Who knows how long I spent at Don Det but it was over a lot quicker than I wanted. 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 years, who knows? I have aged a bit, but that has more to do with yet another bout of paleness. Perhaps a large intake of Mekong water infused my system with some bugs happy with their relocation to a cosy corner of my insides. A few days of lingering grottiness ruled out the chance of food poisoning, even though the food there was so bad that actual poison seemed tasty by comparison.
Long term companions Adam and Gemma have been temporarily traded in for Steph, as the last two weeks in Thailand of her holiday will prove to be a good break before the three of us ended our trip together in Cambodia in mid March. Last good byes were shared with Emily and Lisa, and a boat whisked us away at the one decimal of speedness that is Laos fastest pace.
Back on land we boarded a bus to Pakse, delighted to find we had the whole back seat to ourselves. A half empty bus from there to the border and my disbelief started to give way to the expectation of an impending reality check in the form of a 2 day delay, while 20 workers watch the one who drew the shortest straw, filling in a large pothole at one shovel load every 10 minutes.
I sung my final praises to Laos in Pakse by using the last of my worthless kip on $1AUS 750ml bottles of whiskey. Whiskey that should be potent enough to scorch the eyebrows off any nasties living in my system but not to be the case. Even though the kip is more valuable as toilet paper than actual currency, it gave me the only taste of being a millionaire as exchanging $150US travellers cheques resulted in a massive wad of notes to the value of 1,440,000 kip. It felt great until I had to hand over about 7 notes to buy one bottle of water.
I also ordered a beautiful Palak Paneer from an Indian restaurant only to sit there watching flies crap all over it for 20 minutes because I remembered too late that I still felt like a simmering volcano. We also had a chance to check out the market there but I wandered into a carnival of animal cruelty that destroyed my faith in humanity. I accept that using animals for survival is sometimes necessary, in the absence of choice, ie. survival of the fittest, if we weren't supposed to eat them why do they taste so good, blah blah blah. But when making small concessions equates to immeasurable reduction in their suffering, and people are too lazy to make them, the nutter in me almost breaks the surface and pummels some compassion into these everyday Hitlers. Consideration for an animals basic needs is rarer in Asia than a bar not playing Bob Marley or a reggae song that doesn't contain the words 'Zion' or 'Babylon'.
The overnight bus to Bangkok changed our travel experience from sybaritic to incapacitating and brought on the battle of Harry vs the bus seat. Duration: 13 hours. Points scored for precision and tactical brilliance of movements: Harry 3,427 – Bus Seat 0. Points scored for composure under duress: Bus Seat 4,000 – Harry minus 2,000. (Points were deducted for landing numerous blows on defenceless seat). Numerous points were also deducted for Harry's underhanded attempts at gassing his opponent into submission! Result: Bus Seat wins in a landslide and is rewarded by adding another scalp to its impressive list of travelers over 6 foot tall who have nearly gone mad in its rock hard embrace. Harry wins a consolation prize of having his first all-nighter in 15 years; without having a party to keep him awake.
The bus ride also brought me the closest I have been to a fatal road accident in Thailand. One of the many motorbikes that ply the road here decided that the dividing white line was a better place to be than the shoulder and the fervour with which it assumed that position drove our bus off the rode and into a shallow ditch. Having the amazingly wonderful good fortune of being able to see impending death from the front seat of the bus, I saw that only lightning reflexes from the driver avoided the bikes two passengers becoming bloody smears on the under carriage of the bus. After stopping, we were able to deduce from the always comical charades form of communication that the accident was even closer than we thought, the driver has since become a chain smoker, and that he also decorated his underwear with a few bold statements.
Back in Bangkok we met Stephs two friends from home, Suze and Lydia, neither of whom were as posh or proper as Steph was, much to my disappointment, but lovely none the less. Hoping for a better standard of holiday than what Steph and I had enjoyed over the last few weeks, we all booked into a Khao San Road hotel that had a pool on its roof. The day was spent lounging there until the night time saw us on another overnight bus that was bad enough to be left for the next installment.
