We awoke at 6AM to squeeze in a noodle soup and a Lao coffee before hopping in a tuk-tuk to catch a bus bound for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. This is a face I've become oh so too familiar with in Asia - the half asleep, zombified Nicola drowsy yet content with her bowl of porky broth.
The bus took off half an hour late - no biggie, clocks and time aren't really a thing in Laos. They're just a rough guide and we'd become accustomed to that by this point.
We left Luang Prabang and crawled up mountains for hours finally stopping at 1PM for lunch after the requisite couple of roadblocks and pee stops. However this was a fancy farang bus, no roadside bush weeing here. Instead you pay 2000 Kip for bathrooms with no doors and for the second time in two months I opened the door to a woman squatting, stretching desperately to try and push the door shut. Really? Why me?
We shared lunch with this dude. He was cool, if a bit sad.
On we pushed in our VIP King of Bus and it was mid afternoon that we realised this bus wasn't getting to Vientiane by 6PM, or anywhere near that time. Car after after truck after truck after crazy truck-bus thing were lined up not going anywhere.
We got off the bus and the entire village was by the roadside watching proceedings and it became apparent that this wasn't your normal roadworks stop. Something a bit more serious was at play. The rumours began - 'someone's rolled their car and we're stuck', 'there's been mudslide', etc, etc...
After about an hour watching ladies bathe in their sarongs and pigs snorting around all over the place our driver threw his hands up, tooted the horn and signalled for everyone to get back on the bus. We drove slowly past the procession of vehicles and discovered why we hadn't gone anywhere - a two k stretch of thick, wet, muddy, clay that no one was willing to attempt driving through. Bar our exceedingly optimistic bus driver.
We began to crawl through the mud, you could have literally walked faster. At one point we almost slowed to a stop, the wheels began to spin in the mud and a couple of locals gave a look like what the f*ck does this guy think he's up to. Bravery is rewarded though and he somehow got us through it. Now only a further five hours to go on old bumpy roads that are falling to pieces lay ahead.
All of this would have been a lot more bearable if not for the five young, very obviously private schooled, English girls who talked sh*t the entire journey. They genuinely didn't have an interesting, enlightening conversation during the 15 hour trip. And one of them would decide to sing a few lines from a Spice Girls song every now and again. That pretty much epitomised the intelligence of the pack of moths that populated the back of the bus.
We finally arrived at the bus station, still a half hour tuk-tuk from central Vientiane along roads and through a part of Laos that made you feel like you were arriving in the most backward of backwaters - not the capital of a country.
Once in Vientiane, we circled a couple of blocks looking for a guesthouse where by 10pm all were either full or had rooms available at thrice our budget. We fluked a cheap room with a fan, no bedbugs and the faint smell of sewage being emitted from the bathroom. It was a win at the time.
The great thing about arriving late somewhere in Laos is the 11PM curfew so by the time we were ready to hunt out dinner everything was closed and the best we could do was a cup of noodle soup, a five day old steamed bun, a chocolate bar and a beer from a mini mart. We were smitten with Vientiane at this point.
Aside from an epic storm the following day complete with exploding power poles, fire extinguishers caked in five years of dust and grime and the very real concern that we were about to witness someone getting electrocuted whilst they fiddled around with the power pole in the rain in thongs, Vientiane didn't really make us regret our planned one night stop.
Here are some awe inspiring photos from Vientiane.
Thankfully, we were heading south and Vientiane was just a stepping stone to Pakse. We took an overnight sleeper bus. This wasn't just any bus though.
All the seats are taken out and replaced with flat beds complete with pillows and Winnie the Pooh blankets, making for the best overnight transport experience you could ever imagine. Oh, and the fact that we took enough Valium to knock out a water buffalo.
We landed in Pakse at about 730AM and were checked into a guest house by 756AM. Can you imagine doing that in many places other than here?
We'd intended to do a trek from Pakse but when the guy at the travel agency was like, "oh, you might be lucky and hear some birds in the distance", we decided to save the US$340 and hopped on a scooter and headed to Tad Fane waterfall instead, where Koffie runs tours of coffee plantations and takes you through a roasting workshop. Yes, you read right, Koffie's Coffee.
The tour was interesting seeing the differences between the Robusta and Arabica trees and tasting coffee berries but the workshop was the headliner.
Koffie moved to a town not far from Pakse and through trial and error taught himself to roast beans in a wok (an implement you're obviously never far from here).
Within an hour Koffie had us in control of the wok and whilst we aren't able to get the kind of consistency in roasted beans that you'd get from a bag at home, we'd created something that was very drinkable.
Koffie immediately ground up the freshly roasted beans and we enjoyed a still quite green tasting but very enjoyable cup of the good stuff. By this point the sun was starting to drop and Koffie pushed us out the door, two freshly roasted bags of beans in tow, and we cruised back to Pakse with Nicola clinging onto the back of our moped and the sun sinking down below the mountains making for a beautiful end to one hell of a great excursion.
Koffie's concept is simple. You don't get there and fiddle around with tens of thousands of dollars of machinery and create a cup of coffee that you have no hope of replicating at home. You wok roast the beans, grind them up in a simple burr grinder and brew them with the classic Italian moka pot. You walk away with the confidence that with a bit of your own trial and error you'll be able to reproduce a decent coffee at home, from green beans to cup.
On top of all of that, Koffie is a cracking guy learn from. All details on his workshop can be found here.
Now it's time for hammocks, beers and nothingness at Laos' famous 4000 Thousand Islands.
