The rain continues! Our plan for the day was to explore the ruins of Wat Phou. This is an ancient Khmer temple, with some of the remaining structures believed to be from as far back as the 11th century. It's not every day you get to see a World Heritage area, so we donned our rainjackets and started exploring!
On each side of this walkway up ahead was a palace-- the "north" and "south" or "mens" and "womens" palaces. Complete with courtyards and a building, some parts still standing!
I forget if this was the mens or womens (my guess is the womens- as we're built tougher! ;))
Weird body part sculptures...
The walk continued uphill--- here's looking back down the hill at the palaces/courtyards
A carving of a crocodile. Some believe this site may have been used for an annual human sacrifice. Creepy!
At the top of the hill there was a sanctuary, where in the back a mountain spring empties into a basin. It's thought that this water is holy. I made sure to get my hands wet in *that* good stuff!
So the rain continued. Our tourguide gave us an "Oregon Trail" type offer- if we all chipped in 10,000 kip (like 2 dollars or something), we can take a ferry across the Mekong River that'd shave 2 hours off our driving time for the day. Or we could just drive around it. The vote was unanimous!
However we didn't know the ferry boarding would look this sketchy....
And this boarded deck was our ferry platform....
And this was the front of the boat....
And THIS was this gy-normous river we had to cross...
We may have thought otherwise! But somehow we made it across safely :)
Our last Laos destination was Don Det, also known as 4000 Islands.
This place was SO relaxed it would probably make Jamaica look like Downtown Manhattan. Dirt streets, shacks as restaurants... quite chill. Many menu items at the restaurants were preceded by "happy"--- "Happy" Shake, "Happy" Burger--- (I think you know what I mean)... as if you needed anything to chill you out even more!
I boycotted the "Happy" Menu items... and chose these DEE-licious Summer Rolls instead.
The rain continued to fall- so a book and a BeerLao on a hammock overlooking the river was my afternoon agenda. Perfect.
Absolutely fantastic sunset after the rain! A memorable last day in Laos.
Last dinner together with the tourgroup--- gonna miss these guys!
The next morning involved a slow boat ride over the river, a 2.5 hr drive to Pakse (where we were in a flash airconditioned minivan where the driver was pumping Dance Beats, driving 100km/hr, and honking the horn at any dog/goat/bike/car on the road in his way). Next in Pakse we crossed the border back to Thailand by walking through an underground tunnel. Sounds sketch, but was quite easy and not scary. Another gloriously air conditioned van took us to the town of Ubon Ratchathani, where we'd catch the overnight train to Bangkok. We arrived to Ubon early, so our tourguide took us to the mall where we basked in the air con, people-watched Thai teenager fashion, and played pool and did some bowling.
Next up was the overnight train to Bangkok.
I think the ride was about 11 hours. Luckily we were booked in the sleeper cabin so our seats turned into beds. I pity the folks who had to stay seated for the whole ride. :(
The train boarded right around dinnertime, and our tourguide told us there'd be food on the train. He didn't tell me this would be the only option!
I don't know what the @*(# was in this other than the fried egg and rice part. All I know is that it was super spicy.
The food gods were definitely in my favor that night- how I escaped gastrointestinal distress after eating a meal like THAT I do not know!! :)
In the morning I arrived back in Bangkok. Spent the day on the same street I started my tour- Khao San Road, getting great deals on souvenirs (and making sure to avoid the scams!)
Although it was hot, and humid, and involved a LOT of sitting on a bus, I really did get to cover a lot of ground in Northern Thailand and all of Laos in quite a short time. Travelling Southeast Asia was a wonderful distraction to pass the time while waiting for my Australian Work Visa to process!
Thanks for reading!
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