Pakse

Pakse, Jan 12, 2011.

Don Det - Phia Fay 102 km
Phia Fay - Pakse 57 km

My stomach was not a hundred percent when I was set to leave. And then when I went to pick up my bike it had no air at all in the front wheel. Bummers! I lazed all day yesterday in the hammock reading a very interesting book on Cambodia I had bought in Phnom Penh and not yet finished. I should have checked on the bike but never did.

So in the boat going back to Nakasang I dismantled the front wheel and mounted my spare tube. It has a Schrader valve and is a bit difficult to inflate with my hand pump. I was only half done when we docked on the mainland. Fortunately though I found a motorcycle shop that had a machine pump and I was ready to pull out around 0930.

I knew that there would be a guest house about 25 kms before Champasak, which means some 100 kms to ride from Nakasang. The road was good, no hills and not that much traffic. I came on a guest house at Phia Fay and moved in. As I left next morning I saw that there are actually another three guest houses nearby.

Like far too many others in Pakse I tried to get a room at Sabaidy 2 guest house. Full. Then saw a miserable room that was 60 000 kip. Eventually moved in at a fancier place for 100 000 kip. An hour later as I was enjoying a cold Beer Lao at a street corner, Leon pulled in. He is an Irish guy I met with Cindy and Tomano at Viscious Cyclo in Phnom Penh. He had been sick for a few days, had just arrived from Cambodia and had not had a kip for a couple of days, since he found nowhere to exchange his dollars. You get spoiled in Cambodia where you can pay everywhere with either the local Riel or with greenback dollars. In Laos the government does not like people to have foreign exchange. There is not a black market or anything, but you can not change dollars everywhere. Pakse though has several ATM's even though it is not much of a city really. Leon had been turned back at the Sabaidy 2, and moved in with me for half of the hundred. He will stay a couple of days to recuperate and then go on to Vietnam. He has been a year on his bike now, cycled 16 000 kms on his Marathon XR's, and not had a flat yet.