As soon as arrived in Pakse we booked into guest house, dumped the bags headed out for some food and then went to a bar. It was Steves birthday today so we were going to have a few beers to celebrate this. However Pakse was really dissapointing not only in the night life being a bit somber but also because there is not a lot to do here and it seems most people just use it as a stop over and entry route down to the 4,000 islands. We ended up in a karaoke bar which one minute would be playing the strangest heaviest most banging techno music which you must need to be on pills to tolerate, which had intermissions everytime somebody there wanted to sing a song and this would then result in some kind of gentle romantic love song being sung (this is basically what Laos music is......). Really bizzare mix of music and not quite sure how it would work anywhere else in the world, but the locals seem to love it so fair play to them!!! (weirdos). Once again in the bar however everybody was really firendly and we were once again chatting to the locals here. This seems to happen anywhere you go in Laos where they speak english they always want to talk to you, soo friendly. Once again the locals would not see us walk or get a tuk-tuk home so motorbikes back to the guest house again....... This was followed by a very unimpressed guet house owner, who had to get up and unlock the doors for us, it was like fort knox. Still realised his dissatsifaction in the morning when read the sign that said all guests to be back in guest house by 11pm as doors will be locked, whoops a daisy slight oversight there!!!!!

Cannot say I was overly impressed with Pakse, in fact had we not needed to come here to get the connection to Don Khong (the 4,000 island we decided upon visiting) would of totally skipped the town. Next stop is Don Khong this is the biggest of the islands, however all of these islands are supposed to be very calm and very peaceful with some fantastic scenary and given the experiences of the rest of Laos so far it is therefore something to look forward to.