Moving along the Mekong in Southern Laos

Yes well, posting hasn't really happened as frequently as hoped, but there is either too much excitement or no internet. I'll try to get us up to speed here.

After a surprisingly painless 24 hour bus ride down from Luang Nam Tha to Vientiane and some time in Vientiane getting our Cambodia visas and learning Lao cookery, we made our way down to Champasak, home of Wat Phu Champasak. The wat is a World Heritage Site (our third so far on the trip) and apparently home to the most impressive ruins in Laos. We rented bikes to travel the five miles from our guest house and enjoyed our sunniest day thus far. Of course the blinding sun addled my brain and caused me to forget the camera that day, but I suppose we'll always have our memories...

The temple represents the spread of Hinduism and then Buddhism across the Mekong river and into the Bolavan Plateau, and both of these religions are lumped on top of the animistic beliefs of the Angkor people who lived here. While most of the temple has crumbled, many stunning sculptures of both Hindu and Buddhist dieties are preserved in a nearby museum. It's amazing to see how some of the forms are conserved over time - a new concrete water pump at the Cambodian-Laos border had almost exactly the same design as a fountain of the wat from the 11th century.

That night we found a restaurant all to ourselves where I had a really extraordinary fish soup - lemongrass, a sour flavor, some galanga root (possibly related to ginger?). I'm a bit unclear as to all of the ingredients, but it was a nice way to end the day.

We continued our journey south the next day, once again following the Mekong, this time towards a group of islands in the middle of the river called Si Phan Don, literally "four thousand islands". About the Mekong: we've been traveling along the river for the last week, and while it was fairly wide up in Luang Pra Bang, down here it is absolutely huge (and when we crossed it a few days later on our way to Phenom Penh it was positively ginormous). It's well above the usual banks and a dark muddy brown from the water and sediment brought by all the rain we've had. Despite it all the surface barely ripples.

After waking up to roosters once again, we flagged down a bus heading to a ferry that would take us back across the river. As soon as the bus stopped at the "ferry terminal" (a dirt road leading into the water) it was suddenly full of vendors hawking bamboo skewers loaded with a cornucopia of meat products. I got some chicken and sticky rice. Apparently it was buy two sticks of chicken and get a free stick of the chicken's organs day, but 7am is a little early for chicken heart in my book.

Once across the river the bus headed north without us, leaving us at a dusty intersection where we waited for a southbound public bus, which is fancy word for a pickup truck with some wooden benches and a steel cage over the bed. When the first one arrived we successfully bargained down the foreigner price to the Lao price (we knew we were there when we got furtive thumbs up from bus occupants). Soon I was squished next to an old woman with lips stained red from the betel nut she was chewing, and Elyse sat with a woman who offered her lotus flower seeds and a small boy who offered to drool on her.

Whenever the bus stopped, fresh sticks of bbq'd creatures were once again thrust into our faces. An alarming number of passengers bought an alarming variety of creatures, including crickets on a stick and a variety of small rodents with furry claws still attached. Of course, half the fun of buying crickets on a stick is making the white guy eat one, so I was compelled to crunch and swallow the poor guy. You see, I studied weta in New Zealand for a month way back when, so I have some love for members of the order Orthoptera, but I have to admit the cricket wasn't half bad.

When we return: lounging in Si Phan Don, exploring the charms and terrifying history of Phenom Penh, and the curious incident of the dog in the night time.