Day 103 Happy Birthday Me!!

15/06/13
I turned 19 on a bus, somewhere between Vientiane and Pakse, I had little leg room and it was only going to get worse. An hour later we stopped to let people off and we ourselves swapped buses with 5 other travellers, the problem with our new bus was that all the seats were already taken, a few even had 3 or 4 people to 2 seats. We piled everyone on and in the end there must have been about 20 people in the aisle sitting on bags and another 5 sitting on the stairs, which I was one of. This joyful experience of sitting on the floor lasted almost 2 hours but most of us had a good laugh about it, just another part of travelling. By the time we got to Pakse enough people had got off to allow me to have a double seat and I even managed an hour or so worth of shut eye. We arrived at 06.20 by half past we were at our guest house, what a good way to start the celebration of 19 years of life. At the backpackers hostel Sebastian went to sleep straight away whereas I wanted to actually do something. On my way out to hire a motorbike I bumped into Miriam who coincidently was staying at the same place as us. It was a great 40km ride in the sun to get to Wat Phu Champasak, a Khmer temple, dated around the same time as Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It wasn't quite as large or as spectacular as many of the temples at Angkor but it was still stunning in it's own way. It rises partway up a 1400m mountain called Phu Pasak (Penis Mountain). This World Heritage sit is well over a kilometre end to end and the site has been a place of worship since the 5th century AD. Even though Wat Phu is a must see for anyone travelling in Laos it is surprisingly visited ill-frequently, during the hour and half that I was there I saw perhaps 30 people. When I returned to our room I found Sebastian still asleep but my movements woke him up so we went for 'breakfast' together at midday. We split once more to wander round the town and it didn't take me long to find a nice French cafe to while away a couple of hours in, I also pushed the boat out and bought a fancy coffee as a birthday treat to myself. In the evening I went out for a meal with Miriam and Sebastian, after walking round for ages we finally settled on a local place. We proceeded to spend ages conveying what we wanted to order then even longer waiting for the food to come but I had taken a pack of cards so we had a good laugh whilst we waited.

From the top plateau looking over Wat Phu

Wat Phu