Sundown in Savannakhet

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Becks' diary.

Buses in Laos never leave on time. Our 9.20 local service to Savannakhet departs at 10.15ish. We are loaded up with people, chickens, motorbikes, bicycles.

Along the 5h journey we pull over once just long enough for local women to come up and stick whole roasted chickens and rice balls on sticks through the window. I devour deep fried sticky rice balls coated in sugar and filled with egg yolk. An old woman behind prods me in the shoulder, exclaims "Madame" and offers us balls of a fudge like thing made from sugar cane, delicious. Next she is keen for us to try peanuts (yes we have these at home) and finally a very bitter tasting fruit, the texture of a lychee but larger and containing a juice filled hollow and no stone. She soon gets off and on to the bus to Vientiane for the 20 hr ride and I don't envy her.

Savannakhet seems a similar size to Pakse despite having twice the population. We um and ah about how long to stay and decide to spend the afternoon sightseeing and head off on the 10pm local bus to Da Nang in Vietnam.

Just time to walk around the centre of town, down by the Mekong - for the last time in a while. Savannakhet is a pretty town with lovely colonial shop houses. However, it does not have much life about it and we struggle to find somewhere serving dinner. In the end we find a "Korean" bbq place - which follows an identical format to the "volcano pot" Cambodian bbqs!