I arrived in Pakse at 6am. The bus journey wasn’t as terrible as the last two but I was once again the only white face and got stared at for most of the trip. The air conditioning was so high and it was so so cold. I couldn’t sleep and was constantly shivering! A lovely older lady sat next to me covered us with her fleece and we huddled up together to keep warm. When the bus stopped I stood at the back near the engine and exhaust to warm myself! When we boarded the bus again I asked the driver to turn off the AC, which he did and I got applause from everyone on the bus! Whilst collecting my backpack a young Lao guy approached me and asked where I was going, I told him ‘Don Det’, this was an island on Si Phan Don (the four thousand Islands) the southern most point of Laos near to the Cambodian border. It turned out that his uncle ran a guesthouse on Don Det and he said to get in a pickup with him and some others, it was much cheaper travelling with the locals as I paid the same as them. We drove a couple of hours to Nampasak where his cousin waited for us in a long tail. It took us about 15mins to reach Don Det. It was beautiful. I had a walk around as soon as I had booked into a guesthouse (his uncles was full). I found Elliot who had left us in Vang Vieng to travel down to Don Det, he had stayed so long that I had caught up with him. It was good to see him and he introduced me to some girls he had met there.