Southern Laos

Well after Vang Vieng it was time to leave for the capital Vientiene for an overnight stop. We booked ourselves on the VIP bus, which as you can see from the photos was an absolute luxury liner (not). But 5 hours later we were in the capital and checked into a nice hotel which ac and hot water. The wallpaper was held up by sellotape but we're past letting that bother us. The capital was quite nice, although very busy, but we did managed to treat ourselves to a lovely french meal with wine (thanks Dave and Jackie) and a few beers watching sunset. The next evening we were booked on the overnight bus to Pakse which takes 10 hours. After a few problems at the bus station (I can't go into them too much but it involved trying to put us on a ropy on bus that we were not standing for) we got on a nice bus with reclining seats and cold towels and made 2 new friends Sean and Joely. After arriving at Pakse at 7am we piled on another bus and then a ferry to get to Don Det an island in Southern Laos. We were safely in our riverfront hut by 11am which wasn't bad going. Then we had a few days relaxing and cycling around the island. There was of course another waterfall to see and lots of lazing in hammocks. We were going to get the bus over the border into Cambodia, but in the end we decided to fly to Cambodia, so it was a bus back to Paske where we bumped into 2 separate groups of people we'd been on the slow boat with over 2 weeks ago, which was great.

Beer Lao

Next stop Cambodia.....

Don Det sunset

Drinks

Sunset Vientiane

VIP Bus