After a couple of rest days in Pakse I was off again to do what I do most often, ride my bicycle. This time it was a bit different though, because instead of simply continuing my relentless surge for Australia I was now planning to go south on the west bank of the Mekong until I reached the scenic Four Thousand Islands area, and, after giving that little beauty spot a good bit of thorough exploration, return north on the east side of the Mekong until I was back where I started in Pakse. Yes indeed, I was taking my indirect wanderings to a whole new level now, and was actually riding my bicycle around in circles on purpose.

The beauty of this strategy was that the whole thing felt like a bit of an excursion. A sort of side-trip away from the main event. I was going somewhere just to see it, not to get somewhere. Strange then, that the first day I was a bit of a misery guts. Having crossed back over the Mekong bridge and retraced my steps for a few kilometres, I turned south on a paved road that was extraordinarily uninteresting. After a few hours I arrived in the town of Champasak, although it was so small I actually almost missed it completely, and after going most of the way past it I had to double-back on the main street. It was nothing more than a quiet little village. Incredibly, up until forty years ago this non-descript backwater was a Royal seat. I wondered what they did all day.

Nobody had said hello to me all day but as I cycled along this street a woman did cry out 'sabadee' to me and I was so taken aback I stopped and went into her restaurant. And I use the word restaurant quite wrongly, although she did manage to rustle me up some unflavoured noodles with a watery soup with lettuce and tomato in it. So I sat and tried to force down this tasteless food and the woman sat down at the next table looking glum and the two of us sat in silence. There were some chickens strutting around. One jumped up on a windowsill, then flapped its way back down. A cat sat watching. I looked across the road at a wat, where the squeal of young boys kicking a football around in the yard could be heard. Older kids out from school cycled past. I ate my noodles and watched all this and felt terribly sad for I don't know what reason.

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I cycled further into Champasak and found the area with all the guesthouses and proper restaurants and 'falang' wandering about, and I liked this even less, and so I returned to the main road and continued on my original course south. It was now getting late, and the main road swung west towards Wat Phou, an old temple that I wanted to visit. But as it was late I needed to camp and return in the morning and so when the road made this western turn I took a side road that stuck by the Mekong, a dirt track that I assumed was the route that David and Elena had told me that I had to cycle. Well blow me down and call me Mustang Sally but weren't they just right about that idea. Instantly I was transported back to the Laos I used to know. Children were everywhere filling my world with smiles and laughter and singing their beautiful sabadees just like old times.

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But I didn't want to go far - it was getting late and in the morning I would need to return to the main road to visit Wat Phou - so as soon as I could I found myself a nice little camping place. It was in an area of mixed scrubland, trees and bushes mixed in with dry grass, a pretty dandy spot. I put up my tent and called it a night.

I was woken by the sound of gunshots. That's a pretty startling thing when you're alone in a tent and it's pitch black. In the movie Ryan Gosling will no doubt reach for his 9mm and go out to investigate. In real life I pulled the covers up a bit tighter. That's something I don't think Hollywood's leading men do enough of - ignore the problem and hope it will go away. As it happened on this occasion the problem didn't go away, it shone a torch on my tent. Then I heard a great many animated voices approaching. Unfortunately my Laos hadn't improved sufficiently well as to become my second language yet, but I imagined they were talking excitedly about having found a 'falang' prisoner, and that I should go quietly.

I unzipped the tent and looked out to see approximately ten men carrying hunting rifles. They were shining torches in my face and exclaiming loudly, I believe, that yes, they had found a good one here. I suppose I should use words like 'terrifying' and 'petrified' to describe my feelings at this moment, in the interest of making it a good story, but to be perfectly honest I was just a bit miffed about being woken up. The man who could speak the best English was thrust to the front and he said hello in a friendly enough manner.

"Hello. My name is Sok"

"Yes sock, what do you want?"

"You cannot sleep here! Danger!"

"Why? Are you going to shoot me?"

"No. Dangerous here. Animals!"

"What animals?"

"Snakes!"

Personally I thought it was quite difficult for snakes to attack me inside my sealed tent but Sok was adamant that it was too dangerous for me to be sleeping here, and that I should go back to the village with him instead. On the snake front I had to disagree with him, and I rarely take snake-awareness advise seriously from a man who walks around in the dark in his sandals, but in terms of potentially being accidentally shot by one of the 'hunters,' from whom emanated a considerable whiff of alcohol, I had to admit I was not in a strong position. I really did not feel like packing up my tent now, but there is something about ten men with hunting rifles that I find oddly persuasive, and so I agreed.

I went back inside my tent and began to pack up my things rather grumpily. I really get quite irritated when I get woken up in the middle of the night. I checked the time. It was 19:45. Well, I go to bed quite early. I took down the tent, under the watchful and curious eye of all of the men, loaded up the bike, and was then marched back to the village with my armed escort. Along the way I began to feel a bit better. Sok had said that there was a house for me to stay in. Although people in Laos had been very friendly I had not yet been invited to actually stay with anyone, and so this was perhaps going to turn into a nice opportunity to spend the evening with his family and get to see life inside a Laos family home. Yes, that would be nice, I decided, and I felt much better. Then we arrived at the village and I was directed to one of those wooden hut things, and told to put my tent up on that. I guess I wasn't going to see life in a Laos family home then. Sok left, presumably to go and hunt some rats, along with some of the men. About five stayed though, so I still had an audience to watch the exciting show that was the reassembling of my tent. Once it was up I indicated that I was going to go back to sleep now, and the men nodded and waved goodbye to me before trundling back off into the night. "Goodbye," I called after them, "watch out for snakes!"

It's called 'diplomacy' Gosling - give them what they want and everyone gets to sleep eventually. Don't be so quick to whip out your 9mm.