Browsing Tag

Laos

Travel

From Monks and Bus Rides | Laid-Back Laos | Part II

Hi there,
here we are with part two of Laos. Which is actually a chain of horrible bus rides up north. If we speak of “horrible” we rather mean totally (!) uncomfortable and long then unsafe. Maybe both, but most of the trips are safe or at least not too obvious dangerous.

Two ways to leave Tad Lo: going back to Pakse and taking a VIP sleeper to Vientiane, or going “local” across the land ;-) guess what, we went for the latter.
Next target were some huge Caves called “Kong Lor Cave”. Very recommendable, people say. Getting there from Tad Lo approximately 20h with local vehicles. So we split it up and went for Takhek, which are still 14h direction Vientiane. It was fun and exhausting at the same time. Driving 4,5 hours on the back of a truck with local people and lot of things to deliver, like 3 meter boards etc. was one stage at the very beginning. The street may not be drivable during rainy season but now it was just a dusty off-road kind of way. You do not feel your butt anymore after this. Trust me! We had good connections though and jumped on a local bus right after this. It was surprisingly not very crowded and we got some sleep. Bad thing: They through us out of the bus in Savanaketh because we were the only people in the bus. No people no bus. We got told the connection bus should leave in 20 min right away. Somehow this people are not around anymore if 20 min are over and you go to ask about the bus and then it suddenly leaves in 1,5 hours! Thanks a lot!
And to top it all, we got the worst seats in the back, a Lao lady next to us that seemed to have not taken one breath during the 4 hours!! And this bus was stopping literally every kilometer to get people in the already totally full bus. No kidding!

Continue Reading

Travel

Sabaidee | Laid-back Laos | Part I

Hello everybody!

Oh my Buddha ;-) it’s been almost two month now that we are away from home and as we type this we are just sitting in a Thai bus heading to Chiang Rai. Back home they got the first snow and Christmas flair and feeling is all over the place. Nothing to see about this here though. Neither snow, nor Christmas feelings coming up. But to be honest, it could ;-) as its wintertime here in South East Asia as well.
We left Laos behind and we realized that we haven’t blogged about it. So here we go for part one:

We left Siem Reap very early in the morning. Before sunrise. Having an overpriced 13h trip ahead we hopped for good conditions. Looking back they were not bad but at the time we were a bit scared as the minibus driver though we are in a race he got to win. No kidding we were really happy as we changed to another as bus about half the trip to the so-called “4000 islands”
We choose Don Det to hang out a couple of days to enjoy the famous “Laos style” which is pretty much doing nothing than “testing” hang mats.
We saw the best sunset so far on our trip (check out the time-lapse below) the other day and could not resist getting bikes and cycling around on the island.

We had the impression, that this island was just made up for tourists and indeed there were lot of those very “cool” travelers. Also the staff working on the island did not look happy to be there and was thus not very friendly.
So we did not stay long and took a boat/minibus trip to Pakse. This trip got famous as “ticket-ticket-ticket”-trip because we had to show our tickets almost twenty times to the same person again and again.

Continue Reading