We stayed only one night in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It was too hot to do anything! And also everything was so expensive! So we stayed in a Scandinavian Bakery all day, waiting to have our night bus to Pakse.

We did a huge mistake when booking the bus ticket directly from the bus station. It would have been much cheaper to buy it from a guest house. Also the bus we booked was the worst of all! All the other buses were 2 floor buses and more modern. We really aren't lucky!!

The bus left at 8h30 pm and arrived about 7h00 am. We couldn't sleep because the bus moved and jumped so much. About 12 pm the bus stopped so we went to see what was happening. There was a girl who took the bus but she wanted to put her motorbike in there too. So the drivers moved the bags to make some space. And the lay the bike on my bag! I said no way the bike is going to stay on my bike so they moved all the bags and they had to open the doors on both sides of the bus. There was a car that wanted to turn where the bus was standing so when they moved the bus David's bag felt down of the bus. We didn't really care about that at the moment so we went back to the bus.

We arrived to Pakse about 7 am. We went to pick up our bags and guess what! Mine was ok but it was David's bag which was broken on one side! We started to check what the damage was and first we saw that David's Ray Bans were broken. Then he checked inside the bag and what a nightmare! All the electronic devises were broken! He had the charger for the laptop, camera, shaver… We were so angry!

Eventually, in the guest house David repaired his Ray Ban, and the laptop wire was little damaged so we went to see if we could buy a new one somewhere. Also the adaptor was totally broken.

We bought a new wire and it worked! We thought about it after and the only way David's bag would be in that condition was that the bus had to drive on the bag when they moved the bus!

Anyway we were really angry and hated Laos and the people... The bus drivers didn't even apologize and they laughed at us. ..

We took the bus company's name and phone number but in the end we never called them because what really could they do? Or I don't think that they even care…

Pakse is a small and cheap city where you can rent motorbikes and visit villages nearby in the plane of Boliviens. We visited some amazing waterfalls and we stayed one night in a village called Tad Lo, about 80 km from Pakse. It was really nice place with waterfall and also there was an elephant village. So of course I wanted to go for an elephant ride! The ride last about one hour and we passed through the forest, a village and a river. It was so nice to see that it was the elephant that was in charge and not the human. If he didn't want to move he said so. And the guy with us didn't have a stick or anything to hit, he just nicely asked the elephant to move! I didn't know that you can speak elephant!

After the ride the elephants took a bath in the river.

The day after in Pakse we went to have lunch in a restaurant. And what a coincidence: I met my high school friend from Laajasalo sitting in the restaurant! The world is really a small place!

The next day we booked a bus to go the 4000 Islands region.