We stopped for lunch along the way at a village known for its grilled chicken village. Up and down the entire street there was nothing but restaurants selling skinny, grilled chickens. We got some roasted corn, a chicken and some sticky rice for lunch.
Roasted corn was something we were starting to see a lot of, and for very cheap, so I wanted to try some. The colour of the corn was white, light grey, or light purple. It tasted like somewhere between white corn and indian corn or purple corn. I dug into the corn while we were waiting for the chicken to be done.
Our chicken was heated and served chopped up in a bowl. The feet were still attached to the drumsticks and the Head was also in the bowl. We were not feeling energetic or adventuresome enough to eat either of these, though. The chicken was good, but very lean in comparison what we get at the grocery store in the west. Good thing we had the corn and rice and that we weren't too hungry.
The roads after lunch weren't well maintained and very muddy from yesterday's rains, so it made travel very slow. The road was so slippery that at one point I thought we might slide off into a rice paddy. (Katie, at least the driver has slowed down a bit).
The landscape of this area was markedly different from much of what we experienced in Laos so far. Gone were the undulating mountainous roads and the jutting granite and limestone cliffs. Here there were mostly tree-scattered rice paddies on flat ground for as far as they eye could see. It looked similar to northern Thailand except with different style houses.
After about two hours of slow, bunking bronco roads (yes, that is two hours of slippery, pot-hole-filled mud roads), we came to a swollen river where the concrete bridge that crosses the water was an estimated 10-20 feet below the water level.
How does one cross an Underwater bridge you ask? Well at first we weren't sure. No one was attending a small old rusty ferry there, and the only thing that seemed to be grossing when we arrived were motorbikes on a makeshift 'ferry' consisting of longs laid across two longboats with a motor on one end of on longboat.
It took a while, but the ferry drivers eventually came down to get us going (they must have been having a drink up in the village we passed at the top of the hill). Once they got the boat (think metal raft with a tiny tugboat attached) lined up to the shore, we seemed to get onto the ferry alright. But once we got to the other side it was a different story. Due to the angle of the bank, the ferry had difficulty finding an angle to shore where they could get close enough for the bus to pull off without flooding the engine or getting stuck in the mud. Twice the ferry guys tried to get our driver to agree to pull off, but when the driver hiked up his jeans and walked in to test the height of the water, he was above his knees and told the ferry guys to pull back and attempt to get a bit closer. Eventually, on the third attempt our driver agreed to go and we held our breath, crossed our fingers, and said a prayer as the driver pushed forward. There were a lot of us holding our breath at each bump but the driver managed to slowly climb onto and up the steep, slippery slope of the shoreline to where the 'road' resumed.
Those from our group who had gotten off the bus while on the ferry had to hike their way through the water in the gap between the ferry and the shore, and then wade in ankle deep mud up to where the bus had paused. Stephen was one of these and we had to donate a large bottle of water to rinsing his feet and legs of the thick, caked-on mud.
It was another 45 minutes of muddy, bumpy roads until we finally hit pavement again. Everyone was so excited for a smooth ride again.
A short drive later we pulled off the main road to the Tat Lo Waterfall. We were staying in the bamboo cabins dotting the woods along the right bank of the falls. We unloaded our bags and as we entered the guesthouse complex we barely cleared a giant spiderweb that spanned the walkway above our heads. The diameter of the spiders legs was easily 6 inches, and it was mostly black with some yellow and red colouring on it. I snapped a close-up photo of the spider. It was pretty creepy looking!
Our 'bungalow' was of slightly more hardy construction than the ones in Nong Kiaw, and thought it was slightly cleaner with a western toilet it still had a good scrub to get off the coating of dirt/dust. At least it had a mosquito (well, sort of - it had a lot of hokes we had to patch).
We walked back to the hotel entrance to get a view of the waterfall. By then the rain had stopped and the sun had peeked out. The view from the hotel veranda/restaurant was impressive. We took the somewhat-in-need-of-repair bridge just past our hotel's entrance that spanned the river just downstream from the falls and crossed to where the main part of town was and followed our Lao guide up to the elephant camp (outside the posh hotel) to see if we could ride the elephants in the morning. The elephants had already been taken back into the jungle for the night, but we could come back and see them in the morning. Two of the three elephants were injured and so we would not be able to ride the elephants, but we could see them feed tomorrow.
We walked back down to where the main street was and walked around town. There were piles of pumpkins everywhere, outside all the buildings, and people were loadinbg some of the into trucks. Was there going to be a pumpkin festival? We walked through town to the Wat and had a look across the river and back up at the waterfall. There were children sitting by the overhang there, and mothers with small children bathing in the river just below, I assume in preparation for dinner.
As dusk was approaching, we walked back to our hotel and sat on the veranda and enjoyed the views of the waterfall while sipping on fruit shakes and beers until it was time for dinner.
Some others from our group joined us and we went to eat at Tim's for dinner. Tim is a Westerner who opened a traveller's cafe, and also built a library and computer center for the community. We had the typical Lao cuisine of curries, Laap, etc, then headed back to our bungalows. It had been a long day.
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