The beautiful 'paradise falls' very close to
Pakse
Sight survey at coffee plantation, did I mention the dust
The bizzare Pakse variant of Tuk Tuk's
"I'm sorry I don't do hills"
Tom on the sleeper bus
looking forward to sharing a bunk with someone
with sleep apnea
Site survey of potential site for Coffee factory
never done a site survey before being lead by
a man witha machete before.
The victoriuos trivia team
team' Richard Dawkings Bible Class'
Inside the night bus
Sadly no appearance by Marilyn Monroe
Honoured guests at Baci
Tom with his plate of offerings
The Baci, no less than 9 Monks
The view of the Mekong from our hotel room
The Champasake Grands hotel
The high street of Pakse, enough said
"Operation Expresso" now complete
The Blue Flame
The Morning view from my balcony
Quite a while since my last blog, I have been experiencing technical difficulties uploading pictures to the blog site, I might even change my blog service, so the next blog may have a different look; same old drivel but in a new package, hey; I should be in marketing. Needless to say been a back log of all sorts of stuff going on and loads of pictures, which of course you can’t see.
OK; I can cover some of the photos that I have managed to upload. The first up is ‘operation expresso’ is now complete and I now have the unadulterated pleasure of sipping ‘the best coffee in Laos’ whilst watching the sunrise over the paddy field in front of my house. As with Erawan, facing East, I do not have a good sunset to look at, but the sunrises are spectacular. I do like the house I have but it main feature is this beautiful view I have in the morning. Its worth getting up early for.
Next big news in the last month is a purchase of a motorcycle. A Korean made Kolao ‘New Rio- I’. which are better than the Chinese things but not as good as the Honda’s or Suzuki’s. It became available at a good price, friends of Edwards heading back to the states, and are wanting to shed all the ‘baggage’ that you accumulate during your stay, one of which is ‘The Blue Flame’ as she is now christened. (See my first rantings; as any ride will tell you, a bike has to have a name otherwise it will never get into bike heaven)
This last month also included my first ‘work away’ trip to Pakse, deep in the south of Laos in Champasake province. Travel arrangements got a little complicated as initially the customer was going to come to pick us up but because of the Chinese new year none of the drivers were available. So it was all agreed (not by me I might add) that the Night Bus which is a ‘Sleeper Bus’ was the best option. I was for the Day Bus but I was told that the day bus is a ‘local’ bus which stops at every stop (add images of goats and chickens) and took in the region of 12 hours, this put me off. I was assured that the sleeper bus is VIP and you get a big comfortable bunk and is easy to get a good night sleep. I reluctantly agreed. The comfortable bunk turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, small bunk which was hard a rock and small pillow and sheet and YOU HAVE TO SHARE and NO DUNNY, this is a 10 hour journey remember. There was a stop at 1:00 am in Takhe hek which was dump of stop and were charged to use their revolting toilets ( OK at this point I had reached my ‘Bo bpen yang’ limit and was having a sense of humour failure.) The sleeper bus was ‘an experience’ which is probably the kindest thing I can say about it.
Anyway we arrived at Pakse at 6:30 AM and were greeted by Pong who was going to be our driver for the nest three days. He took us directly to our hotel which was the best in town the ‘Champasake Grand hotel’ which and our room had a commending view of the Mekong which is unbelievably wide at this point. Can’t say I thought much of Pakse, bit of a bump really, but the surrounding countryside is quite spectacular. Possibly the most memorable thing was yet another variation on the ‘tuk tuk’, possibly the most bizarre variant yet. Consisting of a 100 cc motorbike, oddly two stroke sports style, mainly Kawasaki’s with drop handle bars, with a odd looking rickshaw style side car, with a seat capable of taking 1 ½ people. When you put three people on it and add the rider/driver it did tend to take the ‘sparkle’ from the performance. The driver said he would take us back to the hotel but wasn’t prepared to attempt the slight incline heading to the hotel entrance.
The ‘team’ are working for a Coffee plantation. The customer is looking at building a sizable coffee processing plant up on the Champasake Plato, the centre of Laos coffee industry, apparently ideal conditions for growing coffee. They want to use solar power to dry the coffee beans which as far as we know is not done in Asia at all at the moment. It was an interesting trip and good to get out of the office, although 3 days to do a ‘solar survey’ seemed excessive. I will qualify this by saying that it is absolutely essential to visit the site (or in this case a choice of three sites), especially in a country where all information is not volunteered. But the fact that it is on a ‘Plato’ indicated that there shouldn’t be too much in the way of obstructions to the sun. The proposed sites were as you expect at this stage, just sites, although in this case it is Jungle, so finding our way through to the extremities of the site required the use of a machete. There were a number of tall trees which were in the neighbouring properties which I raised questions about but was assured that they were “not a problem”. The main memory I have of the place is just the astonishing amount of dust that was stirred up into mini red whirlwinds just by looking at it.
The trip included an impromptu attendance of a Baci (a Buddhist blessing) at the hotel as guests of our customers who had some family members involved with hotel. We were honoured guests and were treated to a superb breakfast which included ‘Laos Laos’, a rather nasty Laos whiskey, if you didn’t have any further plans for the day. We were introduced to a good deal of the attendees, including I have to say some ‘interesting local business personalities’ As we hadn’t brought our own offerings Myself and Tom were given a plate to offer to the monks, consisting of sticky rice and locally made candy bars.
Earlier this month was abundantwaters.org trivia nite which was organised by Sunny and his house mates plus others. A hugely entertaining evening which was MC’d by Sunny himself and true to form descended into utter chaos (which is a good thing). Dispute over answers were thrown open to the floor until the resolution was achieved by who made the loudest noise, mob rule, brilliant!!!. In all the chaos, confusion, ample amounts of Beer Laos and some real good food, our team ‘ Richard Dawkins Bible Class’ actually won, by half a point actually. So a big shout out for the Lire/Sunlabob Delia ( Australian), Nora ( German ) Katia ( Japanese), we were joined by a Frenchman, Laurent, who is the sales manager of Ansara hotel and his Laotian wife/girlfriend ( didn’t get her name). Any how’s prize of 6 bottles of pretty good wine didn’t last long.
We are in the middle of wedding season here; the Laotians go big on auspices and look to the stars alignment for a good time to marry. Which does appear to be the same as the slow time for the hotels every year. I have been warned about Laotian weddings I haven’t been to one yet ( see next blog) but it seems essential to have a 10 KW Pa system which is turned up to ‘distortion’ and requires karaoke with a microphone which appears to be set between ‘reverb and feedback’. I was pondering if any couple planning their nuptials actually approached there parents and said.” what we really want is a quiet wedding with no loud music”. Responses in the realm of “No daughter of mine is going to break with tradition”.
It is also Chinese New Year (Back to the bloody rabbit thing); officially February 3rd was New Year where numerous Chinese dragons roamed the town in a bid to give people with hang overs a very bad day. I was stopped at traffic lights in town and was not quick enough to take snapshot of a very large Chinese dragon in a very small restaurant. The Laotians are big on holidays and most people think that this years Chinese new year has still got some legs and many have not come back to work yet ( it is now the 14th ) I understand Yom Kippur gets a good run as well.
Next blog; my first Laos wedding, a bike ride to Vanviene.
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