Sala Phae Don Kho

... English), or a singer. <br><br>Les Ch'tis (Hein??)<br>By the way, I spoke to that French couple from Lille about the popular movie "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis", a film that basically takes the **** out of northern France. They were not too happy about that movie, and get teased with it all the time, even though it's not exactly about Lille. And they also disliked the fact that the movie mixes up the accents and traits of that region. It wasn't right. But they ...

Today we woke up with the notion that we were actually going to stay another night but decided against it as we might never leave so mid morning we booked a boat/bus out of there and headed to Pakse in midlands. The mini bus was fine and it only took about ...

... ponds out front, balustraded windows and steep steps. It is set into the mountain (known as mount penis!) at it was nestled in the clouds. Like the temples of Angkor it was originally Hindu and is now buddhist, so it has images of Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu alongside Buddha statues.<br> <br>The walk to the top of the complex was rewarded with a great view across the rice paddies. We also saw some rock carvings, including a ...

... as we're used to now from Vietnam and Cambodia, there were just a few guys sitting around. We asked one guy to take us to the Paske Hotel and he pointed the way, no we said, we'll give you a dollar to take us there, oh ok he agreed. And we got onto the side-car attached to his moto. This is the first time we've seen these contraptions and they are fun, although I did wonder if we were going to die at one point.<br><br>Paske is a small ...

... people we needed but eventually left anyway. Turns out we dropped off some messages and packages along the way so maybe that made up for the 2 people we were missing.<br><br>When we arrived at the 'ferry terminal' (a few steps down to the river where some little boats were tied up) some boatmen came up to me. They pointed to a sign that said it was 20,000 kip to cross. At the tourist office in Pakse I'd been told that it was 5,000 kip. I figured they were just trying to rip me off ...

The weather wasn't going to let us have it our own way on that last day in the Bolaven plateau and it was clear from the start that we were going to get very wet at some point. Within an hour of riding we inevitably hit the rain and it lashed down upon us with amazing ferocity. We continued on despite it, but had to change our route when we arrived at the dirt road we were ...

The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray!<br>We stepped off of the overnight bus at Pakse and into the glorious morning sunshine, a crown in the blue sky above. It had been some time since we had seen a clear sky and within minutes we had forgotten about the cramped sleeping conditions that we had all endured on the journey down from Vientiane. I think it took Scott a little longer as he had had to share the poor excuse for a double bed ...

... and were suspected of being trafficked. We got there and saw that the children ranged from age 12 to 19 and they were girls and boys. All of the conversation occurred in Lao so I did not really understand what was going on, I watched and tried to figure out who all the officials were and what the children would going to do. About two hours later, it was explained what had occurred and where the children were going. She had to explain to the families ...

It was nice to team up with Anne-Marie for one more day; repeat yesterday's performance: hire a bike, cycle on the firm sometimes sandy tracks, visit a beach area, see some of the locals on the way. Gun Ho!<br>Don Khon was very pleasant to cycle on, around, and through, too: flat lands, interspersed with dry fields, thick vegetation intermingled with palm trees and trails, sometimes stony.<br>As we were riding along on these 'lands,' it was starkly evident ...

The commanding sound of the resident cockerel forced me to get up. Its sound would have been even more commanding, had not a spanner, in the form of a croaking modification, got in the works, needing a spanner to fix it - probably an old bird. It looked amusing; its dark-red chest and shiny feathers nonchalantly strutting around the premises, weaving in and out of the bungalows. The guest proprietors seemed nowhere to be seen, but it hadn't ...