Champa Residence Pakse

After our fabulous experience in the North of Laos we headed south to the town of Pakse. Luang Nam Tha to Pakse is over about 600 km and originally we had chosen to fly this leg of the journey. However we found that the airport in Pakse was shut for renovations.

A five hours mini-bus journey was followed by a 16 hour overnight bus back to Vientiane, roughly the halfway ...

... as the coffee I had in Vietnam though. We then pushed on to Paksong where we went to vist two more waterfalls, Tad Nguing and Tad Fane . I thought the second one was more impressive then the first but they were both nice waterfalls. We had some lunch here and as soon as we sat down after taking photographs the weirdest things happened. A fog just whipped in and covered the entire area and lifted ...

... each to enter. The sound of the falls was amazing, however a fog seemed to be snaking through the trees towards us. This didn't look good and to our disappointment the falls were completely hidden from view. Our visibility was probably about a foot. All we could do was laugh about it!

Before we moved on to the next set of falls we decided to have lunch in the restaurant. Cheese and tuna sandwiches with french fries, just what we ...

... country?? I do realize that even if there were street signs I probably wouldn't be able to read them seeing as my Laotian isn't so great but anyway...) and ended up taking a tuk tuk. He looked at me like I was confused when I said I was planning on going to Don Kho for the night, saying there were no guesthouses on the island and it was a little bit late for a day trip. He dropped me off at the spot where you can take a shared sawngthaew to the village and they explained to me that ...

... that we would sink. But, we somehow made it! The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful as it's not too far away. Of course we stopped a bit outside of the city and tuk tuk drivers came on, teling us we had to get off there and take a tuk tuk into the city. Luckily, there was a lady who spoke English and told us that the bus was going to take us more into the city-they were just trying to rip us off!

Anyway, we ...

... it with girl talk. We finally fell asleep because when the bus arrived at 6:30 we needed to be ready to work. When I woke up people were deboarding and I was seriously groggy from the night, but I got off the bus and the staff was there to drive us to our hotel.

We were staying at the Salachampa hotel, that at first looked a little sketchy, but when I looked it up, my guidebook said it was ok. I know I shouldn’t be so hesitant but sometimes I ...

... the French. Next day we head to the 4 thousand islands.... to the island of Don Det. What a place. In the midst of the Mekong river are (supposedly) 4,000 islands - one of which is a tiny island with a few travellers, a few bars/restarants and loads of friendly relaxed locals - most of which were farmers. We were so happy to arrive somewhere relaxed after 3 days of travel that we stuck into the beers with our irish neighbour on the hammocks on the balcony ...

... Laos people are more dishonest that their neighbor Cambodians.
We pushed back to our accommodations, but not until I'd mistakenly given some Australian lads the wrong direction to the waterfalls. never mind, I soon corrected this by asking another passer-by, should she catch up with them, to tell them the correct way.
After our rest, we extended our use of the bikes by riding across the French bridge to check out Don Det. It was more more 'involved ...

Yesterday I started the day with a run around the island and over onto another called Don Kong to see a nice waterfall - as it was only 8:30 am I was suprised to see busloads of Asian tourists already there before me! I lwas a hot and sweaty mess and a little disappointed to see a no-entry sign as I would have happily dived in to the cool water!

Later that morning we got the boat back to the mainland and a ...