Maybe it’s true that the fun can’t just keep coming, because
after our adventures flying through the jungle we were ‘rewarded’ with a day of
travel-hell, enduring a 12 hour bus journey (that was only expected to last for
6 hours) and getting our first true taste of the difficulties of public
transport in Laos. And we thought ‘Cambodia time’ was frustrating! In fairness,
our bus did break down, but this had the knock-on effect of encouraging our
driver to hover at each pick-up for the next collection time, meaning we could
be hanging around for up to an hour instead of a few minutes at each stop. Food
was proving difficult to come by too, so we endured the day eating a savoury
type of rice crispie cake and not much else. Suffice to say, the journey was a
significant low-point, which wasn’t helped by finding ourselves in Tha Khaek
with an elusive hostel to track down. We walked up and down a few dark alleys
and got barked at by some suspicious dogs before finding the main road, and the
hostel was just not there! We kept asking around and eventually a kind Laotian
family offered us a ride to the hostel (when they figured out where it was
themselves, which involved rallying the neighbours together to discuss the
possibilities!). This led to an interesting two minute motorbike journey with
our enormous bags on - I don’t think the bikes were used to 25kg of extra weight
on board, plus another person... We tried to thank them for the ride, but they
refused to accept any money from us – maybe it was an entertaining distraction,
as there was a lot of laughter, possibly at our expense! This experience ranks as the highlight of Tha Khaek for us - genuine Laotian hospitality and happy smiles all round. However it was great
to finally get to our hostel, eat some real food, and crawl into bed.
Our hostel proved to be a lovely place, and its
out-of-the-way location was a positive thing once we were settled in as it was
very peaceful, with a lovely courtyard to sit in and enjoy the sunset with a
cold beer. The rooms were great too, very spacious and clean. The hostel was
the best part about our experience in Tha Khaek in the end, as we couldn’t get
on to a tour of the Kong Lo cave during our stay, so all we did the next day
was amble around Tha Khaek town after a much-needed lay-in. If we hadn’t been
quite so fed up after the previous day we may have appreciated Tha Khaek more –
it was a sleepy, Mekong-adjacent town with some beautiful French villas, and
riverside restaurants and bars we could have tried out. We also dealt with the
horrors of day to day admin and then enjoyed the pleasures of Skyping home,
which made the day a bit less of a write-off. After putting the computers away
we had dinner while the sun set in the hostel courtyard and got chatting to a
drunken Aussie who was a little annoying but also quite entertaining (as long
as you didn’t rise to his often racist, homophobic or sexist comments! - which
I didn’t always manage, but nevermind, there weren’t any major fallings out). It
was still a pleasant evening, and we could relax knowing we’d caught up with some of the blogging, sorting
through photos, hostel bookings and route planning we needed to do to save us
some hassle in the next few days. (You wouldn’t believe that catching up on
such things happened of course, considering this is coming to you four months
later!)
The next day we were heading to Vientiane, the capital of
Laos, and although it involved another protracted bus journey (shudder) we were
looking forward to a new day and a new place to clear our heads and reboot.
