- the smallest cube that's also the sum of three cubes
- the sum of a twin prime
- the number of days since I last had a cigarette (and the number of nanoseconds since I last thought about having one)
We are currently in the delightful Southern Laos town of Pakse on our way from the capital to the most southerly point of Champasak province (and thus Laos), Si Phan Don (4000 islands in the widest point of the Mekong). The journey down from Vientiane has been pretty slow as the only form of long-distance travel here is bus, and we have chosen local buses mostly. This has made me realise that when viewed from the inside, a country's size is relative to its transport infrastructure: this way Laos becomes equal in size to China in terms of time spent crossing end to end and goes part way to explaining why we will have been in each country for approximately the same amount of time.
The trip has been great despite not everything going to plan, as moving again after so much time in one place has been like a breath of fresh air to me. Our first stop was at a town called Tha Kaek, where we discovered a 4 day motorcycle tour ('the loop') that we could do which would get us off the beaten track and into some pretty remote villages, not to mention a renowned 7 kilometre long cave that we would kayak through. With some trepidation on both our parts, but a mitigating unbridled enthusiasm on mine, we set off on a glorious day through some spectacular karst scenery. However while I have had plenty of experience falling off bikes during a mis-spent youth The Boss has not, and after a couple of Ellen-road-interface incidents (nothing broken I'm happy to report) we decided to head back before she gifted me a big payout on the life assurance policy. On reflection maybe an unassisted 4 day ride along rough dirt tracks was not the best or fairest introduction to her biking career. 'No shit, Sherlock' I believe the saying goes. Actually this did me a huge favour as the day after I developed a pretty energy-sapping cold that would have made the remaining 3 days biking pretty tricky.
Next stop was Savannahket, a town that I have been looking forward to since we knew we were headed south lured by descriptions of faded French-colonial grandeur, a hint at what the capital was like before more modern development, and laid-back petanque games by the side of the Mekong. Needless to say from the moment we arrived it didn't feel at all right and much to Ellen's exasperation we stayed 1 night before hitting the road again. I don't know why it was like this for me: certainly the town itself seems lovely objectively speaking. Maybe it was my cold; maybe it was the size of the place (unexpectedly substantial); maybe it was the pretty impersonal room we found to stay in (I'm getting old when a bit of freshly laundered crisp white linen can seriously affect my opinion of an entire town! Oh dear.); either way I have at least begun to trust my instincts even when I don't understand them and so moving on was easy, especially as we have really outstayed our time in Laos as it is if we are to return home at anything slower than light speed.
And so here we are in Pakse, my cold subsiding a little, the linen quite crisp and fresh, the town manageably small and altogether delightful enough to reassure us that we made the right decision. We have had a splendid day pottering around one of the local Wats (and combined monk school) and tramping around a huge edge-of-town market where I was able to acquire another giggle-inducing 'Vietnamese gardening hat' (conical, wooden, you know the thing). This afternoon we took a jumbo (Laos' answer to the tuk-tuk) to a nearby weaving village where this seemed to be pretty much the sole (cottage) industry, with every family owning their own loom and other assorted weaving related gadgets. Many families were really friendly and took the time to show us how weaving happened, mostly I think because Ellen wore her sinh (Lao skirt, not unlike a sarong) which they loved. I was amazed by the weaving process, which I'd never really considered before, and of course computing analogies were obvious: dying the weft multiple colours in a particular way is essentially like writing a program: when it is loaded onto the shuttle (compiled) and fed through the loom (processor) an amazing pattern emerges that is wholly depended on the dyed thread, which itself gives up no clues about the eventual pattern to the uninitiated. It is a highly skilled art and very, very cool indeed. Go and see traditional weaving if you ever get the chance.
Tomorrow we go further south, this time by boat to the town of Champasak primarily to visit the nearby ruins Wat Phou. It was a Khmer temple very similar in style (although smaller in scale) to Angkor Wat in Cambodia with the advantage of being much less visited, and as we have decided we don't have time to visit Cambodia this could be a real highlight of our Southern Laos journey.
As for coming home, we have reached a bit of a crunch point with the journey route and our future all hangs on whether we can scrounge a lift on a cargo boat from Thailand to India. If we can we shall travel India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey (these are the southern silk roads). If we can't we shall go back through Laos to China, up to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey (the northern set of silk roads). Its all a bit scary and exhilarating at the same time, but either way fun and adventure are guaranteed. It is a real pity that if we get to explore Pashtun culture in Peshawar we shall certainly miss the madrasahs of Samarkand (and vice versa), but as dilemmas go this is not a bad one to have. Not bad at all.