Can you believe it took 24 hours of constant travel to go 600 odd km's? mind you these bus drivers go down every dusty back street in every town throwing more net bags of live chickens on to the roof of the bus, I'm sure a few of the poor beasties must die before they reach their destination.
My last post was ten days ago, I didn't realise it would be so long, from Attapu I went back to Paksie and then on down to Don Det and the 4000 Islands, it is very laid back down there and they are still only on generator electricity so I didn't have the opportunity to fire up the computer really.
OK how to squeeze the last ten days into a single post.
Here on the Island every rice farmer has realised he can supplement his income by knocking up a couple of bungalows along the edge of his property next to the river, there are some quite nice ones and some getting a bit ratty ones, mine was merrily being munched out from around me by termites, but the bungalow owner didn't seem to mind too much when I told him about it. Living here though is like living on a farm, pigs, chickens, morning roosters and all.
Sitting on the balcony in my hammock was great, reading books from the collection in the restaurant and watching the world drift on by down the Mekong, my bungalow was opposite a large wat and boat loads of monks would occasionally head one or other way up the river with spare saffron robes wound like turbans to keep the sun off, there was a regular flow of people in conical bamboo hats paddling up and down, hiring a boat in the morning or evening to wander aimlessly about the islands and watching the fisher folk became a favourite hobby.
My bungalow is on sunrise, as the heat in the afternoon is pretty intense and luckily I have found a bar on sunset beach which makes potent "Lao lao" Mojitos for drinking while watching the sunset.
The sunsets may be great, but you should see the moonrise, it's fantastic, glowing bright cerise which fades to pink as it rises higher, I don't think I have ever seen anything like it!
Irrawaddy river dolphins, some of the rarest creatures on earth live just a few kilometers south of the bungalow I stayed in, we caught a boat out to visit them, they appeared to be having a fairly chilled out morning. it's weird though, despite knowing this, locals drop plastic bags into the river as if it were a garbage disposal unit and foreigners (who should know better) get drunk ad throw their cigarette butts in too.
The water here is a little startling some of it! my favourite is the one that proclaims "disinfection by uv rays", great so it is scooped out of a muddy puddle after it has sat in the sun all day?
Went and saw the widest waterfall in Sth east asia, the waterfalls are all a little unimpressive at this time of year, but I can imagine this one is really impressive in rainy season.
At the market my bus stopped at on the way back up here to vientiane I saw somebody actually buy a rat on a stick! (maybe it was a mouse), I even took a photo, they also had little plastic bags seething with live bugs, maybe thats our problem in the west we don't buy packets of fresh bugs and take them home to our kitchens we spend all our time in misguided attempts to get rid of them. Just imagine next time your at the cinema a packet of freshly roasted mixed bugs instead of popcorn, mmmmm.
Did I mention how many bloody French tourists are here? they love to ask intellectual questions like "In my country this is called a baguette, what do you call it" to which the waitress (remarkably restrained I thought) merely replied "a baguette" no mention of the fact that if it hadn't been for you colonising bastards they wouldn't be any bloody baguettes.
Better go pick up my passport.
Love Nikki Jayne
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