Pakse

took a night bus from vientien, from the pictures I saw when booking the ticket the beds looked the same as the ones on the night train.When I got on the bus I found this to be correct, however I didnt realise that you were meant to share the bed with someone else effectivley cutting the bed size in half.
Luckily the bus was only about half full so most people got a bunk to themselves and those who didnt seemed to be friends.
Pakse is another boring town. If you look on the lonley planet website the "things to do" list is almost entirely drinking coffee at coffee shops. There is the bolivian plataou about30k out of town which you can loop on a moped, but all I could find were manuals and I dont know how to use an automatic. All that was there was a waterfall anyway so i wasnt overly botherd about missing it.
In the evening I stumbled across the australian guy (oscar) who I met in vang vieng along with an english guy he was traveling with (who I also saw briefly in vang vieng). Sat and had a drink with them for a couple of hoursand discussed a range of stuff along the lines of fate, paralel universes and dowsing rods. Both Oscar and the english guy both seemed to be the cleshe stonner hippie type (probably something to do with why they were traveling together). Apparently when he was in england the english guy had a market stall selling crystals and dream catchers and stuff. The australian Intended to spend a 2-4 weeks in a meditation course run by monks, back home he was a carpinter but quit his job, sold his car and chose to travel. So far I think he had only seen thailand and laos on this trip, but he has been away for about 2 months. He said he was hoping to travel for about 1/2 years before needing to work.