Down south the sequel

Hi everyone! Its just one more day until Rosie gets here, hooray!!! I'm very excited :-)
Just before I tell you about my last week, I've added another feature to the blog (I've been playing with it a bit!) called Labels. For example, you can find any posts that talk about my travels under 'Trips'.
On Friday night, Chris and I headed to the bus station to catch the sleeper bus to Pakse for our long weekend in the Four Thousand Islands (they aren't marked on the map, but if you look where the Mekong gets a bit fatter next to the border with Cambodia - the islands are in the middle of the river. We had a long weekend because it was Lao National Day!) We'd booked tickets during the day, but when we got the bus station we discovered that the bus was in fact 'booked out'. Feeling very much like I was back in Hanoi, Chris and I asked every single bus company until eventually we managed to get on the local bus - no beds. So when we arrived in Pakse at 8 the next morning we were pretty tired!
Then we jumped on the back of a pick up truck (I believe the Lao word is sangatheiw) to get to the Four Thousand Islands. There was about 40 people on the back of this truck - just when you thought 'surely they can't try and squish another person on here' they'd stop and another person would get on. We got to the boat at about 1.30 in the afternoon, after making numerous detours to drop everybody off. Then a quick boat trip to the island (Chris and I chose the island of Don Det) and we finally stopped travelling - about 19 hours after we had left home.
We were looking at the various tours we could go on when Chris discovered we only had $40 (thankfully we'd already bought our tickets home). Crap!!!!!!!!!! After waving the Visa card around and realising that was useless, we found the cheapest tour we could go on, which was leaving ASAP. So 30 minutes after we arrived on the island (we still hadn't found a place to stay), we were leaving again.
Back on the mainland, we got into a minibus which first took us to the biggest waterfall in SE Asia (Khon Phapheng Falls) - which is basically a huge chunk of the Mekong tumbling over rocks. We spent about half an hour here, and then drove to the Lao-Cambodian border crossing. We jumped in a boat here, which took us to wait for a sight of rare freshwater dolphins in the middle of the Mekong. Just before I was starting to think these dolphins were a myth, we saw some! :-)
We got back to Don Det just after sunset, and found ourselves a bungalow on the river with two hammocks for $2 a night (at least we knew that we could sleep cheaply on the island!) The place was swarming with backpackers - there were more white faces than Lao, I was really surprised. The restaurants even sold 'happy' (e.g. marijuana laced) pancakes and shakes - I steered well clear of those :-) Chris and I went to bed at 8.30 after a really exhausting day - even the sound of all the generators (there is no electricity on the island) couldn't keep us awake.
The next day we went for a walk across the bridge to the next island, Don Khon, and looked at some more enormous waterfalls (Li Phi Falls) and had a look at Laos' only railway (which hasn't been used since WWII). I was a bit scared to see a little Lao boy at the edge of the waterfall trying to fish out somebody's hat - thankfully he didn't fall in. We spent the rest of the day whiling away our time in the hammocks, and watching the sunset.
On Monday morning we left at 11 am - with 50c in our pockets (somehow we had managed to eat ten meals between the two of us for $15.50). A minibus took us back to Pakse (no more pick up trucks!) - when we arrived in Pakse we found out the minibus would actually take us all the way to Vientiane if we'd like. We took them up on their offer, and were back in Vientiane by midnight - so only 13 hours on the way home!!
Yesterday Nishan and I went with two of the Sunlabob staff to a village two hours from Vientiane called Ban Sor. Sunlabob has all sorts of products here - solar rental systems, a solar powered water pump and purification system (which is having some problems, and its my job to fix it), solar powered lanterns. We spent a lot of time examining the water pump and purifier, and eventually ended up bringing one from the neighbouring village home with us. We also distributed 2008 Sunlabob calendars throughout the village (Sunlabob seems very big on their merchandise - last week I bought some Sunlabob shirts that say 'AC/DC - Sustainability Forever' :-)) It was amusing to see what the villagers were using them for by the end of the day - we saw two girls using it as an umbrella.
I should be back in a weeks time to tell you all about our adventures with Rosie, and about Chris and my 4th wedding anniversary! I am hoping to post soon about directions in Vientiane - which are just as crazy and strange as the road rules :-)

Pai gon der!
Susan