Xaysomboun, South of Lao arround Paksé

Well, one more time it's a lot to tell..

I left Vientiane to go to Xaysomboun on the 14th. After dozens of different things heard about the possible-or-not ways to go there, I eventually found a bus in Vientiane and the guy even said "from Vientiane you can go everywhere in Lao". He was right but the bus didn't go by Vang Vien like he thought, and rather by the east of Vientiane, through a nice road I hadn't seen before. After 11 hours of mountains roads, during which a nice Lao guy tried to talk to me half in Lao half in english, I got there. It's really beautiful there, high mountains with a bit of karst on it, and everything is soooo green. The city is not particularly nice or interesting, but the areas arround are, and if you walk 5 minutes you can see Phu Bia, 2800m high :), which is like 2km away from the town.
In short, this place was controlled by the CIA for a long time, and the Hmong people were fighting along with them, against the Lao army. They opened it to public in 2007, and I was apparently the first foreigner to go there. Therefore it was fun but not really easy, and they didn't know how to deal with me (it's not like in a village in the jungle where everything seems so simple).
No guesthouse available (or at least they didn't want me to stay) so I had to go to a hotel were the owner didn't speak a single word of english.. I improved my Lao a little bit. On the day after I met quite a lot of citizens, eather Hmong or Lao people, and I could talk with a couple of them that spoke english, it was very nice. Then I asked about possibilities to trek arround to the Hmong villages, but they were telling it was dangerous. Apparently it was true about the Phu Bia, but it seemed it was OK on the other side, so I took a nice nice nice walk there in the afternoon.
Sorry I can't put any pics from here..
I didn't know whether to try to go the Hmong villages on the days after, or go back to Vientiane, but when the Police came to find me in the restaurant I was eating in for dinner, it fixed my mind. They took my passport and I had to pay them to get it back on the morning after. Fortunately a very nice Hmong guy, english speaker, was with me and could negociate with them. Thus I left to head south of Lao: 11h bus back to Vientiane, 30min waiting there and 16h bus to Pakse in a row, in a bus with a broken battery, so lights were off when the driver were not accelerating.... Next time in Lao, I'll stop on the way though.
Anyway, once in Pakse I took directly another bus to the country side, a place called Tad Lo.

Tad Lo was sooooo relaxed, it was unbeleivable. The owner of the guesthouse is one of the nicest guy I met in my trip. We cooked with him and he showed us everything. We talked with him a lot, we shared meal with his family, rooms were very nice and cheap, etc etc. So I spent 3 nights there, and did walk around to waterfalls, rent a motorbike to visit the Boloven Plateau and enjoyed meals with very nice Lao and western people :) These times are part of the best I spent in Lao.

But since I had decided to go in the south of Lao, I thought I should take a look to other places, and therefore came to Champasak yesterday. I met a surprising Lao man that had lived in the US for 30 years in the bus by the way, but I'm afraid I can't tell about everything here ^^
This morning I went to visit Wat Phu, an Angkor-style temple from the 10th century, it was great as well.

Tomorrow I'll keep going south to the for thousands islands on the Mekong river for my last days in Lao. It's supposed to be even more relaxed than here... if it's true then it's close to a time crack.
Then on Tuesday morning I'll leave there to get back to Paksé and cross the border to Thailand. I'll try to sleep in Ayutaya and spend some time there on Wednesday, and I'll go catch my flight back to Paris at night. I'll be back on Thursday morning!