Champasak: Give me a V (for visa)
Sunday, January 29th, 2006The bus stopped, it was 5.30am and still pitch black outside.
“Is this Pakse?” I asked Bec, as though she should know. “Not sure. I’ll go outside and see what’s going on,” she replied drowsily, while I tried hard to keep my eyelids from falling. A few minutes later, she called out to me, now wide awake, “This is our stop, you have to get off!”
I stumbled off, grabbed my bag out of the pile of backpacks forming on the dirty ground next to the bus, and we headed for the nearest tuk-tuk. For we weren’t staying in Pakse, our plan was to head 40km further south to the little town of Champasak, where a millenia-old ruin, like a mini Angkor Wat, sat at the foot of the nearby hills.