Sah - Bah - Deeeee

Or in other words, Hello! I don't know how you spell it, but that's how you say it and its currently my favourite word! You can say it at any number of speeds and I like to prolong the "Deeee" sound which I've noticed a lot of the locals doing. One of my other favourite words is "Spatchcock", its a classic I know and quite appropriate to Laos as on any bus journey (a nightmare), as soon as the bus stops, women gather near any open window bearing spatchcock chickens on sticks! I would have one, they look kinda tasty, but we always seem to see them late in the day and so you know they've been sitting around all day covered in flies...mmmm. They sell pretty much anything on a stick, bugs, meat things and....eggs, yes with the shell on, three eggs to a stick?? How weird is that :) Still, better that three spiders on a stick!
Well we've been busy little people since we last blogged and are now sitting in Vientiane, the capitol of Laos (see map children). We've done some heavy duty proper traveling this time, none of your namby pamby tourist buses, oh no, but more on the journey from hell in the next blog.
We left you whilst we were in Pakse and it was an alright kinda place, not good, not bad really, but we did get ourselves on a couple of nice trips. Unlike Vietnam and Cambodia, in Laos you have to organize everything yourself, a bit of a shock, but fine once you get on with it. In the other country's if you wanted to go somewhere, you would wander down to the hotel reception and they would sort it all out for you, very nice, thanks. We wanted to go and see Wat Phu in Champasak, about 50k (35 miles?) south of Pakse, so we ended up taking a tuc tuc. Well I copped a right strop about it, these are tiny tuc tucs and you use them to get about town, 2-3k maybe, but 100k there and back?? After I got over myself (girlfriend) it wasn't too bad, but we got a lot of looks from the locals, you don't see any tuc tucs outside of the towns. After 50k of tuc tuc and ferry cross the ...river and being soaked several times by drunk Laotians and their kids (it was still New Year) we arrived at the Wat. It was built donkeys years ago by the same people that brought you Angkor Wat and you could really see the similarities, after all its not really that far to Angkor. It was a real steep climb up lots of stairs, luckily not daft ones a la Angkor and a pretty nice view of the surrounding countryside once you got up top. At the top was an ancient little temple, monks included and we spent a lot of time looking for a boulder with an elephant carved into it. We found it, it was an elephant and we also found a crocodile carving that may have been used for human sacrifice, nice! It all turned out to be well worth the 100k trip there and back.
Our second little sojourn out of Pakse was to a couple of delightful waterfalls. We'd met a nice couple called Rob and Faye (Hello guys!) and we all trooped off in a 'Sawengthaw' (pronounced Song Telle) and is a truck version of the tuc tuc. The first waterfall was called 'Tat Fan' and was on the Bolaven Plateau which is famous for its coffee, we bought a massive bag for 60p. You wander down through some trees and come out to gaze across a massive rip in the jungle and across the other side a waterfall that plummets 120 meters down to the bottom. It looked like something out of Jurassic Park, I expected to see pterodactyl flying about. We then drove onto the second waterfall which was called 'Tat Lo' and was even more impressive. It wasn't as high as the other one, but you could get really close to it and the scenery and atmosphere was really tranquil. Here is the gorgeous Samantha next to it!
On the walk back from the waterfall, we were heading to our sawengthaw when I spotted something in a tree. I had a second look and to my horror / amazement it was the biggest spider I'd ever seen! We all went over for a closer look and it was sitting in a web at least a meter wide and it was easily as big as your hand (not yours Jeremy), absolutely massive!! Of course the one time I forget my zoom lens I needed it, so I've zoomed in to this photo on the computer, hence slightly blurred. I looked it up on the net and its called a 'Giant wood spider', we've been on our guard whenever we've been in a jungle / forest since! Its not poisonous apparently, but because its so massive it could give you a nasty bite. That day was a real insect day, we also saw an incredibly hairy catapiller and later, a Preying Mantis in our hotel.

Laos slideshow