Day 11 - The music from the wedding party in the next village finally stopped at approx 05:30 so unfortunately wasn't a great last night at the ecolodge. We were awakened by the noise of 'something' moving through water. On further investigation, the herd of water buffalo were literally just yards away, the other side of the fence thankfully! A bit of breakfast then we just chilled out in the lodge in the morning watching the buffalo slowly go about their business.
Massimo spoke to us in the morning to say that we could share a minivan with another couple to get to Pakse. This was good as it halved the cost and meant we definitely didn't have to get a local bus down Thorpe Park Road for the last time!
Our final destination for the day was Attapeu, a couple of hours from the Vietnam border. On arrival at Pakse bus station, before we'd had a chance to even touch our bags, they were whisked off onto a bus. A bit of 'discussion' (mostly in sign language) later it was the right bus to take us to Attapeu 4 hours later. As we made it to Pakse bus station with 30 minutes to spare, we stocked up on food and drink for the trip. When on the bus, we chose seats near the back where we could hear a clucking noise, very strange. A quick look down to the right, a cockerel and a chicken were down by some chaps feet, just loose to run around!! I thought hedgetrimmers were strange but this topped it! I must mention that we found out in Ta Ong why hedgetrimmers were everywhere, they are used to cut the rice fields to save time on hand cutting, genius.
After quite a few stops and more than 10 people standing at some points, we arrived in Attapeu, in darkness and 3 miles out of town at the bus station and no tuk tuks in sight. The driver could not help us and most people seemed to have lifts arranged. We struck gold when a lady said to us she had a truck coming and was going into town. We jumped in the back of her husbands truck, open to the elements, proper hitchhiking! We asked to go to Saise guesthouse in town, unfortunately we had no idea where it was and nor did they. After 10 minutes we were dropped at another guesthouse and decided to make our way down to the river as we knew it was near there. We eventually found the Saise, walked in to an empty reception desk with a note on it......in Lao! After using their toilet, we walked up to the centre of town and decided on an interesting looking 'hotel' which was run by a Vietnamese guy. "Room?", to which he nodded. We decided to check the room before agreeing as it all seemed a bit surreal. It was awful but we begrudgingly said yes as it was 20:00 and we were hungry and tired. The owner then said, "you, Vietnam, morrow?", "yeah", "ar, you get bus from here". Excellent, but the language barrier wasn't helping one bit but we eventually worked out it left at 06:00 tomorrow. This was established with quite a bit of pointing at the clock but it didn't help he kept pointing at a sheet of paper that said 11:30!! He also set us up with some Dong to get us started.
A bit of food just down the road and a beer at a local place. Then off to bed bur not before squashing a cockroach! Out came the silk sleeping bag liners and we just placed the mosquito net over us. The room had air con but a big hole in the bathroom wall.......what do you expect for £7.50?!! The room served a purpose though and it was heads down for what would probably be another restless night.