Pakse - Si Phan Don

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Pakse

We decided to head for Pakse in southern Laos as we were all keen for Cambodia and we’d heard the bus journey into Hanoi was horrendous - i.e. sick bags are distributed at the start! We booked ourselves tickets on the sleeping bus from Vientiene and a sleeping bus it was. Proper flat beds with mattresses, blankets and pillows! We got the back row which was 4 mattresses in a row. Was a fairly bouncy journey but still the best bus ride I’ve ever experienced.

Pakse is a sleepy little town with not too much going on except for its proximity to the Bolaven Plateau which has a much cooler climate and is home to tea and coffee plantations as well as some ethnic villages which we could visit. Also in Pakse is great pizza, freezing cold beer and a sweet little massage place. Larn, our tour guide took us up to the plateau for the day and showed us around the waterfalls, plantations and 3 villages where we got to mix with the locals. The village people live self-sufficient lives without much in the way of western technology - all farm land is worked by hand and their homes built by themselves from local timber. Television has arrived however and the satellite dishes look very strange against the village backdrop. We hung around with the kids for a bit and were shocked and amused to see that some of them were smoking massive roll-ups as they wandered around. Definitely the cool kids.

Back to town for more pizza and Beer Lao.


Si Phan Don - Don Khone

We left Nathan in Pakse to catch a bus to Bangkok, the first leg of his journey home. We continued south to Si Phan Don or 4000 Islands which is, as it sounds, 4000 balmy islands in the mighty Mekong River. Larn had advised us to head to Don Khone, one of the smaller inhabited islands so we caught a sinking longtail boat (Joel scooped water out for the duration) over to the isolated spot. No one pretends there is much to do here, the Lonely Planet suggests relaxing under its “Activities” paragraph and so that is exactly what we do. Joel and I get some bikes as I have never been great at sitting still and head off to explore. One pretty impressive waterfall and a pleasant ride through the paddy fields later and we’re back on the hammocks on the bungalow veranda enjoying the fans while they last - electricity is only available for a few hours a day.

We had been warned in Pakse that some guesthouses here use the river water for cooking although we had no problems there. However, it is clearly an essential part of their lives as the locals use the river for bathing (a very discreet process, always wrapped in beautiful fabric), laundry, teeth brushing etc.

We had all arrived a little unprepared and without much cash (no ATMs here) so after a bit of faffing around we manage to put the bus tickets on my credit card (took about 2 hours, involved phone calls to some bank and unsurprisingly has still not appeared on my bill) and exchange some Lao Kip into US Dollars ready for our meeting with the Cambodian border officials tomorrow!

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