We stayed in Tad Lo for another few days trying to gather up the energy to move on and they were a little bit more productive than the previous days; we finally made it to the waterfalls to cool off and it was so refreshing - why hadn't we done this every day?! There was fun with trying to do our hand washing as well - being the dry season, there isn't much water coming down the river, so naturally just as we got through a few clothes - the water ran out! So we did what the locals do and took it all down to the river to finish it off - I think a few of the locals were a little bit surprised, but it did the trick!

So, it was time to move on and we'd decided to go to Paksong and rent motorbikes from there to go and visit some of the waterfalls in the Bolaven Plateau. We both agreed that doing the whole bike loop was probably a little beyond our capabilities - given the number of times either of us have ridden a motorbike before (…never!). There were only a few buses which passed through to Paksong each day and so, as we had a 1.5km walk to the bus stop, chose the morning one when hopefully it would be a little bit cooler. About 10 minutes down the road, a Swiss ex-pat stopped and offered us a lift into town, so we jumped in the back of the pickup truck (a new mode of transport for us!)…when he dropped us off at the bus stop, he enquired where we were going - just so happened he was going our way! This time though we got to sit up front, although we would have happily stayed in the back given that it was a free ride! He was quite interesting, he's been living in Lao for 25 years and produces Oud essential oil for export. He dropped us in Paksong town and we immediately noticed the difference in temperature - over 60km, we'd gone up 700m in altitude and it was definitely a bit fresher…almost cold that evening!

…It turns out you can't rent any form of bike - motorised or not - in Paksong, and there isn't really a bus timetable as such that we could find (the tourist information centre wasn't all that helpful!), so our plan to visit some of the waterfalls kind of fell at the first hurdle. The closest one was about 6km away and although it was fresher up here, it was still too hot to be walking a 12km round trip. We worked out that we could probably get a bus or jump in with a local taxi…but it wasn't clear how whether we'd manage to pick one up for the return journey! So all in all, Paksong was a little bit of a wasted trip. We settled for an early dinner and a movie (finally watched Spectre - hmm it was ok I guess, not the best Bond movie they've made).

Time is flying by and our visa is only valid until the 1st April, so it was time to get moving north and actually do something. After a mission trying to find somewhere serving breakfast we picked up a local songthaew back to Pakse where we would try and pick up the bus to Savannakhet - Lao's second biggest city. We finally made it the 50km back to Pakse in time for the last bus going north. We'd heard that the buses leaving for Savannakhet were pretty local and could take up to 5 hours to cover the 245km!)…a change of bus and almost 8 hours later, we rolled into town. Shattered and hungry (we weren't prepared for such a long journey and although we'd picked up some snacks from one of the many stops, it wasn't enough to keep us from flagging…not helped by the 'air-con' not really working and no opening windows!). We had high hopes for Savannakhet, 2nd biggest city, surely there was enough to do to entertain us for a few days…….

Braving the 40 degrees, we set out exploring the historic centre with its beautiful old French colonial buildings and about an hour later, we were done! The tourist information (with free maps) was closed at the weekend (we were there Saturday and Sunday), the Savannakhet museum was also closed at the weekend!! We did manage to get into the wonderfully cool dinosaur museum though, but it was very small (2 rooms) and we were done in about 20 minutes! It was quite impressive though, they've got about a quarter of a dinosaur in bones at the moment! So, there was nothing left to do but enjoy a few beer Lao to try and cool off! Unfortunately though we had one too many so didn't move off the next day! That evening a couple of German girls (Krisi and Tine) arrived and they joined us for dinner and decided to travel up to ThaKhek with us (they only had 10 days in Lao so wanted to make the most of it…Savannakhet was not the place).

Again in ThaKhek, we'd planned to get bikes to go and explore the caves, but they were so expensive! It worked out cheaper for us to all hire a tuk tuk for the day, which we did - at least it meant we could enjoy the scenery. We went to a couple of caves; Buddha cave which you have to pay to get into…and honestly wasn't worth it - very small and not really one you can explore. That was, once we'd found it - we went the wrong way and ended up walking for about an hour trying to find it! The second one though was much better, and free! We spent an hour or so scrambling through it to the other side - hardwork in parts, but very cool. Then rounded the day off with a dip in the river - well needed! Yesterday again was so hot so we all lazed around the hostel playing Yahtzee and card games…then someone had the bright idea to buy a bottle of whiskey….the rest as they say is history.

So, tomorrow we're moving on to Kong Lor where there is a huge cave with a river that runs 7km through it - it looks pretty amazing! Then off to Vientiane. Thankfully the temperature is dropping slightly, it's at least under 35 today!