There had been much talk about the problems of taking wooden items into China. Several people have bought wooden spirit houses, similar to our one, and no one wants a problem when entering China. So, we like others have made the decision to ship ours back to the UK using a local carrier.
As we left the hotel we saw that a couple of cars were being worked on. Paul Wignall’s Nissan had a problem with front shock absorbers, and Jingers was giving him a hand. Is this the best view we have had of Jingers since the tour started?
The G4 Range Rover of Simon Dedman has a problem with the engine management system. Paul’s car is fairly easy to deal with, but Simon’s is definitely not. Trying to find the cause of an electronic problem without the right diagnostic equipment is virtually impossible.
Eric Woolley, one of the 'mechanics' showing how much weight you can lose on a HERO event!!
Our first stop in the town was at a DHL agent who said they would charge $900 to ship the spirit house!!. We rejected that and went to the post office. They said it would cost about $200, but we had to have it crated. The post office man thought he knew where we should go,. So we got a tuk-tuk to lead us to someone who would crate the spirit house. We put the spirit house in the back of the tuk-tuk.
The driver then lead us to a furniture manufacturing unit who said they could do it by 4pm for $30. I agreed with the driver to meet us at 4pm to take the house to the post office.All this had taken a good hour and we hadn’t been able to have a look around the town. It is situated on the Mekong River and has become a centre of back-packing and trekking holidays. The centre is a very busy place with dozens of cafes and restaurants.
We were most impressed with the town. It is quite unlike the other Laotian towns and villages we have seen, as it is very western and prosperous. We saw the main temple, that has some very beautiful mosaics on the outside of some of the smaller temple buildings.
We then had a mediocre snack lunch at a bar overlooking the Mekong. If only the food had been as good as the stunning view!
We headed back to the hotel for a swim in the hotel's magnificent pool.
We then did some packing for the next six days of the tour. We each carry two bags. One is taken in to the hotel each night and the other remains in the car, to store clothes. As we walked to our room we passed the car park, where Simon was still trying to sort out his Range Rover. It became clear that despite all his efforts the car could not be repaired in Laos. The decision was taken to ship the car back to England and for Simon and Andrew to travel as passengers with Eric & Lynn Woolley. It was a sad ending to their SE Asia tour.
At 4pm we drove back to the furniture unit to collect the crated spirit house. When we arrived, there was our tuk-tuk driver with his tuk-tuk already loaded with the crate. Off we went to the post office, following the tuk-tuk with the crate in the back.
Half an hour later it was sent on its way to London. We gave our driver a big tip as a thank you for all his help. Wendy took this rather blurred photo of me and the driver in the post office.
In the evening we went to a French restaurant, L’Eliphant, with Alan Crisp and John Faulkner.It was a wonderful treat to have really good French food after all the local food we have had on this trip.Tomorrow we leave Laos for Vietnam, the sixth country of the tour.
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