We spent the best part of the morning on the mainland, at the Angkor-esque temple of Wat Phu Champasak set in the Phu Pasak mountain. Visible from the lodge (and indeed, from our bedroom window), you can almost sense that there’s something special up in them hills.

We left for Champasak after an earlier than usual breakfast; booking a ride across the Mekong with the lodge’s ferry service, it took us no time at all to get to the mainland. We disembarked via an expensive looking cruise boat, which despite being crewed by busy staff seemed to be completely devoid of people.

That wasn’t the only thing that appeared deserted. We clambered up the steps to the Champasak visitors centre / restaurant to find it closed. Thinking that we might be a little early, we hung around for what seemed to ages on the side of the road waiting for a Tuk Tuk or taxi to come past, with no avail.

Figuring that either Champasak was living up to it’s reputation as a “sleepy town”, today was a day of rest or we had just come at the wrong time, we phoned the Lodge manager who very kindly ordered a Tuk Tuk for us. In true London Bus fashion, two come by the moment I hung up the phone; eagerly jumping into the second one, we were soon on our way to the temple, three-wheeler style.

Our plans to avoid the searing hot afternoon sun had pretty much come a cropper by this point, so by the time we made it to the foot of the site, I was already overheating and desperate for an ice-cold Beerlao. With very little shade for the first 15 mins of the ascent, it was extremely difficult going, which was thankfully offset by the sheer amount of interesting stuff to see. It’s still an active archaeological site, so there is still work being done (as we found out when we strayed from the path), but there’s enough left intact to get more than enough of an impression of what it was like in it’s heyday.

Gorgeous frangipani trees, the heady smell of incense and bhuddist mantras filling the air where all in check as we reached the top (this is an active religious site), as was (thankfully) a fully stocked and chilled drinks stand and cool leafy trees out of the beating sun. About facing 180 degrees gave us a fantastic areal view of the site, and although not as big as Angkor Wat, it was certainly almost as impressive.

After wandering around and taking in the ambience, we head down to the boat and back to the lodge for lunch.