Day 8, Pakse

The night is so dark, I can't see my hands despite waving it a centimetre in front of my face. There literally is no difference between having your eyes open or shut; I blink a few times experimentally, and get confused over whether my eyes are open.

When I do wake up in the morning, it is 7a.m., and the first thing I do and trek down the path towards the outhouse. The shower is indeed refreshing, though I start getting muddy almost immediately after, so it is an exercise in futility.

Packing takes a mere 5 minutes. I throw away a bunch of clothes that are beyond any detergent on the market.

Breakfast is half a banana that, thankfully, manages to stay down. I scribble in my diary for a bit then head to the jetty (really a mud slope that is slightly less steep than the banks around) with the Aussie boys.

"Hey, did your room have a shower?" I ask out of curiosity.

"Yea," one of them says. "Why?"

I stare, mouth agape. "What? I didn't! No wonder you guys walked out looking all clean and fresh. I can't believe the woman gave you guys the room with showers and me, the one without!"

We all laugh it off, but I can't help feeling like I was fleeced.

The longboats pull up at the shore, 45 minutes late, and the men in charge spend half an hour playing a game of human tetris with the 40 of us and our respective luggages. With about 10 of us still standing by, they order the passengers to squeeze. The boats are obviously overloaded, and are sitting very low in the water.

"Nobody move -- or breathe," says a girl behind me, once the boats start on their journey back to the mainland.

After a very perilious 10 minutes, during which there is constant shuffling to maintain the boats' balance, we reach the banks of the mainland, whereupon an absolutely sexy Spanish man pulls me onto the road and hands me my heavy backpack.

His name is Roberto. He asks that I call him Berto, but it isn't a gesture of intimacy -- it is because I'm mangling his name.

A handful of us now pile into a minivan headed for Pakse, a town in Southern Lao. There is already a woman sitting in there, reading a book on spirituality, with a stern look upon her face. She peers up a us for a bit and reprimands a traveller for attempting to throw a plastic bottle by the roadside.

Soon (which, by the kind of loose timekeeping I am now used to, means about an hour and a half after the stipulated timing) the minivan roars into action. Within 5 minutes however, the driver stops to pick up a local girl, and orders us to squeeze in order to make room for her. Being a bit of a pushover I almost oblige; the other travellers however insist that we all paid good money for a seat each, and it's well within our right not to budge.

"5km only," he wheedles. (In fact she ends up in Pakse too.)

The travellers now get a bit vulgar, and sensing the tone, he retaliates by slamming the door shut and consulting with the girl.

She ends up driving the minivan, with the original driver hanging in the doorway of the vehicle. Later, she will crouch behind the driver's seat while he takes over the driving.

An hour and a half into the journey, the minivan breaks down. We are stranded beside a steaming pile of very questionable excrement.

For 2 hours we wait in the blazing sun. Still, no complaints -- I get to know the stern woman with the spiritual book, who turns out to be a rather amazing individual, and further get to exchange a few Spanish pick-up lines with Roberto.

Hazel tells me she's on her way to Luang Prabang, where she will be helping out at an NGO called Free the Bears. Roberto has a fractured foot and is travelling to Thailand for medical help. (He also tells me, "You know your MRT stations? You have that little TV that shows the Madrid bombings. The funny thing is, we from Madrid haven't made any improvements after the attack.") The man who earlier tried to toss the bottle is Nigerian -- he seems very interested in applying for a visa to Singapore, and with the word "Nigerian" immediately triggering all sorts of warning bells in my head, I'm afraid I treat him a little coldly.

I say I am from Singapore, and everyone knows where that is immediately. I think they must soon be sick of me though, because I stick up for my country way too much.

Case in point:

"It's funny how all these South East Asian countries are so backward," says a Dutch girl.

"Not every country," I murmur.

Everyone laughs. "Malaysia's alright," says her boyfriend. "It's pretty safe."

"Really?" I frown. "I don't think so. There are so many instances of people being attacked and robbed."

They laugh again, but this time someone adds, "Yea, everywhere's unsafe to you, you're from Singapore!"

I shut up after that.

Eventually a van trundles by and comes to a stop beside us. We cheer, thinking that help is at hand.

Alas, that van has broken down too, and in fact is not the last one we see in that two hours. Even a bullock cart falls apart a few feet from us. It's like that stretch of road is cursed.

Help does finally come in the form of a lorry. It is none too comfortable, but it does get us out of the sun and on the way to Pakse.

We reach at 6p.m., explore the tiny, sleepy town for an hour, then are driven to the bus terminal to board the sleeper bus for Vientiane.