Life in Phana

Christmas in Lao PDR

However much I enjoy life in Phana, it is good to get away sometimes and for me Lao PDR is the best place to get away  to. This year I had to leave Thailand at the end of my allotted 90 days by 22 December so we decided to stay away over the Christmas period. There is only so much of piped jingle bells that anyone can take.

I prefer round trips if at all possible and so this time we decided to drive up to Thakek and then do the 'Khammouane loop' that so many tourists on motorbikes are encouraged by the guidebooks to experience. We did see a couple on the route but there were also several people we came across who were doing it by public transport -- more gruelling, possibly, but almost certainly safer.

Referring to guidebooks again, I read this loop described as possibly the highlight of a trip to Laos. Without doubt the trip is full of highlights. The scenery is pretty much one continuous highlight, and we also were lucky enough to stay at two resort / guest houses that were particularly welcoming.

The first was on our first day out of Thakek. We headed for a small town called Mahaxai which my guiddebook described as a 'delightful little town' with several guesthouses. I think they were thinking of somewhere else, or perhaps some tourists had written in recommending it as a joke! Mahaxai can never have been delightful and right now it is being 'redeveloped', meaning that it is nothing more or less than a red-dust dust bowl. So we pushed on ... and fortunately saw this sign just a couple of kms further along the road (route 12):

  

The restaurant and our bungalow:

  

Other bungalows and the view of the resort from outside:

  

We stayed two nights here. The resort is owned by a friendly English-speaking, Russian-trained engineer at the Nam Theun 2 power station who said he had built much of the resort himself and put in the water and electricity supply.

We drove north along route 1e, a laterite road that until very recently was full of potholes but has now been upgraded and is very easy and pleasant to drive along. It is metalled as far as the Nam Theun 2 Power Station seen here:

  

Some people find the huge flooded area caused by the Nam Theun dam depressing and the dead trees spooky. Of course, villages were destroyed by the flooding and the villagers re-located but their new villages offer them better facilities in terms of schools, electricity, easier access to medical treatment and so on. At a police checkpoint just across the dam, the policeman asked us if we could take an old man home who had been up to the dam for some free medical treatment, and we learnt a lot from him in the 30 minutes or so he rode with us.

  

There is a small stretch of about 5 kms where road works are continuing and we had to wait a short while before we could get past:

  

The road was so much better than we had expected that we pushed on past windy and dusty Lak Sao the last town on route 8 towards the Vietnam border. We turned west and drove on to Kham Khoun where we found a wonderful resort / guest house with the help of our guide book, which proved completely reliable in this instance. We stayed here, at the Sainamhai Resort, this one owned and designed by an English-speaking Cuban-trained architect who is currently running the Nam Heun Power Station and preparing for his retirement in a few years time.

  

  

 

After 3 nights at Sainamhai Resort we returned to Thakek. We had taken several sightseeing detours on our way round the loop and I will write about them and show more photos in my next post – coming soon.

Phana Garden Resort

Phana Garden Resort is the only place of its kind in Amphur Phana. It opened in September 2009 in spacious grounds which have been well-maintained as  the 'garden' in the name of the resort.

The frontage is welcoming by day ...

... and by night.

The building nearest to the road is this open-air restaurant:

 As with many things in Phana, the town's iconic monkeys are represented. Here they figure behind the bar.

As well as the open-air restaurant, there is another room, air-conditioned, which can be used for entertaining large groups to lunch or evening meal, or as a meeting room seating up to 80 people. The resort has only a small number of rooms available for accommodation, and most of their business seems to be providing spaces for meetings and celebrations. There are two snooker rooms which seem to be well patronised and so do the two karaoke rooms, of course.

The sleeping accommodation consists of five small one-bed units like these, three of them with air-conditioning and two of them with a fan only. All have a toilet and hot and cold showers. With air-con the price is 470 Baht per day, and with a fan it is 310 Baht per day.

Two larger units with veranda and carpeted floor are 630 Baht a day, and there is one two-bedroom unit with veranda at 960 Baht a day. Breakfast is not included in the price, but it can be provided if ordered the previous night.

This karaoke room can seat 15 people:

The resort is about 1 km from the amphur office, 2 kms from the new market and bus station. The area where the resort is situated is still green and pleasant as this view looking out to the road from the open-air restaurant shows.

At present, the resort is used mainly by people returning to Phana usually  for some sort of family ceremony that means more people attending than the local family members can accommodate. If some of the ideas being proposed as part of the Community Based Tourism initiative in Amnat Charoen Province came to fruition, then Phana Garden Resort will play an important role. People staying there can be sure of friendly and helpful service and a comfortable night's sleep.

Happy Returns to Phana

I got back to Phana yesterday from my trip to Malaysia and a few days in Bangkok. I had only been away ten days so unsurprisingly nothing had really changed. The harvest is just about completed so the fields have changed colour quite dramatically. And the weather has changed again. When I left it had got unseasonably hot again after a very brief cold spell. But when I got here at about mid-day it was immediately apparent that the cold weather was back. And by bed-time I was closing all the windows and searching for more blankets.

 

When I got back to Phana in September after six months away, there had been more significant changes so I went around taking photos. The new market and bus station was well on the way to completion, now scheduled for a December opening.

 

 

 

A private building project that had been completed was the new 'resort' just outside town. It looks very nice and has a restaurant with several items listed that I really like but can not get in Phana. Tod mun kung, for eaxample. The waitress said they had that every day so I ordered some. Not today, I was told about 15 minutes later. On my next (and probably last) visit, exactly the same thing happened. All that glitters ...

 

I'm not expecting Phana to become a major tourist destination, however. When I asked how much the bungalows were, I was quoted two prices, one for three hours and one for the night. So I guess they are not exactly aiming at too many long-term visitors. But they do quite a good trade in karaoke, even at lunch time.

The most mysterious change was to the course of the Huay Phra Lao. Upstream from the bridge the banks had been cleared and the stream revealed to be divided, whether around a small island or not I haven't been able to find out yet. The view is certainly improved and it looks as if a riverside walk is planned. Previously the stream only seemed to come from the top right of this picture. 

 

Back in 1982 I swam upstream of the bridge with our kids and some relatives. I can't imagine anyone doing that now, though doubtless it is no less wholesome than it was then and I don't remember anyone getting ill or anything. A little child nearly got swept away but wouldn't have got far because the bridge was just being built then and there was lots of bamboo scaffolding in the river forming a kind of porous dam. I think the present bridge is a newer one.

 

Downstream nothing has changed. A lot of fishing goes on at the weir, usually.

 

Who said Isan is a desert? Not here, it isn't. The Huay Phra Lao divides the old town of Ban Phana from the new town, the amphur. A few kilometres downstream it joins the larger Se Bok, which in turn flows into the Mae Nam Mun east of Ubon. The Mun in turn flows into the Mekong at Khong Chiam, and then it's all the way to the sea through Cambodia and Vietnam.

People thought I would be interested in the new machines set up around the old market place in Ban Phana and along the road where the tetsaban offices are in the amphur. But believe me, despite their lurid colours, taking these photos is the nearest I am likely to get to these things. Other people find them amusing, though, especially round about dusk. Not at the moment, perhaps. Too cold.

 

Close up they are even more off-putting.

 

More to my taste are these new kuti in Wat Phra Lao:

 

So Phana changes, but so far it still looks very nice, I think, and I can't imagine not being glad to get back here. So, many more happy returns, I hope.