Moved from Da Nang to Xepon on August 13, 2024:
From Da Nang to Xepon on Google Maps
The trip wasn't easy:
- waking up at 5:30 am
- public bus (#16) to Da Nang bus station
- a 5-hour trip to the border (bus at around 8:00 to Lao Bao Town)
- border crossing with all worries + carrying two heavy backpacks
- waiting for a bus to Sepon (one at 15:00), and another bus trip lasted for 1 hour.
- then, searching for a hotel afoot since they have nothing on booking com in Xepon.
It was 4:30 pm when I showered at last and decided to straighten my back on the bed for a while... Woke up only at 10:30 pm; got a headache, then ate the remains of peanut butter and a stale baguette from Vietnam... and fell asleep again.
The Room
A 12-sq-m double room with an attached bathroom for 100.000 Laotian kip (4.5$ = 160 Thai baht) at the centrally located Viengxai Guesthouse. Fan only, no AC - I asked for that. It's +25 at night, so I chose to pay less.
Wifi is good but extremely slows down in the evening and early night to the point you can't use it except to send messages. 😞
Quite clean and not shabby in the room. The receptionist can speak needed basic English. Everyone is friendly.
Bedbugs: no bedbugs in Lao motels away from major tourist destinations. Bedbugs, as I understand it, have colonial cities as strongholds and spread with hordes of backpackers. Xepon town is not touristy, and has no hostels.
A good adjustable fan is in on the ceiling.
Alas, they didn't touch the window for a couple of years, it looks like:
All sorts of dead insects there between the mosquito net and the window but okay.
My office:
Furniture! Wooden! That's fantastic! And the king of brainwashing taking much space 😡 (on the right) while I keep my stuff on the floor here and there.
I feel that, although the room isn't new, not many people have stayed in it, and that's nice.
Hot water.
The throne of deep thoughts.
Banghiang River. A Piece of Bitter History
This wasn't my first time in Xepon so I knew where to go: along the main street (a highway from Vietnam actually) to a bridge over the Banghiang River.
Picturesque riverbanks with some activities on them.
Boats made of parts of American aircrafts left since the time of the Vietnam War.
How did it happen? Northern Vietnamese Communists attacked Laos, occupied mountainous Laos, and eventually got bombed by the Americans. That's how these aircraft details appeared in Laos - these boats literally fell down from the sky.
This is the only part left from the bridge bombed by Americans:
As for the current bridge, it was built later by the USSR. The writings on the memorial plaques say (in Lao and Russian) that this is the bridge of Lao-Soviet friendship:
It sounds like another story about bad Americans; however, things were more complicated. The Kingdom of Laos was attacked by Communist Vietnam and dragged into the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese, supplied by weaponry from the USSR, caused the civil war in Laos led to the overthrow of the Laotian royal power, resulting in tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands of refugees; including the genocide of Hmong people and Communist concentration camps where the Lao Royal family perished, etc, etc.
But let's return to the real world.
Xepon Town
Sepon is a small roadside town but it is a center of the district for a long while so it has become a center of relative wealth where you can find lovely houses built of stone or plank with traditional architectural elements.
Thousands of people around Xepon live in simple huts and lead a subsistence economy.
As for food, Sepon isn't cheaper than Thailand and Vietnam. People tend to cheat you about prices at street stalls and restaurants. Be prepared they'll sell you rotten products if you allow them.
Gangsta style! 😁 Kids sometimes greet a foreigner with "sabadee!" (Lao hello), sometimes, usually happy to be photographed, sometimes, ask you to take images of them.
After visiting the bridge, I headed along a side gravel street to see another nearby location.
I wanted to photograph views of Namkok River from another bridge but I found no inspiration there. Instead I was found....
"Gangsta kids" 😁 were back - they wanted to connect on social media to get images from me.
Loved that detail on the leg, hope no rabies.
Back to the main road.
Trucks mean life to that town. They bring money.
And dogs mean dogs; bums and nothing-doers searching for an opportunity to attack someone weak. 😁 But, until now, the dog issue wasn't that bad on Xepon's main road to me, it's okay here. But you never know, dogs are dogs.
Cutting off the story to continue in the next post!
More stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out my previous posts on my personal Travelfeed or Worldmappin map.
I took these images with a Nikkor 70-300mm and Nikkor 50mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on August 14, 2024, in Xepon, Laos.