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So we leave Pakse (the blog is still under review by the Laos government), and get a local bus for a couple of hours. By local I mean a large pickup truck filled with chickens, bags of rice and anyhting else the locals get their hands on in the market. There's 30 people crammed in so I stand on the rack at the back of the bus cos its more comfortable than 4 square inches of space per person!! We've left Paddy in Pakse, so Phil, Blair and myself jump on a boat from where the "bus" drops us off and are welcomed on Don Chong island by a resonable looking guest house, a bit expensive ($6 a night) but it starts to rain so we don't bother moving. A couple of good looking American girls drop in so things could be worse.....

Southern Laos and No electric

Gareth Penpraze
2007-04-20 22:42:55

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So we leave Pakse (the blog is still under review by the Laos government), and get a local bus for a couple of hours. By local I mean a large pickup truck filled with chickens, bags of rice and anyhting else the locals get their hands on in the market. There's 30 people crammed in so I stand on the rack at the back of the bus cos its more comfortable than 4 square inches of space per person!! We've left Paddy in Pakse, so Phil, Blair and myself jump on a boat from where the "bus" drops us off and are welcomed on Don Chong island by a resonable looking guest house, a bit expensive ($6 a night) but it starts to rain so we don't bother moving. A couple of good looking American girls drop in so things could be worse.....

The daughter sells us a tour round the islands including a trip to 2 waterfalls and to see the only train in Laos (I think we only signed up cos we we're told the girls were going.) We chat to the girls that night and they tell us the woman who sold the tour said that we we're going (before we signed up, looks like a scam starting). It becomes clear the girls aren't interested in any form of sausage....

So next morning we're off on the tour, passing an island with no electric so everyone (all 15 or so people we saw) gets wrecked in the afternoon and goes to bed early, sounds like we're going there tomorrow then!! We're dropped off on Don Det I think - could have been any one of 3999 islands for all we knew. We had a arguement with the guesthouse that morning cos we weren't told about the entrance fee to the island, the fee to see the waterfalls and the general scheeming way the tour was sold, so they agred to pay the entrance fees, which turned out to be another lie!! We walked to the small waterfall which turned out to be a grade 6-7 rapid, great. Had a spot of lunch and went to see the train, I'm sure you'll see by the photos that the tour was becoming a joke. Even NIR are just about better quality!! Back to the boat and off to the big waterfall - again a cascade except its the biggest one on the Mekong and in SE Asia. The most fun all day was the trip back sitting in the pickup watching Phil and Blair getting pelted by the rain on the way back..

Our plans were to push on South into Cambodia but we heard all sorts of horror stories about getting through the border and the roads on from there. We cut our losses with Si Pan Don and decide to splash out $80 for a flight from Pakse to Siam Reap in Cambodia, but thats another story..........

Gareth Penpraze
http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/ASBO-Holidays/