We touched down at the Pakse airport early Friday afternoon after a one and a half hour flight from Luang Prabang. As with Bangkok Air, I was really impressed by the service and hospitality of Lao Airlines. Even though it was a short domestic flight on a little prop plane, we were still served a decent meal and - my favorite - a moist towelette. This flight was a tad pricey (about $183), but we booked the tickets before we left home so I'm writing it off as a sunk cost.
From the airport, a registered taxi was 80,000 kip ($10). We had read that a tuk tuk into town should cost about 20,000 kip, so we decided to walk towards the road and see what we could find. A driver approached us in the parking lot and offered us a ride for 60,000, then lowered it to 50,000. No thanks. Once we reached the road, another driver said he would take us in for 40,000, claimed it was the "local price." I've been around long enough to know that falangs (foreigners) never get the local price without a fight. We told him we'd just walk, then he dropped the price to 30,000 ($2 each) so off we went. I'm glad we didn't walk. Pakse's roads are coated in a dark red clay that blows about in a cough-inducing, eye watering dust.
Our first task in Pakse was to find a place to stay, as we hadn't booked anywhere in advance. After wandering around a bit, then stopping for a beverage and free WiFi at the Bolaven Cafe (nice place with a western atmosphere, though a bit pricey), we ventured to the Sabaidy 2 Guesthouse, apparently the cheapest hostel in town. The first room we looked at was 60,000 kip ($8) with twin beds (our preference), but the shared bathroom was downstairs and out the back door. We instead opted for a room with one king bed and private bathroom (80,000 kip/$10). Amber likes to walk around in her underwear, so this suited us much better. Good location, close to the city center. The place was reasonably clean and at $5/night each, well below our budget.
Our plan was to spend about two full days in Pakse - the rest of Friday, all of Saturday, and most of Sunday, before catching the night bus to Da Nang, Vietnam. We had read that there was not much to do in the city of Pakse itself, though plenty of excursions to the surrounding Bolaven Plateau. Apparently the nearby 4000 Islands are also lovely, but we didn't have enough time for that adventure. We decided to figure out how we would be getting to Da Nang, then work out how to best spend the remainder of our time in Pakse.
Our first stop was the Lao Airlines office. If we could avoid a 14+ hour bus ride for the cost of a $100 plane ticket, we were willing to shell out the dough to save time and the general inconvenience of an entire day spent staring out the window of a bus. Despite the advertisements on the counter at the office stating the times of flights to Da Nang, we were informed that this route no longer exists. Some further internet research revealed that this flight was started in 2012, so it barely lasted a year before it was discontinued. We thus scratched this convenient but expensive option off our list.
I had read online about a night bus from Pakse to Da Nang for 180,000 kip ($23) departing from the southern bus terminal at km 8, on www.bolaven.com. However, when we stopped in at various travel offices, all of them insisted that there was no night bus to Da Nang. Puzzling. Everywhere, we saw advertisements for buses to our desired destination, but they all had early morning departure times, meaning you spend all day on the bus and arrive late at night, instead of all night on the bus and arriving early in the afternoon the following day. The prices for the day buses seemed to range from 220,000 kip to over 300,000 kip, depending on whether you booked a VIP sitting bus or sleeper bus. Every travel office listed a different price, so once again I was getting that "I'm getting ripped off feeling."
Feeling as if we were getting nowhere, we decided to do something productive: get a beer. We found a riverside bar where we were served two Beer Laos and a large bucket of ice for 25,000 kip ($3). We poured the warm beer into glasses of ice and drank it local style; we were the only falangs in the joint. Our waiter sat down to chat with us for a while. He didn't speak much English, although he did manage to tell us that he is studying English at university. It was at this bar that Amber convinced me to rent scooters the next day and ride to a coffee plantation about 50km out of town.
We had dinner at Delta Coffee, which was recommended as a good place to get Italian food. The meal was actually quite tasty, but my chicken with garlic and mustard was so greasy that it made me a little sick. After eating far too much food, we went to bed early, in preparation for the next day's excursion.
But of course, we woke up to pouring rain. I gave up on the scootering immediately, as I was pretty apprehensive about it in the first place, so I just went back to sleep. This traveling gig is exhausting. Amber ventured out, had breakfast, and found a lovely old couple who had a laundromat across the street from our hostel; they communicated with flamboyant hand signaling and assured her that the laundry would be machine dried and ready by 6pm.
It turned into another day of just trying to figure things out. We moved our belongings to the Somvang Hotel in another part of town ($17/night and I was pretty pleased after reading some bad reviews online), then headed over to Pakse Travel and Air Co. to book our bus tickets. Apparently there are a lot of ticket scams to watch out for, but several blogs I read online claimed this to be a reputable agency. I read some horror stories about the night bus, and about buses from Pakse to Da Nang in general, so we decided to play it safe and take the VIP sleeper bus for 250,000 kip each ($32).
We had dinner at a French restaurant called Nadao. According to reviews on TripAdvisor, this was a great place to have delicious French food at Lao prices. Unfortunately, I have to disagree on both of those points. We each got the three course set menu for 80,000 kip ($10). My salad was beautiful, but really over-dressed and I thought Amber's pumpkin soup just tasted like butter. For entrees, she had a pretty uninspired filet of Mekong river fish and I'm still not exactly sure what I had. At first I thought the waiter, who spoke very little English, was saying "fox", but then I figured he must mean frog. So I said "ribbit" and mimicked a frog hopping across the table; he nodded. What came out was some sort of chewy steak. I hope it wasn't fox. Do people even eat fox? Dessert was also pretty underwhelming, though at least the wine was good. We polished off two carafes, bringing our total bill to over $40. Yikes. To top it off, they then informed us that their credit card machine was broken, so I hopped on the back of the waiter's motorcycle and he took me to the hotel to grab some cash. This was really fun and kind of the highlight of the whole meal. That and the wine.
On the way back to our hotel, we were pulled into a small roadside store where a bunch of very drunk Lao people were singing karaoke. We danced, drank iced beer, ate food that was randomly spooned into our mouths, and I was groped by an old man. You know, the usual. After escaping, howling with laughter as we walked back to our hotel, we had one more surprise waiting for us in the form of a message at the front desk: Tomorrow's VIP sleeper bus had been canceled, so we could either wait another day (or two, or seven) in Pakse - or travel local style. Stay tuned!
If you're considering traveling from Pakse to Da Nang, here are some sites/blogs that I found helpful, amusing, horrifying, etc.:
Unsure of the information here about this night bus - it is almost certainly a local bus
http://www.bolaven.com/bus_vietnam.php
http://elcaminolesstraveled.blogspot.com/2013/05/south-east-asia-series-infamous-bus.html
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g670161-i14802-k6018291-VIP_bus_from_Pakse_Laos_to_Hue_DaNang_Vietnam-Pakse_Champasak_Province.html
http://www.travelfish.org/transport/laos/southern_laos/champasak/pakse/all
http://www.paksetravel.com/all%20ticket%20center.htm
Boarding the plane to Pakse
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