The RETURN TO PAKSE... part 1: Sleeping buses and goodbyes

Several blog posts ago, we went down to visit Pakse for two days. It was great weather and we got an idea of the area where we would be living and teaching. The Pakse Hotel had great accommodations, but we didn't really know anyone there (except for one landlord for the house that the Coopers were hoping to get...but that story has a strange twist to be told later).

NOW, we are returning to Pakse...to live! We gathered all our possessions from the Guest House in Vientiane on Monday, September 28th. Things were a little hectic as we were getting the last shots for Japanese Encephalydis but forgot to get needles from the nearby French clinic. The trip to the clinic and back left us just enough time to catch the proper buses for our larger stuff.

There are sleeper buses that leave every night from Vientiane at 8:30pm (sharp, surprisingly) and arrive in Pakse at 6:00am the next day. These buses will also carry a lot of stuff with them (including our 8 suitcases and a few other odds and ends). BUT, they would not carry our bikes or a gas stove that the Coopers bought (we were told that gas stoves were not sold in Pakse... but we found some later, at a much higher price!). In order to transport our stuff, we found another bus that left slightly earlier, but carries larger items. The problem is that there is no way to guarantee that our stuff will not get stolen along the way (since this bus stops every 20-30 minutes along the road to Pakse, the sleeper bus stops only once).

We arrived at the bus station and paid transportation costs of 100,000 kip (about $11.85) per bicycle and the Coopers paid 200,000 kip (about $23.70) for the oven. This bus left at 7pm, but arrived in Pakse around 6:30am... the only problem is that there are four bus stations in Pakse, and we were not sure which one our stuff would arrive at. The best thing we could do was become really good friends with the Lao guy who put our belongings on the bus... and pay him a little money to help him remember to keep them on the bus.

Now we waited for our sleeper bus... Heather got us all food from a nearby night market: grilled fish, grilled chicken, sticky rice, fried spring rolls, and some dipping sauce - great sendoff meal! yum. (THANK YOU HEATHER!!!) We also treated ourselves to some Wall's ice cream (very similar to the ice cream bars or dipped cones we have in the US, but much much smaller). Ice cream never tastes better than in hot weather (and when you can rhyme all the time!).

The bus loaded around 8pm and our 8 suitcases disappeared in the bowels of the enormous land roving machine. I instructed Heather to buy 2 tickets for me because the last time I had to ride in a sleeper bus, I ended up sharing it with a very questionable person with a major identity crisis. A ticket costs 150,000 kip (roughly $17.70) and provides 1/2 of a single bed, a small meal of fried rice with cucumbers, a bottle of water, some random little mints (for your breath?), and a wet towelette in the morning to wipe your face. Two tickets gets me a whole single bed (woohoo... SOOOooooo much space! Almost enough for me to breath!) and no sleeping buddy!

So, we said our goodbyes to Vientiane (and Heather, since she was the only one there to see us off... she lived close to the bus station and was immensely helpful in speaking Lao for us). And the bus took off! They gave us our meal and bottled water. An older Asian gentleman was in the bed across the aisle from me. He too was alone in his bunk (great, wise minds think alike). The bus was now in full swing with its rocking and bumping and turning... sleeeeeeppppy time...

....11 weeks later, and we are finally getting down to the last leg of our journey into Asia!