Tad Lo

It took all day yesterday in local busses to get to Paxe. Sebastian and Janes went ahead of us and caught the bus to Tad Lo. We got to Paxe too late for that, so took a cheap room in the bus station, then went to a Lao restaurant where none of the wairesses spoke word of english. We were served by a lady boy (a man who dresses as a woman) who never smiled.

The next day we cught a bus to Tad Lo. Half way there the bus stopped. We go out.There was a queue of busses, tuktuks and cars. Francesco and I walked down the road, where we found that the bridge had collapsed. Bulldozers had created a diversion. But it had rained torrentially in the night and the diversion had turned into slippery mud. Two vehicles were stuck. Just then  a four by four arrived and proceeded to tow the the two vehicles out of the mud. Francesco begged he driver to take us to Tad Lo. At first he refused, then he relented, so we ran back to our bus, got our bags and finished our journey in a four by four.

Later in the day the rain stopped and it became very humid and hot. We went for a walk by the river, where Sebastian tried to swm, but it was too shallow, then through fields, a local village, where the ground was completely covered in shit - pig shit, chicken shit, cow shit - probably cat and dog shit too. Local boys were playing football with bare feet in the middle of this.

We walked past burnt fields, the tree stumps sticking up pathetically, past fields recovering from slash and burn agriculture, sprouting all kinds of lush, green vegetation.

The group of four split up this morning.The boys hired motorbikes to explore the Bolovan plateau. Janes set off on the regular bus to Paxe and I hitch hiked in a semicircle round the central mountain in the middle of the plateau. The road for the first part of the journey was a bumpy dirt track, through plantations of coffee and fruit, banana trees and thatched villages. At one point a driver in a tray top let me ride in the back, with his spare tyres and spare fuel. His wife didn't like the look of me enough to share the front seat with me.

From Paxe to Champasak the road was being rebuilt - that's to say bulldozers had piled earth up and flattened it. But our old bus had to drive on a swtchback of beaten tracks. Progress was painfully slow.