Hi to all once again, this time i am posting about the stuff you guys should all know about the EOY trip. I believe this would be useful as i have summarized information from 3 travel books Khooky gave me which will give us a better understanding of our destination, so please do not merely just give it a glance!
Destination- How to get there:
By now all should have already known that we are headed to SOUTHERN LAOS for our trip, and we would be going from Bangkok (Hua Lamphong train station) through an overnight train ride (presumed to be better than the one in Vietnam) to the Thai border province of UBON RATACHANI. Then, we will travel to WARINCHAMRAB and then the town of PHIBUN MANGSAHAN (known locally as Phibun, approx. 90km).
From there, we will take a bus/pick-up/van/songthaew*/whatever to the border town of CHONG MEK and get across the border on foot after stamping our passports at the immigration 'office' there (do not expect much!).
Things to note:
The traveling plans are strongly subject to many factors such as the weather (roads get flooded there) or even outdated information that we make assumptions on, thus we would have to be conscious of what we are doing in order to change our own itinerary to be flexible.
*A songthaew is just a modified pick-up truck owned privately and would possibly be our main mode of transport due to our group size. It is a common transport feature in most Lao towns, similar to the jeepney of the Philippines in being an 'icon'. (Imagine: the driver would stuff as many passengers in the back with 2 rows of benches facing each other on each side) Btw, songthaew means 2 sides in Lao......
As you can see, we would be traveling long distances over periods of days, thus i recommend everyone to bring less books but instead MP3 players to kill time as the roads would be too bumpy to concentrate on a text.
Although we would be passing through many towns, a quick check of the books reveals that we would not be missing much even if we do not have stopovers as these are mainly Thai-Lao markets that sell daily necessities, not catered to passing tourists.
Previously we might have heard from Khooky places in Laos such as Luang Prabang and Vientiane, but FYI these are in the northern provinces and would not be in our itinerary.
Itinerary - Where and What:
After crossing the border from Thailand, we would then take a bus/pick-up/van/songthaew*/whatever to the Lao village of Ban Muang Kao (45–75min away) and then a boat across the Mekong to Pakxe, Southern Laos's major transport hub, and also our main 'base' to get our supplies or other essentials in Laos. From there, we will travel around Southern Laos to do our service and recreation within 9 days.
Some places where we are going:
Pakse: The biggest Lao town in the far southern area of Laos, where most backpackers and tourists use as a convenient stopover point to access the others parts of the region. This is also where we are basing ourselves at for this part of the trip.
Si Phan Don: Also known as the 4000 islands, this is one of the best attractions there that is highly recommended to visit. It is made up of some river features that form on the Mekong such as sandbars (braided stream). This would be our tentative location to do our service as it is quite remote and distant from the main towns in southern Laos.
Salavan: One of our possible destinations for our planned motorbike trip, it takes a full day to get there from Pakse. It is located near the Bolaven Plateau, where there are plenty of amazing sights.
Things to take note:
These are the major places that we have placed in our itinerary, thus I might have left out some other smaller towns or markets that we might actually visit.
Also, as Lao is a very difficult language(6 intonations!), the places actually come in many spelling forms. eg. Pakse, Pakxe etc. When reading up on your own, just note that these actually mean the same thing.
Thanks for reading till the end, but do remember to check back here as i will be posting a series of must-knows over this week. Please read these at your own time and give your comments or doubts that any of you guys might have.
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