Pakse is a town in southern Laos which serves mostly as a gateway hub for travelers. There’s some temples, waterfalls and small villages to explore in the region. We saw none of that. Got holed up in the hotel again, potently infected with a stomach bug, confined to our hotel and feeling very weak. However we blasted our way to good health over the course of a few days.

We wanted some easy to eat, bed friendly food so got some pizzas from a shop across the road. They were terrible – coated with a sickly sweet sugar syrup. No tomato sauce, just like our pasta in Don Det.

Next day we opted to get garlic bread from the same shop. Surely garlic bread can’t be messed up. Wrong! The garlic bread was doused in the same sickly sugar syrup that the pizzas were.

Once we were almost mended we went out for dinner with a couple of friends we met in Don Det. We got a Laos hot pot. This is where a pot of soup broth is simmering on your table, heated by some hot coals, and you add your meat / fish and vegies to it as you go. Was an excellent meal. Delicious, fun, and ridiculously cheap. It cost around AUD$4 for the whole thing – about $1 per person.