We arrived in Pakse at 6 in the morning, it was pooring with rain, and we were to realise, that Vientiane isn't the dullest city in Laos, nope that title should surely go to this small, fairly dirty, very uninteresting place!!!

After finding a hotel (finally), Sean and his girlfriend/wife (the South Africans) had found one but the rooms were abit too pricey for our selves, so we had to continue our search, eventually settleing on a Chinese hotel, which turned out to have the best rooms we'd stayed in to date for a very decent price.

The girls slept for a couple of hours while I watched a film involving Antony Hopkins as a butler, and Emma Thompson as a house maid to a fascist sympathiser in England in the run up to the second world war, oohh and Christopher Read was thrown into the mix as the level headed American Diplomat, I go into these details because there was very little else to the film, I think I went and got a shower just as 'something' actually happened, which was slightly frustrating.

When everyone was up, showered and changed we went and got breakfast, where somebody attempted to charge me 7000 kip thats $0.75 for one piece of cream cheese, that may not sound so much, but considering a baguette with two fried eggs was $1, you'll understand why I argued it. ha god I sound tight.

After breakfast we organised with a tuk tuk driver to take us to a few of the warterfalls in the Bolevan Plateau just outside of the city. Having stopped reading guide books in the majority of places, we didn't know that the most spectacular one along with some tribes were a fair old drive away and apparently took an over night stay to see. We had already agreed to travel on to the 4000 island the next morning and therefore dsecided against that, instead opting for two not as impressive ones. The tuk tuk driver told us we would see a coffe plantation aswell, that turned out to be two coffee trees!!!

The waterfalls were quite nice, but nothing to really write home about (although thats exactly what I'm doing now, so maybe I'm wrong!!!) At the first waterfall it was possible to swim, but it was fairly freaking cold and wet, so I decided against it, while the two girls, much to the joy of the Laos tourist with cameras joy got in in their bikinis, swam to the waterfall and straight back again.

Back in town that night we had planned to meet up with Sean again for a few beers. When we finally got round to it after an early dinner and my search for batteries, we found him at his guesthouse. We were playing cards, and he came and informed us that he didn't think there was much to do, but we could look. After finishing up our beers we all went and had a cursory look, and found nothing, Sean retired back to the cafe his girlfriend/wife was in stealing the wi fi for her Lap top from the posh hotel across the street.

We continued our look and went down to the river front where I'd earlier seen a bit of human movement, and there we found a cafe/restaurant/bar, full with Laoatians (I'm not sure if thats the name for them, but I had a discussion with a Candian guy about it on Don Det (our next stop) and thats we he thought, and I think it's a cool word!!) eating, drinking, and when we entered, staring at us!! We were the only foreigners there, but after a while we had a few guys coming over introducing themselves, practising theirEnglish and attempting to hit on my female companions. We actually had a really nice time there, and had a couple of beers bought for us by a Laotian who had lived in the US for 5 years and so spoke very good English.