Pakse & Pakxong

We stopped in Pakse for a day with the intention of making a day trip up to the Bolaven Plateau to see the coffee plantations. The only thing is that the Lao New Year celebrations were still going on, except now we were in a much larger city. In Champassak we ran across four or five groups of people trying to throw buckets of water on us, in Pakse there were dozens.

Just trying to find a place to stay was challenging because we didn't want to get our stuff wet. So Heather stayed put with the things and I went searching. We couldn't find any really cheap places to stay so I ended up walking into a fairly nice hotel dripping wet from the buckets asking if the receptionist could show me a room. I took her slight smile as an indication she wasn't upset with me for dripping in her hotel.

So, we got settled, rented another motorbike, and put all the important things we had with us in plastic bags. At least this time we were prepared. So we headed out of town and on to Pakxong. We passed lots of bucket gangs on the way out, some we dodged, others soaked us, but that's how it goes.

The problem we had when we reached the plateau is that the higher elevation meant it was much cooler. So cool, that we really didn't want to get splashed with any more buckets. Even though Pakxong is a pretty small place, there were lots of people "celebrating." We got splashed and we were very cold. It's always best to try to embrace the culture, but this is the point that it really stopped being fun for us. We did make it to the plantation and we had a very nice cup of coffee before heading home.

We were so happy to descend into the warmer climate again. After we returned our bike, there wasn't much to do except join the party. So we made friends with some locals who were more than happy to share their splash buckets with us in exchange for us allowing them to dump water on us periodically. It was warm, so we didn't mind.

So we had fun splashing people who came by, but the protocol confused us a little bit. Apparently, you aren't supposed to splash just anyone. We discovered this after Heather emptied her bucket on two middle aged women coming by on their motorbike. She got them really good and they looked rather upset. We felt bad because sometimes people had gotten us when we really didn't want to be splashed, but we were just trying to do what the Lao people do. Oh well, we still had good fun.