{"id":35,"date":"2008-05-10T11:26:05","date_gmt":"2008-05-10T11:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/?p=35"},"modified":"2008-05-10T11:26:05","modified_gmt":"2008-05-10T11:26:05","slug":"thursday-1st-may-escaping-luang-phabang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"Thursday 1st May &#8211; Escaping Luang Phabang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I absolutely loved Luang Phabang.\u00a0 It was such a quaint riverside town with an amazing combination of architecture from very French colonial style buildings to traditional Laos Wats.\u00a0 I was also quite keen to leave so was relatively less worried about using Laos airlines than I perhaps should have been.\u00a0 It was the smallest plane I have been on with around 20 passengers.\u00a0 I was also surprised (hmm, that may be putting it slightly mildly) how much more small planes get affected by turbulence.\u00a0 A European woman was sitting next to me and\u00a0as the plane dropped what felt like a very long way on\u00a0more than one\u00a0occasion and then bumped about she shrieked and yelped.\u00a0 They did serve a damn good meal though even if your chocolate cake did keep threatening to lollop onto your lap.\u00a0 The\u00a0flight actually arrived in Pakse about half an hour earlier than\u00a0was scheduled.\u00a0 When I got out of the airport I bumped into an Australian woman, who I have now met in far too many places, and we managed to get a shared tuk tuk into town and then I shared another to the bus station.<span style=\"color: #800000;\">\u00a0 When I say bus station I mean sawngthaews station.\u00a0 Like <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">a large shared truck.\u00a0 As per usual my camera had run out of batteries at the <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">opportune moment.\u00a0 There were also numerous stalls including one with a guy who was obsessed with trying to sell\u00a0me a rather large knife.\u00a0 I wouldn&#8217;t have minded too much but he kept demonstrating how quickly the blade sprung out about two inches from my chest!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The journey turned out to be an experience.\u00a0 I was the <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">only Westerner and the focus of all conversation.\u00a0 My Ipod proved most <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">amusing and I have now deduced that Laos men dislike Mozart but love Pink!\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">In order to get to Champasak you have to cross the Mekong River and we <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">drove onto the craziezt Roll On Roll Off type ferry I have ever seen.\u00a0 The <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">women in the truck kept shrieking as the driver tried to get as close to\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">the edge as possible and kept nearly reversing off the side and into the r<\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">iver.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">When we arrived in Champasak I was surprised just how small it was.\u00a0 I <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">wasn&#8217;t expecting a sprawling metropolis but it is tiny and quiet. My <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">guide book described it as &#8220;An up-and-coming backpacker resort&#8221;.\u00a0 All I <\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">can say is that by my reckoning it never came!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">I checked into a guesthouse and then wondered around the town (village\/ hamlet).\u00a0 There were very few people around but a lot of animals which I found myself talking to in order to try to get better pictures.\u00a0 I&#8217;m actually starting to worry about how entertaining I find my own company when I&#8217;m traveling.\u00a0 It&#8217;s sooo good when you can tell a joke and know that you&#8217;re going to find it hilariously funny!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Anyway so I checked into a very friendly family guesthouse and was in an e<\/span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">nsuite bungalow for the princely sum of 30,000 Kip (around $4 US).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I absolutely loved Luang Phabang.\u00a0 It was such a quaint riverside town with an amazing combination of architecture from very French colonial style buildings to traditional Laos Wats.\u00a0 I was also quite keen to leave so was relatively less worried about using Laos airlines than I perhaps should have been.\u00a0 It was the smallest plane [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}