A short post of our couple of days spent in Champassak, a quiet town set along the river south of Pakse. Home to Wat Phu, which is an old ruined Khmer temple like Angkor Wat, many travellers pass this place without stopping. We decided it was worth a stay and weren’t disappointed.
Day 132: To Champassak
As the buses possibly only go in the morning, we packed up early, ate our spare (slightly stale as they don’t use preservatives) baguettes for breakfast in the room whilst we packed, saddled up with the bags and walked the 1 km to the Don Hueng market to look for the songthaew or bus which goes to Champassak. A hot walk even early in the morning, and Evie had woken up really tired. I think I broke her ☹.
The market was massive though! The first street we wandered down had motorbikes whizzing up and down with locals buying their goods, but no signs of public transport. The stalls went on forever, so we headed for the areas near the main road, the buses would not be able to navigate these streets surely!
On the main road the other side, we bumped into another couple, who were also searching for the same songthaew. We found some on the main road, but they were private ones who would take us for 50,000 each. This driver claimed there was no bus or songthaew, only him, but reinforcecd by the fact that there were two groups of us who thought this songthaew existed we carried on. 50 metres down the road, another tuktuk driver pointed us down a street back into the market for the songthaews. And there they were – on both sides. There must have been forty songthaews all lined up – which one?!
Luckily it’s all pretty organised and a lady immediately approached us. When we said Champassak she called it down the line, where a man waved his hands at us. He loaded our bags on the roof, but informed us that it would not go for another hour. There were only four other people on board, and this one was specially equipped with a central row of seats to increase capacity by 50%.
We headed into the market to look for some fruit, and ended up also picking up some new sandals for Aiden, as his had broken in the mud in Tad Lo, and a T-shirt for me. As Laos is so conservative my vest tops are not really appropriate, and the couple of t-shirts I brought are quite think fabric – too hot! Thin, light T-shirts are the way forward here.
Our songthaew was not due to leave for another 30 mins, but we headed back anyway, and discovered it was pretty much full! They had saved seats for us at the front though, so we climbed through and over the locals to our places. Surely it wouldn’t sit here for half an hour when there are no seats spare? It didn’t. After managing to squish a couple more on (it was cosy!) a man outside asked us where we were staying. It turned out he was the owner of the Anouxa guesthouse and had received our booking the night before. He made sure the driver knew to stop outside the guesthouse, which is great, as we had no idea where the bus was actually due to stop in Champassak and were winging it. Then we were off.
It took about an hour to get to Champassak, even though we didn’t stop too many times on the way. We spent the time chatting to the French couple with us, comparing places we’d been as we’re crossing routes, and enjoying the talk of ‘falang’ from the locals, which means foreigner/white person.
We had no real plans for the day, but needed to get some lunch so we headed to the Champassak with love restaurant about a km down the road for some lunch on the riverside. It was a hot walk with little shade – things really are warming up as we go south, it was about 33 degrees today!
With lunch done, we wandered back to the place and chilled. A hard day!
Our big decision for the evening was whether to take pushbikes or the scooters the next day. Bikes would be a lot cheaper, but there were no kids ones and these ones at the Anouxa looked VERY old! It’s also at least a 24km round trip which is way more than the kids have ever done on a bike, and they’ve not ridden one for 6 months! Plus Evie’s not herself today so may not be up to much tomorrow. In the end it was a pretty simple choice to opt for the scooters, even through they cost about 5 times as much. Still around £15 for the two scooters for the day.
Having had a big, late lunch, we weren’t that hungry for dinner (or most of us weren’t – Chris is always hungry!) so we ordered a couple of things from the guesthouse menu and ate them in our rooms. We may also have been motivated to stay indoors by the huge amount of mosquitos and midges eating us as soon as It started to get dark…
At least there are proper mosquito screens down here!
Day 133: Wat Phu
As usual we didn’t get out as quickly as planned. Our idea of making overnight oats by soaking our remaining oats in water overnight and combining them with some yoghurt, bananas and raisins worked and was yummy, but not as quick as we’d thought!
Our host showed us how to use the scooters. They’re a little more complex than the e-bikes we had in Bagan seemingly. There’s a leg pump to start the battery on my one! It was also low on fuel, so our first port of call was the gas station just down the road. Unable to communicate to them that we only needed it half full, they filled it up. Ah well, it only cost 30,000 which is about £2.50 so no big deal!
There are two roads through Champassak, one along the river with most of the guesthouses and restaurants on which is very quiet, and this other one with the garage on and the trucks, buses etc. We chose to head back to the riverside street so we could putter along in peace.
We made pretty steady progress along the route to Wat Phu, which is about 12km from our guesthouse. Route-finding was super easy as you simply stay on the road, and there are signs too!
There’s a little area for tourists here, with somewhere you can pay to have your bike watched, toilets, hammocks, restaurants and the ticket office. All under shade.
Nearby, there’s a small museum with some history of the site. Then it’s around a km to walk past the barays (lakes) and to the first temple, so they offer a free oversized golf buggy to shuttle you up and down. More of us voted to ride then walk so we rode. It was hot!
The site is built on the hillside of a sacred mountain (sacred because of the phallic shape of its cone!) so it starts with two identical palaces which face each other. There is a theory that one was for women and the other for men, but apparently there’s no scientific fact behind this. Whilst the fronts and walls do remain, they are really falling down in places and need help to stay standing.
There’s a smaller one behind which is in better shape, and then the climb starts.
This site predates Angkor Wat, although it is meant to be in the same style (Khmer). It was pretty incredible to be climbing steps and thinking that they have been there for over 1000 years!
At the top is the main temple. It’s mostly collapsed, but a roof has been put over, supports in place and it is still used actively.
The carvings here are impressive too.
At the back is a spring flowing from under a cliff face here, and some pretty great views of the site below and the fields and river beyond.
We headed to the boulder field at the side to hunt for the rocks carved with a snake, crocodile and elephant. Which are really random next to all the other stones which look like normal rocks. Where did they come from?
By now the sun was cruelly hot, so the exposed walk back down was a scorcher. We hitched a ride again back to the start and treated ourselves to some ice creams and drinks. I tried the sugar cane juice. How often do you get the chance to try that? The lady literally takes a cane stem and puts it through a masher which squeezes the juice out, leaving only a woody pulp. With a little lemon added it was really delicious and very refreshing – not as sweet as you might expect.
Wondering what the sugar content was we turned to Google and semi regretted the drink. It wasn’t the sugar levels so much, they count as natural sugars and aren’t as simple as the granulated sugars it could become. There is also a long list of health benefits so it’s apparently a bit of a health fad in places! My concerns came from reading about the bacteria and parasites which can be found in it if the machine is not properly cleaned, or if the cane juice is raw (which mine certainly was). Ah well – I’d drunk most of it by this point so it was a bit late to stop! Fingers crossed mine is bacteria and parasite free…
The joy of the scooters over pushbikes was that we could head on further to another site, Hong Nan Sida which is down a dirt track a few km west. We went here not expecting it to be overly impressive, but rather to see a site in the midst of a restoration.
Over the years, as the temple has fallen, rocks from the area have seemingly been piled up to clear the area for farming, so when they started the restoration it was in pretty bad shape and very jumbled.
Some rocks have been taken off and numbered. Stored on pallets to the front and sides. The space is filling up though and there are still a lot of rocks to go!
We wondered how they could even go about starting to take this pile apart and rebuild the structure. How can they work out where everything goes? It’s like a massive messy jigsaw, which requires many men to move one piece a few feet. We didn’t envy them!
The plans to rebuild with the original rocks and replace some of the lost parts are here to see.
What was interesting was that this is again, still an active temple, with offerings left. These even include lit cigarettes, and fruits and drinks which have been opened to help them use them. To us this seems such a waste! And where does it all go? There weren’t piles of rotting fruit around so presumably someone clears it?
There’s another site here a little further on, which was rumoured to be hard to find or get to on your own. But there was a sign, so we launched off down the sandy path through dry rice paddies, guessing the way at a couple of intersections before deciding we had no idea where we were going and turning back. Nevermind!
Back on the main road we kept a look out for the turning to see the old walls of the ancient city. The path was really dusty, and I had to put my feet down a lot as the bike squirmed in the loose dirt. Chris also got bogged down so it wasn’t just me being rubbish! We arrived at a hole in the ground. Was this it? No other routes led away but there were no walls in sight.
Ah well! Onwards again back into town where we passed many beautiful temples. This area really does have more than its fair share!
Once we were in the main stretch of the town, where the old wooden houses line the streets, we stopped in the Handmade café for lunch. It justified its high online ratings. We enjoyed a curry soup, noodles and a sweet and sour chicken. The ice cream man came past too…
On the way back we passed some of the big French colonial mansions which used to be owned by rich Frenchmen.
We made it back to the guesthouse unscathed, very pleased we’d gone for the scooters as we’d have been getting back a lot later if we’d been under pedal power, and not been able to do all the off road bits looking for the other temples and walls. And scooters are fun off road!
The owner suggested a swim in the river at the bottom of the steps. What an excellent idea! The banks were pretty silty, much to the kids delight, and then dropped off into the deeper water pretty sharply, so no slow wading in for me! I made it in anyway, and Chris and I enjoyed swimming in our leisurely paced water treadmill whilst the kids played in the mud. Even though the water’s come so far, it’s a really clean river and it was a beautiful swim.
We repeated dinner from the night before as we couldn’t be bothered to cover ourselves in Deet and get back on the bikes to head for the restaurants further down! I miss eating indoors!
Tomorrow we head on to the 4000 Islands in the Mekong at the Southern edge of Laos. Follow along here as we continue our chilled times exploring the beautiful Mekong before leaving Laos (coming soon). Or head back to waterfalls, local villages and the quiet town of Tad Lo.