Pakse

I arrived in Pakse at 6am after a very sleepless night on the sleeper bus which was very cramped as its made for small people not big westerners, but I did get to watch the sunrise which was very beautiful!  The landscape is very different here from the north its much flatter.


I met a French girl on the bus and she was heading down to see the Wat on a motorbike so I hired one too and joined her to drive down Wat Champasak and see the old temple, it was a bit of a long drive down there with some crazy traffic to negotiate as well.  At one point we had to cross the Mekong river and needed to put the bikes onto a ferry - well Ii say ferry more of 2 boats strapped together with some planks so you could push the bikes onto it, was a little unstable but went across the river pretty quick.  The landing was very odd the path went straight through a Wat so we had to drive around the temple to get onto the road - so relaxed!  
Champasak was a very small little town, strange to think it used to be a royal capital until very recently but looked pretty deserted and run down. 

The temple was really impressive even though it was mostly ruins and no where near as big as Anchor but interesting to see, just a shame that the part that used to house old statues had been replaced with a big golden Buddah.  There was also an interesting rock with an crocodile carved into it which they think was used for sacrifices to the gods.  

Pakse