2011 - NZ To SF - Day 81

Day 81: (2 August 2011):
- Wake up & go straight to bus station across the street.
- Felix ask which is faster / fastest way, told us local bus. Consider taking the truck/bus. Perhaps we should have tried to use ticket from day before, maybe wouldn’t have worked due to date stamp.
- Excruciatingly slow. Take 4-5 hrs. Scooter on bus in aisle.
- Try to walk to centre, but realise is another bus station.
- Tuktuk flagged down. Delivering a backpacker to bus station. then double back & to town centre.
- Guesthouse at centre of town no more 2 bed rooms. Walk ~2km to another LP guesthouse. Large rooms, but leaky shower (big bucket), broken light, terrible English (Problem asking for toilet paper), etc. Lumpy beds. Logan tree. Loud, as bar/kareoke/disco just beside.
- Accept room, they say fix light by 6pm & we can pay later (Felix want make sure light OK).
- Tourist info just beside. Slippery path. Say still have time for Buddha cave. Organise tuktuk for 150k. Say can easily find boat when there. Found Kong Lo caves flooded, bus went & can’t get through. The well-known circuit also impassable.
- I grab some old kind of stale snacks from a beauty salon across street. (Some kind of chewy strips with oily Sechuan pepper taste).
- Drop tourists off @ bus station first. Took opportunity to buy bus ticket.
- Drive towards beautiful karst hills landscape in low clouds.
- At turnoff, water. People fishing, etc. Told water is waist deep.
- Return. Refund 100k. I slip on path & scrape right arm. Looked disgusting with the mud/mold/moss/etc on it.
- Tourist info tell us tuktuk will take us to centre, not to pay him more. I stop @ hotel to wash off, & driver extract 10k from us through Felix.
- Eat, Internet. Centre of town quiet & quaint. Felix say like Texas outpost town. Looked decaying.
- Walk along water edge. A series of (roast duck) restaurants & tables by river. See Thailand across river. Nice blds, big wats, fast cars. Feel urge to go to Thailand since looked so developed.
- Walk to see a vat: quaint, not too impressive, not as well maintained as Thai wats. Pass by a stream outlet with causeway. Lots of rubbish. Fishing.
- Sit by river (somewhere with loss rubbish in water) & drink. Meet the Europeans on tuktuk to Sav.
- Some food stalls in square, small restaurants along street. Ate 10k bowl of foe at random place with small yappy dog. Dark squat toilet with scoop flush (somewhat clean). no dangerous food for Felix -> Take anti-biotics/drugs.
- Sit for drink at the bar on hotel grounds. Poor service even with people sitting on chairs right across. Cool thatched roof huts. Table of white ppl beside.
- Lights are fixed.
- In retrospect, should have stayed more in Si Phan Don to visit waterfall & wat, then go straight to Vientiane.