The Lazy South

Hi again. I've been a little out of touch since the south is far less developed and less set up for tourists. We started out going down to Savanaket, which most travelers bypass, and maybe we should have taken that as a hint. The town itself had little going for it besides a few nice riverside cafes and a tiny dinosaur museum with only Lao and French captions. There are supposed to be nice areas further out in the province, but our rapidly dwindling visa only allowed us a day trek. It was nice, but nothing compared to the north. Our guides showed us endless herbal remedies and edible plants and we saw how they collect lamp oil from the trees. It just wasn't that wild of an area though so the only cool animals we saw were black swarms of daddy-long-legs that turned tree trunks black.

From Savanaket, we continued down the Mekong to Pakse, which is a little more substantial but not much more interesting. We just checked out bikes and rode out on the scorching road to a small waterfall where all the locals were. Mostly though, we wandered around the city and got a quick fix of internet and backpacker food.

Since Pakse wasn't really that cool, we went over to Tad Lo -a tiny town set up near three gorgeous waterfalls with a few small guesthouses. It's not much beyond a few quiet guesthouses and two small farming villages, but it was perfect. We stayed at a place called Tim's run by a Lao family and there was just an incredible group of people there. We spent our days hiking around to the waterfalls and relaxing. There were gorgeous blue-green pools between the falls where I'd go swimming with the local kids. At night, we always ate at the guesthouse because of the people who dropped in. One night, an aging hippy musician couple from Nashville broke out a guitar and I got to hear an acoustic tribute to James Brown.

Once again though, the remains of war crept back into sight. It all blended in at first, but then slowly I began to notice little pieces everywhere: a bomblet sitting on the bookshelf, an artillery shell made into a lamp, a napalm canister turned into a BBQ grill. (To the panicking mother: the mortar shell and bomblet I'm holding are quite empty and quite safe. Stop hyperventilating, take deep breaths and relax.) Not only that, but there were countless shallow depressions in the ground which may or may not have been craters. Clearly the locals know how to take advantage of the situation though. When we went to the furthest waterfall, a dozen or so kids assigned themselves as guides. Each one wanted to be the leader so they kept showing us different parts of the same intertwined system of paths. Heading back, when we ignored one kid, he shouted "No! Bomb! Boom boom!." Now that certainly got my attention until I realized the way he was talking about was the way we had come and the way the other locals had gone. When we went down the path, he followed the same way.

Tad Lo was incredible, but with our visa running out, we decided to head further off the beaten track to a city called Attapeu. Strike two. Apparently there's a reason why it's not really mentioned in the guide books. There were a couple small cheap guesthouses, but not much to do except more of the same riverside cafes and biking to villages. We didn't even make it far either, because the only bikes we could find were tiny junky things sized for munchkins, not full-grown adults. I must have looked like a circus monkey riding on that thing with my legs barely unfolded and arms pulled in tight. Why, oh why, did I listen to my sister and not get the motorbike?! So what if I don't know how to ride one -that's a minor inconvenience at best.

The one cool thing that happened is that we found another novice monk who wanted to practice his English. We talked for a while our first night with half a dozen young novices and one tattooed monk lingering curiously around us. Nikon asked us to come back the next night to meet his brother, so we did and we spent a couple more hours chatting with them. Again, I was reluctant to take pictures until Nikon whipped out his camera-phone and started doing it himself. Then he practically insisted that we take pictures. When he was finally satisfied, he dragged me and the Austrian guy who was with us back to his room so we could put the photos on their shared computer -a nicer computer than mine too. I was a little surprised by the novices quarters but I guess I shouldn't have been. They had been playing Lao rock on the computer when we came in, but switched over to Usher and the Black Eyed Peas in our honor. On one wall they had newspaper clippings, which I suspected were there less for the article on Condoleeza Rice than for the models in the ads. A pack of cigarettes -for monks only, not novices- was sitting on the desk. All this was in a small room with holes in the clapboard walls and a single small bed for the monk. Novices sleep on the floor. The monk got really ticked off at the novices though since so many of them had skipped their prayers. Nikon was excused because he was practicing English with us, but if we hadn't been there, he said, the monk would have beaten the others.

Susanna wasn't allowed in their living area or the temple, so we went into kind of an auxiliary temple building to talk some more. The walls were covered with murals depicting a series of stories that Nikon couldn't explain and a bizarre set that showed in graphic detail all the nasty things that happen to bad people when they die: liars having their tongues pulled out by demons, birds tearing the entrails from murderers, and adulterers violated cruelly by demons with swords. So much for the friendly Buddha.

Now we're back in Pakse for the night to catch up on internet and take care of errands. We're off south to Champasak in the morning and then moving on into Cambodia. I'll write more when I get the chance but that may be a while. Miss you all.