After my time in Attapeu I felt I had had my fill of the various small towns in southern Laos. Debi and Matt opted to head up to Salavan and then on to a small village called Tahoy, where rumor had it the tigers were so plentiful it wasn't safe to go out at night. It sounded fun and if they had seen tigers, I would have regretted my decision, but I've come to be pretty wary of anything written in a guidebook so I opted to take the bus straight back to Pakse where I was pretty sure some website revisions would be waiting for me in my inbox.
Wat Phu is another UNESCO site and was at the time I was there an active archeological dig. Perhaps at some point the original statues, figures and carvings will be returned to the grounds of the wat, but for the time being there are house in air conditioned comfort and thus the wat itself is rather lacking. Just to once again slag the Lonely Planet Guide to Laos, if, as the book says, this is "one of the highlights" to your visit to Laos, well, I pity you, you have not seen much of Laos. [I have a sneaking suspicion that the authors of the Laos Lonely Planet deliberately build up the more touristy areas and neglect the lesser known parts out of self-interest—they want to keep the good stuff to themselves—which is fine with me since it isn't that hard to figure everything out once you get here, provided you invest a modicum of effort].
Mainly I spent my time in Champasak sitting of the veranda of my guesthouse reading and writing. The second afternoon, somewhat to my surprise, Debi and Matt wandered up the stairs.
It's difficult to explain but the further south you go in Laos the more relaxed life becomes. Since life in the north is not exactly high stress, by the time we arrived in the four thousand Islands we had to check our pulse periodically to ensure that time was in fact still moving forward. That sounds like a complaint, but it's not meant to be. Southern Laos is simply, well, the villagers tend to the fields in the morning and evening, or fish or weave and generally the heat of the day is spent lying around trying not to move. There is good reason for that, it's hot and the air is deathly still most of the time. When the air does move it's somewhat like the puff of heat that might come from a convention oven when you open the door.
I have long held to a theory that the environment shapes culture and the people who create it. For instance heavy industrial development does not seem to happen in equatorial areas and there's a good reason for that. Those that think the west is more "advanced" because of their work ethic or that sort of thing, ought to come out here to Laos and see how motivated for work they are at one in the afternoon.
I came to the four thousand islands to avoid everything involving heavy machinery and peacefully wind down my time in Laos. There isn't much to see nor much to do, which provides some excellent time for lying in hammock and reflecting on the two months I've spent here. Just down the Mekong lies a whole new experience—Cambodia—but before I move on I wanted to spend a few days thinking about where I've been.
Farewell Laos and people of Laos, I look forward to returning one day.