Julia's Travels: Bolaven Plateau and the Chili-standoff

After a few days of total relaxation, Hendrik, Phil and I continued north to Pakse and then on into the Bolaven Plateau region. The area is, you guessed it, a plateau, known for it's cool coffee-growing climate, great hiking and impressive waterfalls.

Our first stop was the town to Paksong. We had wanted to do several days of trekking, but a tropical storm that had hit Vietnam was wreaking havoc on the Bolaven Plateau, dumping tons of rain, so the trails were too muddy to navigate (and there were zillions of leeches, yikes!). Instead of long hikes into the woods, we ended up taking some short walks around the town, visited a few of the waterfalls and enjoyed the novelty of being cold (I was starting to forget what cold and rainy is like, now I remember). Phil and I explored the local market, where we learned the Lao phrase for "tall foreigner", which is "farang nung". Pretty much everyone has been calling me that, so I'm glad that I finally understand what it means.

In Paksong, we met Uma and Etienne, a Thai-Canadian couple who were also traveling in Southern Laos. It was great hanging out with them and their language skills meant that we could have some meaningful conversations with the locals and were saved from a chicken soup-only diet. Spending time with travelers who can speak the local language was a stark reminder about how different my experience has been here in Asia as compared to my time in Central America. While I have met some great travelers, I definitely miss being able to easily communicate with people other than fellow backpackers, or locals involved with the tourism industry.

Paksong was also the location of my first official defeat, since leaving home, in the spicy-food-standoff*. I love spicy food, and usually when I order a spicy dish here in SE Asia, the server will raise his/her eyebrows at me with a look that says "oh really white girl, we'll just see about that". I don't know if they tone down the spice for me or not, but usually I can handle whatever level of spiciness I'm given. My demise was not at the hands of some chili-loving SE Asian cook, but was my own brilliant doing. I took a big spoonful of the handmade chili paste that was provided at every table (like ketchup would be provided at a restaurant in the US), dropped it in my soup, stirred it up, took a nice big bite, and then sat there as my taste-buds were seared into oblivion by some insanely hot Laotian chili pepper. Lesson learned: when in a new place, respect the potency of the local spices before dousing your food.

From Paksong, Hendrik left us and headed towards Vientiane while Phil, Uma, Etienne and I went to the town of Tat Lo for one day. Tat Lo was much warmer and drier than Paksong, so Phil and I took advantage of the conditions and went hiking. This area of Laos sees far fewer tourists than the North, so the people are generally quite warm and welcoming (in general Lao people are very kind, but the people from small villages truly have hearts of gold. We had a fantastic time hiking through the countryside and surrounding villages, interacting with locals and playing with the little kids.

-Julia

*I am excluding from this statement the time in Malaysia, while travelling with Billy, when I mistook a whole green pepper for a stir-fried green bean and popped the entire thing in my mouth (with disastrous results, of course). That was more like a sneak attack than a fair fight between me and the chili-pepper.