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Published: October 19th 2006
Our last day in Vientiane was spent lounging by a pool! Woke up to another hot & sticky day & had 7 hours to waste until we got our night bus to Savannakhet. Skip found a luxury hotel that allowed us to use their pool for US$7.50. It was a great way to ease my hangover from the night before. Went to our favorite sex tourists bar & had a night on Singapore Slings. Alot of old white guys with their young lao girls thinking their gods gift. Most of them even acknowledged us when they were leaving with a little smurk or to tell us how great the bar is......An ozzie even turning round & saying "you gotta love this place" We were sitting right by the stairs & had been laughing for most of the eve at them!?(sad bstards...Skip) Anyway back to our day of swimming & lounging in the shade surrounded by palm trees....Bloody marvelous!!
Had dinner with a Danish couple we had met on the bus from Luang Prabang, unfortunately their bag had been snatched as they were cycling around the city & had lost everything!! Felt really bad for them so we shouted them dinner &
then went for our bus. Night bus was ok, after the 4 hours of Lao kareoke at full volume we managed to get some sleep, apparantly this is a regular thing on VIP bus journeys?? Arrived in Savannakhet at 5.30am, we were told 8.30!!! So we sat by the Mekong for a few hours waiting for anything to open looking across at Thailand. Savannakhet is a small city with alot of old rundown French Colonial buildings with very little to do but had a nice friendly feel to it & very untouristy. The guest house we stayed at is one of the last colonial-era buildings still being used as a guesthouse. Again a little run down but none the less a great building and only US$4 a night. Went to the Dinosaur museum which was ok, would have been better if we could understand French as everything was written in either Lao or French, even so, it was cool to see the size of all the bones they have have dug up here dating back millions of years ago. Its getting hotter by the day so the rest of the day was spent in the shade, reading on the balcony
& watching the world go by on the street below (our favorite pastime) along with having a few lao beers!
We took the local bus to Pakse which took 5 & a half hours to do 229Km. It was only US$3 so I should have known it wasn't going to the best bus journey! The bus dated back from the 1970's with very little leg room...as in NONE! Had 2 seats for a while but it got busier so went back to sitting next to each other. Was amusing to see how the driver just pleased himself in stopping to visit his friends, stopped for 20 minutes while he ate sticky rice & chicken on a stick, stopped again to get the local produce which was being sold at the side of the road. Everyone seemed totally cool with it & just waited patiently until he got back on & drove. Was glad when we finally got to Pakse. We are leaving here tomorrow for Don Det/ Don Khon in 4000 Islands, plan to stay there for about 4 days then back here to Pakse before flying to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Have decided to fly as our budget is
going well & will save us the border hassles we've been told about , a couple of days of bus travel & back tracking. No internet in 4000 Islands so next blog will be from Cambodia in about a weeks time.
Love to all, thanks for messages & B'day wishes to Skip/Tiny x
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Kiers
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JEALOUS!!!
WOWzers!! Just checked out all the pics and i sooooooooooo got the bug!!! Sounds all good on the travel front to me. Hope all is swell. Stay away from the snatchers and whoever showed you the dug up bones(bit scary don't you think?)!! Stay of the moores and stick to the path!! Right i'm off ski now. Be happy - Be Lucky, keep us all posted!! Miles o Smiles x x x x x x x