Our next stop was Vientiane…again, to pick up our Myanmar
visas. Readers know my patience was wearing thin, and I couldn't have been happier to board a bus, (this one had
beds!), to the 4000 islands in southern Laos. Thousands of islands,
some only big enough for one small tree, rest in the Mekong. Flooding covered
many of the smaller islands, but it was still very beautiful. We stayed on Don Det island,
where cows, chickens, a variety other animals and rice paddies surround the guesthouses.
It was different than we expected, (no actual beach, no sun, no sand), but still a lot of fun. We took a ferry, (a small
motorized canoe), from the bus station on the mainland to the island, where
there was SO much mud! We slipped to a nearby bungalow for $3 per
night and left to explore. We planned to walk over the bridge to Don Khon, the
other backpacker island next to us.
We walked on the path for some time, until it stopped being a real path
and turned into mud trenches with nothing around but water buffalo. We knew this wasn’t right, but the island is small and we knew
eventually we would reach the bridge–by now it would have been longer to go
back. Soon the mud was so deep that we couldn’t take a step without getting
suctioned in, so we took off our shoes and ran through until, in the distance,
the bridge! (This was after we awkwardly shouted/acted/pointed to two farmers
to make sure we were going in the right direction). We washed our feet in the
river, just as it started to rain. Dirty and soaking wet we crossed the bridge,
laughing and discussing how we would NEVER do this at home, and found a small
restaurant to wait out the rain and fill up on rice and vegetables.
That night, we congregated with every other foreigner on the
island, (so about 15 people), at Adam’s Bar. The café/bar is sheltered, but
doesn’t have full walls so it feels like you’re outside. A few booths on the
side leave room for a middle section filled with pillows and rugs where
backpackers gather to drink Beer Lao, eat cheese toasties and watch movies
every night. Indiana Jones was playing when we walked in, and the next night
the bar was packed again for Slumdog Millionaire and The Beach.
The highlight of our time in Si Phan Don was our day of
kayaking. We left early in the morning and kayaked to a waterfall on a nearby
island. Our guide was funny, but a little crazy. He didn’t think Brianna was
steering the way he liked for some reason, so he had us switch places…in the
middle of the water. I climbed onto the front of his kayak, trying not to tip
it, while Brianna moved to the front of ours, then I scooted back on into the
rear seat. He kept going way ahead, making phone calls, smoking cigarettes…not actually guiding us anywhere. The waterfall was really pretty, then we
went on a long walk to a beach. It was raining, but we got back in our kayaks
for the most exciting part–the rapids! Our guide was convinced one of us would
capsize, and not without reason. The waves were big! But we made it to the
farther island, which was technically Cambodia. Here, we ate fried rice and
watched the Irawaddy dolphins jump right in front of us. (We were so distracted
trying not to tip we didn’t even see them while we were in the kayaks). The
Irrawaddy dolphins live in freshwater, and in the Mekong they are critically
endangered because of fisheries and degradation of their habitat. They look
more like beluga whales than dolphins, and we had a lot of fun watching them
bop around. Then we kayaked for what seemed like forever to the largest
waterfall in Southeast Asia. Our guide told us we had an hour to look at it,
but we only needed about ten minutes. We found him drinking with other guides
at a roadside bar. He didn’t want to leave, so we joined them. Luckily, two
guys our age, an Australian and American, joined us, as their
guide was best friends with ours. After many cheers while our guide passed around
a giant bottle of Beer Lao, he was finally ready to call the boat to take us
back to Don Det.
The next morning we settled in for a 20-hour bus ride back
to Bangkok.
