South to Pakse

Another day, another bus trip! Up early again and back to the bus station, where we bought our tickets and boarded the bus to Pakse just before it left at 7am. This was a local bus, so no air conditioning, but mercifully it no cargo inside and surprisingly roomy seats/footwells. So we were comfortable enough.

The bus was pretty empty when it left Savannakhet, but it stopped fairly regularly to pick up new passengers. There was one early stop at a sort-of rest area which was fairly grim, but after that it didn't stop at all. And the bus kept filling up and up.

We were comfortable enough in our seats, but after a large crowd of monks boarded it was basically standing room only for the last couple of hours. We finally arrived in Pakse around 2pm, after having basically no idea how long the ride was going to take. Google Maps had estimated five hours, but clearly didn't account for the endless stops of a bus! Ah well, we made it.

Annoyingly, the bus dropped everyone at the bus station 7km out of town where we had to catch a songthaew into town. For this 7km ride we paid 20,000 kip each, or about $3.20. For reference, the 7 hour bus ride was 40,000 kip each. So the last few kilometres increased the price by 50%! We heard later from a local that the bus is supposed to go to another more central depot later, but since nobody on the bus was from Pakse, nobody knew that. Easy way of getting your songthaew driver mates a bit of extra cash I guess.

Right after hopping out we bumped into a Belgian man who owned a travel agency in town. Chatted to him for a while, then booked our tour for tomorrow and transfer to Siem Reap the following day.

Walked a kilometre or so to the hotel, then back out for a lunch / dinner at 4pm. Had a few different Lao dishes at a nearby restaurant - nice enough although Lao cuisine is generally less interesting than Thai/Vietnamese or even Cambodian.

Upstairs for an early night as a big thunderstorm rolled over the town.Read more