Savannakhet to 4000 Islands... and lots of chicken

Phew! We've been hitting the road pretty hard lately, to have 700 miles behind us by the end of the day. Leaving Savannakhet, we headed to a little roadside town called Paxsong. Not a whole lot to see, but more typical Lao small town feel: Houses on stilts to keep from flooding, markets with every kind of meat and fruit (I did see whole squirrels at a meat stall), goats and water buffalo roaming the streets, and people zipping every which-way on motor bikes. Most towns have their own Wat, with Buddist statues, intricately decorated buildings covered in gold paint, and monks everywhere in their bright orange robes. Local restaurants here are an interesting thing- in america there is a definite distinction between restaurant and house. Here, there is a spectrum of places- every restaurant owned by a family also has a house attached to it, so it's hard to know how much of a restaurant and how much of a residence it is. We usually go by the rule- if it looks more than 50% restaurant, we'll go for it. The other problem in these little towns is we can't read a menu, since we can't read the Lao script. That, and we can't even say them right if they're written phonetically in English. So we end up getting Foe (pronounced like "Fuu", with a very throaty "ugh" sound, as I was corrected yesterday at lunch. Evidently it's hilarious if you say Foe and don't use a throaty sound) and fried rice. In Paxsong, tired of both of these dishes, we successfully mimed our waiter to make us some fried chicken (I do a good chicken impersonation.... ask me for it sometime) which hit the spot.

Yesterday's ride, from Paksong to Khon Xe Dong was a thilling ride. First stop was the market- let me recound our breakfast: Fried chicken, 4 doughnuts each, some unidentified tropical fruit, poundcake, and dumplings filled with eggs, sausage and possibly pate. As we hit the road, Miles proclaimed it was going to be a hot one.... and consequently it dumped buckets of water on us all day! 70 miles through a downpoar/lightning storm! First I was a little unthrilled, but once we accepted the fact that we would be completely soaked for the next 5 hours of riding, we had a great time. Arriving at Khon Xe Dong, we found out this place is (locally) famous for it's grilled chicken, which we devoured, sopping wet, in a roadside stand. After retreating to a guestouse for a few hours, we came back and each ate another whole chicken each. A girl name Noy worked at the chicken restaurant, and she turned out to speak english pretty well. She was pretty cool, about our age, and we ended up hanging out talking long after the restaurant finished serving. We're always happy when we meet Lao people our age who we can actually communicate with, so we can learn about Lao and their culture.

We're in Pakse now, on our way to Champasak, where we hear the Wat Phu Chapasak is a pretty cool old Wat from way back. The terrain lately has been still in the Mekong river valley. Rice fields are everywhere, and being the start of the rainy season the patties are all filling up with water and everyone is planting the rice.

bye 4 now!