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PAKSE TO MUANG
KHONG ON
We arrived at Pakse bus station at 7am in the pouring rain and eventually managed to determine which one of the four trucks in the bus station was going south. Very few people in Laos speak any English or French at all and our attempts at Lao always produced a lot of smiles. This bus was to take us south on a five hour bumpy drive. The rain continued but after an hour the truck came to a halt, as the road was flooded. The ticket collector was put out to wade in front and the bus followed slowly. When the water reached above his waist the driver decided to reverse out of the water.
We were given very pleasant hospitality by an old lady who invited us to join here beneath her wooden house beside the flood. The houses in Laos are raised up on wooden stilts. We sat and drank tea surrounded by ducks, chickens and pigs, and watched logs and trees float by. Children were swimming in the road and some ladies with umbrellas waded from their houses to the bus, the water came up to their chests.
There was a new section of surfaced road which had been built here but no traffic was allowed on it as it was not yet finished. We returned to Pakse and tried again the next day. Pakse bus station was a sea of mud (as was most of Pakse) and this time we got an old Chinese bus instead of a truck. This vehicle was not so good as the truck in the mud and knocked down the hut at the gate of the bus station as it departed. Our confidence was not too high at this point but the driver went very slowly and carefully. Nobody could say when the bus would arrive. The seats were like wet sponges and all the inside of the bus was very wet.
Five and a half hours later we arrived at the jetty opposite Muang Khong on Don Khong island. A small boat with a large engine took us across.
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Khong | |
