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Published: April 23rd 2009
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After a couple of days in Phnom Penh sorting out our Laos visas, we make a dash for the border at Strung Treng. The no-mans' land stretching 20kms on both sides is dusty and begging for the rains to begin. It's really barren, bearing the scars of slash-and-burn agriculture. Each isolated homestead seems to be scraping a living, yet huge satellite dishes sit in every yard. It's not the most inspiring first glimpse of Laos, but that makes what's just around the corner even more special.
Within half an hour of the border crossing we're loaded up into a narrow long boat and heading to Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands). You would not believe that such an oasis could exist so close to the landscape we've just driven through. The Mekong widens here to encompass thousands of sandbars and islets, lush and vivid green. We're heading to Don Det, one of the smaller inhabited islands, still powered by generators, although this is to change over the next month.
How can I describe this place without relying on so many, already overused, superlatives? Take a deep breath, and relax...we know within minutes that we're going to be here awhile.
Simple village life continues around the few score backpackers, all wandering around with beautific smiles on their faces...we know we're somewhere special. I have never heard so much singing, seen so many laughing children, felt so instantly welcome anywhere in the world. Maybe the Laos greeting will help me explain...the word Sabaidee means 'feel good' and how could you not in a place like this?
Beautiful sarong-clad women tend to their vegetable gardens and lay out fish to be sundried, whilst their handsome men fish with nets on the river and old men with physiques better than most 30-somethings back home sweep their immaculate yards. It's an incredibly fertile place...there seem to be babies everywhere! Cherubic faced gangs of children laugh and sing as they head down to the river to play, joined by ducklings and piglets. The tinyest frogs, the size of a fingernail, litter every path making me watch every step, and baby bunnies bounce around in one restaurant...a surefire way of making this my favorite breakfast stop. I have never seen so many butterflies, and we just came through the Amazon! Withing the first hour I lose count of the different colours and kinds. The dragonflies
look like they've been twisted from metal wire, in bright yellow, red, green and blue. I think this could be heaven on earth...I'm almost reluctant to make this post public as I don't want to be responsible for the 'Lonely Planet Effect'.
We'd planned to stay a few days, but a week passes effortlessly. If there'd been a way to access our funds then I think we could still be there. Idyllic days on the porch of our riverside bamboo hut, reading and writing in a symbiotic relationship with my hammock, wandering the village, swimming in the river. We have our first taste of the Laos phenomenon 'tubing', where you sit in an inflated tractor tyre inner tube and float down the river. Yep it's life in the slow land and I love it!
We drink beers with the village cheif and his boys Laos style...where you take it in turns to fill the glass for your neighbour, who downs in one and continues the cycle round the table...never has so little beer gone to your head so quickly! An insight into Laos culture comes at a wake for a recently deceased 90 year old woman who's life
is celebrated in a week long party...the whole village coming to visit her body and pay their respects, before singing karaoke and drinking the local moonshine Lao Lao, all day and all night for the entire time we're there. Someone else has just finished building thier house and the event is celebrated in exactly the same way.
At night the heat explodes into incredible electric storms, which keep us entertained long after the generators have switched off for the night. We're left quaking in our bed one night when the thunder tears through the sky above us and the ferocity of the downpour leaves us wondering if the monsoon has come early. But we always wake to a fresh new sunshiny morning.
We hire bicycles and cross the old French railway bridge to neighbouring Don Khon island, to visit the Som Pha Mit waterfalls, passing two old ladies at their drinks stalls, too busy laughing and waving at us to bother trying to make a sale.
We make friends with 3 ex-pat Englishmen, the two Andys and Scouser Mini (it's ok, he's Everton!) who runs King Kong's...home to an incredible collection of exotic birds and the best
roast potatoes since Aunt Bessie! They were all wise to recognise paradise found 8 years ago, and set up business and home here, only returning oop north when visas demand.
Our cash supplies dwindling, we know it's time to go and I wonder if the rest of Laos could possibly live up to this. It's been the most wonderful introduction to a country that I could ever dream of. And I will be dreaming of the Four Thousand Islands for the rest of my days.
*NOTE: more pics added 😊
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