Mr. Coffee

It's another early start today and we begin by having breakfast by the waterfall in the restaurant. The fruit salad we ordered was one small banana and five pieces of pineapple. Hardly a salad. My mosquito bites were still an annoyance and had woken me up last night again. I keep applying the antiseptic cream in hope it will do something for them. I'm complaining about them a lot to Rachelle. I counted over fifty bites on my hands and arms alone. I didn't even bother counting the ones on my feet, because there are so many. After breakfast, we get on the bus.

We're on our way to Pakse, but before that we are going to a coffee-maker to learn about coffee. It's run by a Dutch guy who married a Laoatian woman and they have a son together. Mr. Coffee is very passionate about coffee and is incredibly friendly. I like him. Unfortunately, I don't like coffee and when he serves out his coffee, I sit there with nothing to drink. One of the girls slips as she walks over from the bus and lightly grazes her arm, which causes her to faint, because apparently she can't handle blood. There wasn't any blood; it was a graze. Her sister puts a transparent plaster on it (I'm sure you're thinking the same thing I am about that) and when she comes around again, she acts like her arm is broken. It was a small graze.

We learn how the coffee is made by doing it. We smash the coffee beans out of their shell, Mr. Coffee's wife separates the broken shells from the beans, then Mr. Coffee roasts the beans and cools them down. They are then grinded into coffee powder and he adds the hot water to make it drinkable. We all taste the coffee. I do too, because I feel I should, but I don't enjoy it. Afterwards, he tells us about coffee plants. I now know what one looks like.

We're not allowed into the coffee plantations, because they were trimming the plants and snakes love the trimmings, making it too dangerous. Instead, he treats us to his finest and most expensive coffee, the beans of which are digested and excreted by Civet cats before they are collected to make coffee. I drink half an expresso cup and Rachelle has the other half. It was okay I guess. I wouldn't really know if it was good or not.

It's a couple more hours on the bus and we arrive in Pakse. Rachelle and I go for food before embarking on a very important decision regarding our trip. It's time to decide when and how we leave Lao. It's a long and stressful story involving internet research, travel ticket offices and a pointless trip to the bus station in a moterbike-sidecar-Tuk-Tuk in which we got wet from the rain. To cut a long story short, we leave for Vietnam tomorrow. 

We meet the Stray travellers for pizza and drinks to say goodbye. We hadn't planned to leave the group so suddenly, but as Jan said, "That's travelling". It's strange to think we won't be getting on the bright orange bus again and I feel bad for leaving all my tissues I used to blow my nose in the net pocket of my seat.