Last Day

Today is our last day in Vientiane and with the CDEA. They threw a party for us on Monday night in the office. We are now covered in bits of bloody string! We were presented with presents and thanked over and over again for our time with the CDEA.

It was a very drunken night. After the office party, where all the staff were there, a bunch of us went to a Lao karaoke bar. There we drank more and danced a lot. Khampasong was wasted, hanging all over me talking drunken rubbish. He's hard enough to understand at the best of times, but his drunken slurred English was verging on impossible to understand. How he managed to get home on his bike I will never know.

The next day there was a lot of sore heads in the office. Khampasong rang up to say he had got up late. When he eventually came in he looked like death warmed up.

We spent yesterday packing and sorting out all the stuff we have accumulated over the last 2 months. Sam is having to get another bag, as her bag is too small to fit all the scarfs, and bits of material she seems to have aquired. We need to head into town this afternoon to pick up a bag for her, also to get rid of a pile of books we have and get some more. Back to reading, that's a part of traveling again I am looking forward to.

At the moment we are waiting for Khampasong to come back with our bus tickets, for the over-night bus to Pakse. As a gesture of good will Khampha said that the CDEA will pay for our VIP bus tickets, which is great. However, as usual they have left it to the last minute. I hope that there hasn't been something lost in translation, and we end up on a bus going north by mistake or something.

I'm sure it will sort itself out in the end and everything will be fine. Fingers crossed!

We have decided that we will spend a day in Pakse and then get the slow-boat to Champasak. Near to Champasak there is an ancient Khmer temple complex. The Lao equivilent to Ankgor. They say that if you visit Laos, then you must go to this place. So we are! Then we will head down to spend a few days in and around the 4000 islands, before crossing into Cambodia.