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Day 7 - The day of the big storm......With our fears of typhoon Haiyan lessening by the hour as it seemed to have tracked north and would hit Vietnam sometime today, we awoke to a cloudless sky. Wandered down for a random breakfast of rice, noodles, sausages and fried egg on toast.
The plan for the day was to hire some bikes and bike over to the large Buddha on the other side of the Mekong river. First job though was to sort out our bus for tomorrow morning to Stung Treng in Cambodia. We walked to the tourist information office where there was no one behind the counter until someone appeared after about 15 minutes. With the book in the info office saying the bus left at 8am from Pakse we thought this wasn't too bad but once we spoke to the lady this seemed to change to 7:30 from the ViP bus station about 2kms away. We also asked about hiring bikes and she said up the main road on the left.
We wandered up to the main road and went along a bit to find a place that hired bikes out as Alice was too much of a wimp to get mopeds! The two bikes out the front were both clearly women's bikes with baskets on the front, the guy took one look at me and didn't even have to ask as he ran off to find a mans bike. He returned with a rust bucket of a mountain bike that had clearly seen better days but couldn't complain.
Off we set for the Buddha which was approximately 5 miles away. Considering it was 11:30 am and was about 30 degrees, it wasn't easy going. We got to just before the bridge and it was too much in the heat on bikes that didn't seem to be built for the road. We had stopped outside the new market so chained the bikes up and wandered in. A brief look around and we were back in the saddle heading for home. Making it back and after bumping into Jerome whilst covered in sweat with him just shaking his head, we headed straight for the air conditioning in the room to cool down.
After a brief rest stop we headed back out on foot this time to find some lunch. We stopped in a really nice cafe called Boloven cafe. A nice pork sandwich for Alice and chicken with sticky rice for me. No dipping sauce for the rice so we had to get some to which Alice decided to add a lot of chilli!! We sat in the cafe for over an hour reading the guide books to work out our plans for after Stung Treng as we haven't got anywhere booked. Lots of options so we are going to play it by ear but most likely we will head for Kratie.
Leaving the cafe we headed back to the hotel to e-mail a couple of places for potential stays further down the line. We then ventured out again and this time on the bikes down to the river front to have a drink right on the Mekong in one of the many shack bars in stilts on the riverside. Obviously looking flushed and after asking where we were from, the owner promptly turned the large fan on to cool us down. Again not many people seemed to be about, guess they're not stupid enough to go out in the heat of the day.
Heading back to the hotel again to cool off we waited half an hour for the roof restaurant to open as we wanted to sit up there with a drink and watch the sun go down. And what a sight it was, very quick but amazingly beautiful. We have to say that the view from the roof if the Pakse Hotel is one of the most outstanding things we have seen, pictures just don't do it justice.
Back to room for a quick shower and then up to the roof again again for dinner. Another superb meal with our last beerlao as we are off into Cambodia early tomorrow morning.
- comments
Al Phew, I'll close the AIR..
Brian http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502655/Britains-thriving-scrap-metal-trade-makes-10bn-year.html keeping you in the loop!
The real Brian There is a mystery commenter using my identity on this blog- narrowed it down to 2