Savannakhet pancakes

Getting to Savannakhet from Ban Nahin by local transport is another classic tale of Laos road trip.

We went to the bus "station" early in the morning, hoping to catch a long distance bus that passes through the village every day. After asking confirmation to some guy at the station, half a dozen men started talking to us in Laotian at the same time. Without a clear understanding of how it happened, we ended up sitting on a crammed "jumbo" packed with local people. Perhaps 'sitting' is not the right word. I spent the whole trip squeezed between the back of a young woman and a metal pole, wih my right knee dangerously close to the lower bits of the guy in front of me (he had to cover them with his hand to avoid the acidental bumps). K on the other hand travelled with her legs hanging outside the back of the vehicle, constantly pushed out of the bench by the fat ass of the lady on her side, always in fear of falling out.

Some of our fellow travelers

When I say that the jumbo was full is obviously a matter of glass-half-full opinion. The opposite philosophy led the driver to happily stop at every request and allow more and more people in, a human-sized tetris game. There were so many people that the vehicle could barely drive uphill, the dark and smelly exhaustion fumes filling the air and our lungs. We tried to stop breathing every time it happened, but we couldn't always hold it for the whole gasification phase. Hopefully our lungs will recover from it.

Breath deeply

 At some point you almost stop caring and accept the loss of whatever 'personal space' meant to you... I said almost. We were so glad to reach the main road, disembark from the jumbo and watch it disappear in a cloud of red dust and dark fumes. Sitting along the road, under the shadow of a tree, we could just hope that a bigger bus would eventually appear and take us to our final destination, Savannakhet.

It did, but surprises weren't over yet. After loading our luggage in the bus and noticing the lack of any available seat, we received simple plastic stools with no back support and the appaling perspective of having to sit on it in the aisle of the bus for the next five hours. Luckily we were able to snatch two seats after just a couple of hours and enjoy a rather more pleasant trip. I even enjoyed a sort of conversation with a young student and an older man, by showing them pictures from our Lonely Planet guide and somehow discussing about places and monuments in Southeast Asia. Not the worst of our trips after all.

Not as uncomfortable as it sounds... for the first 5 minutes

Savannakhet was quite disappointing. Having read that it is one of Laos larger cities, and with a charm "second only to Luang Prabang", we had high expectations about our days here, hoping to enjoy the beauty of the place and the offerings of a big city. Couldn't have been more wrong. The town in itself doesn't offer much, and even if it may have some potential it's all so forgotten and poorly preserved that we could hardly find any reason to stay here for more than a few hours. Having lost our final hopes to find a copy of "Le Petit Prince" in Laotian for K's collection, we were more than happy to leave the town and move further South towards the tiny Champasak, but only after having savoured some delicious pancakes with real maple syrup and mango on the side!

Pancake, maple syrup and mango... Savannakhet redemption.