gestured for everyone to back off. I then lifted the piece of wood off again and grabbed the snake's tail as it tried to escape. As I lifted the snake clear of the wood, the locals all piled in and started trying to hit it with their sticks. So there I was with a very irate 1.5-metre snake swinging about, mouth wide open, trying desperately to bite me and several Laotian villagers doing their best to hit it with big sticks. Dividing my attention between snake and villagers, I waved them all back again and gestured for one of them to hand over their stick, which I then used to pin the snake's head on the ground so that I could get hold of it. An audible sigh ran through the group as I held up the now slightly calmer snake and one of the villagers stepped forward to touch it. I gestured to the group that I was going to take the snake down the road and release it and as no-one seemed to object, that's just what I did, followed all the way by the guy who had touched the snake.

Excitement over, I went across the road to the bungalows. Sure enough, the one that I had looked in with Toui was open, with the fan and lights still on and the key in the lock. I walked back up the road to tell the others the good news and found Kate talking to an old guy on a motorbike outside the visitor centre. He was one of the elephant handlers, and on the basis of what we've seen, one of the only people in the village with any idea of how the whole CBET thing is meant to work. He had seen Kate and come over to see if she wanted to ride an elephant, despite the fact that he clearly had only the most rudimentary English at his disposal. Through the usual mixture of spoken word, hand gestures, arm waving and notebook action, we managed to agree a time for us to meet for a ride tomorrow morning. On the basis of our experiences this far, we weren't keen to stay another night in the village, so we next tried to ascertain whether a ride at that time would get us back to the visitor centre in time to catch the bus to the town of Pakse, from where we hoped to get an overnight bus to Vientiane. It seemed as though he understood the question, but his response was to nod and smile and say 'No.' Repeatedly. No matter how we phrased the question. We eventually took this to mean yes, thanked him, grabbed our bags and walked back to the bungalow. With the sun setting over the rather idyllic wetland that was situated behind the bungalows, everything finally seemed to have turned out alright. We even managed to spot some little yellow frogs in the tall grass that filled the wetland. 

 

 

We walked back into the village to buy some snacks for tomorrow's journey and then found somewhere to have a pretty decent meal for dinner. When we got back to the bungalows we switched to one that had glass in the windows – in the hope of minimising the mosquitoes – and then stood out on the little balcony in the pitch dark watching the little glowing embers of a myriad of fireflies floating over the wetland, before going inside and getting ready for bed.

After we had been in the bungalow for a short while we heard a scooter drive up and someone coming up the stairs outside. I went outside and was surprised and slightly disconcerted to discover that it wasn't Toui. He spoke to me in Laotian and then handed over his phone. There was a woman on the line who spoke pretty good, if heavily accented English. She explained that I should pay the money for the bungalow to her brother, who I assumed was the guy before me. I thanked the woman, handed back the phone and then gave the guy to 100,000 kip that I was pretty sure would cover the cost of the bungalow. But when I handed the cash over, the guy seemed far too pleased to see it. He even hugged me. It just didn't feel right, so I got him to get the woman back on phone. This was her brother, right? I'm meant to give him the money, right? It should be 100,000 kip, right? Well, it seemed okay, so I gave back the phone and the guy hugged me a couple more times. It even felt as though he kissed my neck, although in hindsight, I began to think that he had been sniffing me.

But then, finally, he left and I went back into the bungalow. And then Toui arrived. He seemed a bit emotional and asked me if someone had let us into the bungalow. I was a bit concerned that he as going to be angry that we had just let ourselves in, but when I explained what we had done, he looked even more pained, said 'I'm crying' and walked over to the railing around the balcony leaned against it, his head hanging low. When he had composed himself, he came back and apologised ad said something about his wife and son in the hospital. I wasn't completely sure whether his 'tears' were over something that had gone wrong at the hospital or distress at abandoning us, but as we talked some more, it appeared to be the latter. But he managed to cheer up a little and when I said that we had arranged for an elephant ride tomorrow, he brightened up and said that he would go and find out if that was all organised.

I went back inside, but was called back again soon after when Toui returned to announce that he couldn't find the guy. He apologised some more, talked about his wife and son in the hospital again and then hugged me a couple of times and told me that he would be staying in the bungalow next door if we needed anything in the night. And then I went back inside and went to sleep. It had been a long day.