The Sala Champa was the first French chateau built in the city, and at some point in the recent past some additions were added to the outer grounds while the interior was converted--it was now a hotel. Weary, grimy, weighed down with everything we'd brought from California, and both harboring some belly bug that kept us close to a bathroom, we checked in. They had a hot shower and an open room; that was pretty much all it took.
The chateau's grounds weren't crazy big; but the main house itself was quite beautiful, and we were given a room in it. Really, I should have typed that as a "room", since we had the large room with the bed, a tiny hallway to the bathroom, and a separate changing room that had a door that must have opened onto a sun-deck that no longer existed. This "room" could have been as our apartment. It had huge windows that opened out onto the quad that now housed the hotel's restaurant.
This picture doesn't do any justice to how awesome the place was:
We showered in their hot water for the first time since before we left for the jungle, cleaning the jungle filth off of us before we were to meet some friends we'd met on that trip. We could have stayed under that steaming hot water for days.
Dinner was nice, but before we met the Kiwi family for dinner, we tried to arrange for our departure the next morning: come back later, we were told.
The next day, it turned out, we couldn't fly either, and we were faced with a tough decision: how to leave Laos, and, more to the point, where exactly should we go?
As we were deciding, I explored the Sala Champa and found a cool veranda on the second floor. I took a picture of the Lai Cha Leung Hotel, our hotel from the first day in Pakse, directly across the street:
Here's the veranda facing the other way:
It was too hot, so we went back inside and tried to work out our problem.
Corrie had discovered a neat island beach resort where we could check out some whales. Whales! Since we couldn't leave the day we wanted to, we'd have to fly into Danang (or Da Nang, depending on how you transcribe it) and then boat it over to the island. There were a few problems with the scenario: you couldn't fly directly into Da Nang from Pakse--you'd have to fly into Ho Chi Minh City and then connect to Da Nang, which is like flying from LA to Phoenix to connect to a flight to SLO. Another problem was that the South China Sea, the ocean thereabouts, is dangerously rough this time of year, which makes the rare trip more expensive.
Corrie then found out about a reasonably priced beach resort outside of Da Nang, and once it became apparent that the cost was quite high, we decided to go for the better priced option.
Remember, we just wanted to relax for a the last few days. We were tired, sick, and beat up and figured a few days chilling would be nice. While Corrie rested at the Sala Champa, I roamed Pakse trying to find the best deal to Da Nang:
There was a creepy, overgrown city park among other neat spots:
It turned out the best deal, money-wise, was a bus trip from Pakse to the Vietnamese coast. Only that trip takes, supposedly, fourteen hours.
Having learned from the ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, we got tickets for the bigger bus, the one with the same reclining lounge seats that we had on Day Zero. But fourteen hours is a stupidly long time to be on a bus, especially for a trip that's closer in distance to Sacramento-to-San Diego. Also, the trip burned up an entire day of our vacation. Also, we'd be doing the first border crossing by foot/road of the whole trip.
With the tickets bought and the rest if the day left, we rested. The next morning we were going to be picked up at the hotel and driven to the bus stop--a perk won from our bus ticket broker. Our bus stop was a dodgy looking zone with no other tourists:
I went walking around while we waited and saw a group of guys carrying a building. They were relocating it:
Eventually the bus arrived. It was full, and by that I mean FULL. Sure, we had our reclined spots, so in that sense it wasn't too full, but the aisles were full of bags of rice and the bags of rice all had folks using them as bean bags. It was wild.
When we got to the border crossing everybody jumped off the bus. We started the arduous task of getting processed at the exit point, then crossing the no man's land that's the length of the black line that separates two countries on the map, and then entered Vietnam.
Below is a cool picture of a jungle Wat with a brontosaurus, one of the last things you see in Laos before heading into the line:
The Vietnamese border entrance is a Communist-styled design that's part-Asian-castle and part-fort:
If the trek through the exit of Laos was arduous, then I can't come up with a word for the Vietnam entrance. It took maybe an hour as the Vietnamese military and border personnel searched the bus and everybody's bags.
It was not for no reason. Lao is one of the world's top opium and heroin exporters.
There was some beautiful mountains along the spine of Vietnam, and the next picture doesn't do justice to the views, but does show a bit of some valley village:
We made it to Da Nang fifteen hours after we left Pakse. At the last stop there were only us and a trio of American NGO girls who'd just spent four months working in Cambodia. We negotiated a price with a cabbie before he knew where we were going, and we got our money's worth.
We got to our place, the Sandy Beach Resort, around 11, checked in, and, upon noticing the prices on the minibar and fridge, raided that bastard before we went to sleep.
Back in Vietnam, this time in style.
It didn't take too long to realize resorts like this weren't for us.
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