River Resort in Pakse

For my birthday, I asked Nick to take me to Pakse for the three day weekend. 

(Side note: December 2nd was Lao National Day, the FIRST Lao holiday we've had since we arrived in May. I am so jealous when I see my friends have time off on MLK day, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving... working Thanksgiving was especially hard.)

Pakse is in Southern Lao, and seems to mostly be filled, tourist-wise, with traveling retirees and backpackers. Most of the guests at the River Resort, the hotel being a "luxury destination" and far from Pakse center, were older travelers, mostly from Europe and the States (some Australians). Nick and I were by far the youngest, but we didn't mind because this place was INCREDIBLE.

We found a package on their website (pricey for Laos, but not bad overall) for two people for two nights. It included:

1. A riverside villa (awesome, outdoor shower, balcony)

2. A river cruise for two (wasn't really excited about it originally, but it turned out to be great)

3. Two aromatherapy massages (they were OK, at best. Staff could use better training)

4. 10% discount on food

This was the package rate for the high season; I'm sure it would be much cheaper in the low season.

On the river cruise. The River Resort staff in charge of hosting us was great

View on the River cruise

Sunset view from the villa

The Mekong River is pretty muddy and gross. I wanted to explore the "beach" a bit and ended up getting stuck. One of the very sweet gardening women, Noy, came down and helped me out of the mud, then helped me clean my clay-caked flip-flops.

Getting stuck :(

Washing my flip flops off with Noy.  How the conversation went :
Noy: (speaks a bunch of Lao)
Me: "Yeah I tried walking over there *gesturing a walking motion* and I sunk!"
Noy: (speaks a bunch of Lao) *starts cleaning my other flip flop*
Me: "Khop jai!"(Thank you)
Noy: (speaks a bunch of Lao)
Me: "Yeah I know, I'm a mess!"
(Both awkwardly laughing because we have no idea what  the other is saying)

The River Resort was about 35 minutes from the Pakse airport, so it took a long time to get to the Bolovan Plateau (about an hour, see "Bolovan Plateau" blog entry). They were only about 15 k from Wat Phou (another blog entry) and provided bikes to get there and back so that was an incredibly beautiful ride. Plus so many kids were excited to see white people on bikes!