Eating a cockroach in Pakse

Today we awoke gazing out on 180 degree views of the magnificent mekong.  We were in Pakse, Laos, staying at the Grand Champasak Hotel.  Pakse is the gateway to the south of Laos & for us was the stopover point before hopefully seeing one of the most exciting objectives of our trip, the almost-extinct Irrawaddy dolphins.  Pakse is small & except for lots of hotels, guest houses & travel agencies, is basically a pitstop either north or south into Laos or east of west into either Thailand or Vietnam. There is an enormous & quite beautiful bridge connecting north & south.

Our plan was to head to Si Phan Don, the southern most part of Laos which is almost to Cambodia. As we had travelled almost 13 hours the day before, from Vietnam into Laos however, we instructed the driver to pick us up at midday.  The journey had been reliably (?) quoted at between 90 minutes & 4 hours so we figured that even with the couple of stops that we wanted to make, we would definitely be in dolphin territory before nightfall.

We spent the morning at the market to get in a little exercise & soak up some local colour & were pleasantly surprised by how similar Pakse seemed to Myanmar.  The people's reactions to Miss C & I were the same as in Myanmar, basically lots of interaction & lots of photos.  The market was loud, colourful & interesting, especially when Robert was asked to eat a LIVE cockroach at no cost to him! He was all set to do so (ugh!) much to the delight of all of the cockroach vendors, except that the designated cockroach managed to give him a little nick on his finger, thus enabling his escape which saw him then run away.  This series of actions gave Robert pause for thought about how exactly he was going to eat this still squirming thing.  Fortunately, we were able to walk away.  Whew!!!!

I love the market displays, all beautifully ordered, with colour-blocking definitely being in vogue for retail visual display trick in these parts.  Red & green umbrellas are used over the market stalls adding lovely splashes of colour. An ongoing marvel for us has been the way that eggs are transported.  They are carried over unmade roads on the backs of motorbikes or trucks going at speed, from farmdoor to market & rarely seem to get broken (we often check the dozen egg lots offered to see if there are any cracked eggs in the cardboard containers or around the stalls).

 






Top 5
1. Markets provide an authentic experience as locals shop daily at these sites
2. Pride in displaying one's merchandise in the best possible way seems universal.
3. Like markets everywhere, there seems to be healthy competition for customers.
4. There is always something new to see or a new take on something familiar to experience so they are always on the agenda for us.
5. We really enjoy engaging with locals in a market setting & have been pleased that the feeling seems to be mutual wherever we have travelled.