Here's our comfy little hut on stilts by the river at Van Vieng before it was virtually destroyed by hail stones the size of coffee saucers.
I wrote most of this little adventure in an email so I've copied and pasted it here.
From: danapalamara@tiscali.co.uk
Subject: An all round bad day
Send: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 13:32:53 +0700
Hello,
We are currently in Van Vieng in Northern Laos. We've been here a few weeks
now and we are about to make our way to the east of the country to see the
Plain of Jars (lots of huge jars in the countryside - nobody knows where
they come from). Before that we were in Cambodia, which was an amazing place.
But I'll update you on SE Asia when we are about to leave next month.
For now since most of you are living through the hell that is the UK in February
I thought I'd tell you a little story that will no doubt make you all giggle
a little and murmur under your breath that it serves me right for taking
an 8 month holiday...
Van Vieng. Fantastic riverside location surrounded by lush mountains with
loads of cool caves to explore. The cave we visited requires taking a rubber
ring and floating/paddling through. A great experience, apart from Tim insisting
that his Berghouse bag was totally waterproof and insisting on putting my
brand new 300 quid camera inside it. Need I say more?? The water literally
poured out of the bloody bag. Family and Tim's friends will be relieved to
know that I have not killed him. Not yet anyway.
Our day got worse. When we got out of the cave, dripping wet and minus a
camera it was raining. Raining?? It's dry season. What's going on?? The
two guys at the entrance to the cave just smiled and said 'yes, yes, rain
ha ha ha' Ok, I figure, they don't seem concerned, it must be ok then.
I love watching tropical rain. So I sat, still dripping wet, but by a little
fire that our lovely cave entrance man had made me so that I wouldn't catch
'ashoo ashoo' as he put it. It was fierce, but eventually we took advantage
of a break in it to ride the 10 miles back to the town.
Just as we were coming back into town it started again. Only this time it
wasn't just rain. 'Is that hail Tim?'. He couldn't hear me. He was revving
the 'f***' out of that poor little moped desperately trying to get us back.
He dropped me off at our bungalows and went to take the bike back.
The bungalow was fine. A little damp around the edges, but these bamboo huts
and thatch roofs have always amazed me at how much they stay dry. Then I
realised that the matteress was damp....no actually it wasn't damp it was sopping
wet in the middle. 'Shit! better move my stuff out of the way, this feels like it might blow through the walls.'
When the first bungalow collapsed, I decided it was best to pack our kit
and get the hell out of there. Tim arrived looking like he'd just taken
a shower. Huge pieces of ice started flying into the room from underneath
the gap in the door and the roof started rattling and seriously looking like
it was going to give. Have any of you seen 'The Day After Tomorrow?' Remember
the scene where it starts hailing in India? No exaggeration, the 'hail' wasn't
even stone shaped...it was just massive lumps. This was even scarier than
when Ivan hit us...at least we knew what that was and were expecting it.
Outside a couple of trees had fallen down and the bathroom area was totally
flooded. The water was flowing like a fast river. Meanwhile I grabbed my
raincoat (thank God for Gortex...I love you Gortex), and shoved as many electrical
items into the pockets as I could. Now anyone who knows Tim will know that
that's a lot of gadgets.
The owners were urging us to get out of the bungalow so we grabbed our passports and ran for it. Then it stopped. Just stopped. 20 minutes of devastation. All the electric had gone out. A whole house in town had collapsed and the lovely Irish couple that were staying in aforesaid unfortunate bungalow were looking rather stunned. As were the owners.
It looked like the 3 piggies house once it had been blown down. The rain had washed away the earth that was keeping the legs in the ground and the whole thing had fallen in on itself. The Irish couple's stuff was buried underneath the debris. Thank God, they were not in there at the time.
Since the camera had already had a bath earlier we couldn't take a photo of it.
’Are you going to leave?’ One of the owners asked me. ‘Er..yes, I'm afraid so’. Is
the guy mad? The veranda of our bungalow and bathroom was destroyed and everything inside was sopping wet. We felt sorry for them, but we couldn't stay.
We found shelter in a hotel in town (nice, large, stone structure), with
a dry bed and a big table which we covered with about two million electronic
components, bits of phone, speaker etc in the hope they would dry out. The
storms started again and lasted into the night. Today, apart from Tim being
put on 'look after our entire kit while it dries in the sun' duty it seems
like nothing ever happened.
Strangely enough, I'm starting to get a little homesick.
Happy February.
Dana
xx
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