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Published: February 11th 2010
In 2 places at once!
My right foot is in Cambodia and my left foot in Laos! All that separates these countries is a spray painted white line!Welcome to the next chapter in our wild adventures! What will go wrong this time? What great sights will we encounter? Read on to see!
On January 24th we were picked up at 4:50am by a tuk-tuk to bring us to the bus station where we would board a minibus to Kampong Cham province then change to a VIP bus to bring us all the way to Laos. In Laos we were staying in the area of the 4000 Islands, specifically the island of Don Det. The 4000 Islands is so-named because in the dry season the Mekong dries up a bit and reveals 4000 islands (or little tiny bits of land). There are 3 main islands where tourists go and we stayed on the smallest of the 3 (also the most popular one).
After collecting us, the tuk-tuk goes to another nearby hotel to pick up another passenger, who we can hear cussing and yelling in his guesthouse but who refuses to wake up in his drunken state. Tired of waiting, the driver takes us to the station then goes back for the guy. We get the fortunate chance of getting to hang out
with this guy for about an hour while the rest of the passengers are picked up and we wait for the bus to leave. James, from England, is as drunk as I have ever seen, and loves to tell stories (whether they are true or not is debateable). He insisted that his hotel had stolen money from him (but every time he told this story - and I think we heard it 10 times - it was different amounts of money, clue #1 that this story is not true) while he was out with the entire hotel staff buying them drinks all night. He was still super drunk from the night before and wouldn't stop ranting about this and there was no one else around for him to complain to but us. yay. Finally we are just about to board the minibus and he disappears...and returns with 3 beers in hand for the ride (remember its 4:50am). After offering us a beer (which we politely declined) he proceeded to drink them all while repeating his sob story for everyone on the bus. Oh, and we find out that he is traveling for 18 months because he lost his licence in
England on a DUI charge and can't get it back for 18 months and some hours of A-A. He was a winner.
Anyways, about an hour into the 4 hour trip to Kampong Cham, he decides he needs a smoke break, so he tells the driver to pull over. Well, after this break, the bus won't start up! James is going on and on about how crappy our driver and the van are and I am just about to tell him this is HIS fault for making us stop in the first place, when we finally manage to stop a big gasoline truck on the highway and he boosts the bus! We are on our way again after about a 30 minute delay, in which case we were already 30 minutes late...now we have 2.5 hours to make a 3.5 hour drive...talk about honking and swerving and some intense braking! It was a wild ride! Luckily for us, James was tired so he thought it would be smart to take some valium to help him sleep. Ok, one might have done the trick, but just to be sure, he takes 3 Valium and he is very quickly snoring. Peace
Li Phi Waterfalls
On Don Khong island, the small falls! at last! Er, at least peace until we have to try and wake him up to get his ticket and change buses. After a couple failed attempts at waking him, we gave up and were prepared to leave him on the minibus, when finally he snapped out of it, woke up just enough to get his butt on the next bus (without a ticket) and make ruccus again for the next 30 minutes complaining about a headache (go figure!) and mad that no one on the bus has anything to give him for it.
The next few hours pass uneventfully for the most part. We make a stop for lunch at a sketchy roadside restaurant where Mike and I split some rice and veggies. The real great thing about this stop though, was the washrooms! There were cows grazing right beside the stalls and as Mike tells it, when he goes to take a pee, he has a choice of 3 urinals, 2 of them are filled to the top with a dirty brown liquid and the other one is as clean and clear as can be... so he chooses the clean one. All in all, a few seconds
into the process, he realizes the pipe at the bottom of the urinal leads...nowhere but to the floor!, so the floor is being covered in that smelly yellow liquid! Awesome! When we arrive in Stung Treng, the last city before the border, they load up the bus with tubs of gasoline and mangos, which are apparently both much more expensive in Laos! So you could say we were part of a smuggling operation.
We arrive at the border around 5:30 (yes, at this point we have been on the bus for 12 hours) and hop off to go through immigration and stuff. This border is by far the sketchiest border we have ever seen! On the Cambodian side, there is a small wooden shack where 3 men sit who stamp your passport then demand an extra dollar for "stamp fees". It is customary at these borders to have to "bribe" the officials to let you cross and we have heard that they sometimes ask for upwards of 10 and 20 dollars, so we happily paid our dollar and proceeded to walk around the arm/lever and went the 100 meters to the same type of wooden shack on the Laos
side of the border. Halfway between the two, there was a white line spray painted on the road to show the division of the two countries! On the Laos side the official wanted 2$ for stamp fees and then we were officially in Laos! As we waited for the rest of the passengers on the bus to go through the process, we watched a beautiful sunset through the trees and anticipated our arrival in Don Det.
About 30km into Laos we were dropped off and met by another minibus that would drive us into Nakasang, the mainland, where we caught a boat that brought us to DOn Det island. It was dark by the time we arrived, and since electricity arrived on this island just in September, there was not much to light the way! After checking out a couple guesthouses, we decided to stay at Mr B's sunset bungalows and guesthouse. The first bungalow we were showed to was quickly abandonned when we saw a HUGE spider on the wall on the inside. Easily the biggest spider we have ever seen, about the size of Mike's hand. I actually thought it was fake at first because it was
so large! Our second bungalow was bug free, and had a large bed with a bug net and a fan, so we settled in, then went to the restaurant for dinner.
Our guesthouse had a restaurant in it, so we decided to eat there and get aquainted with our surroundings. We ordered some pad thai, and although what we received did not ressemble pad thai at all, it was delicious! We also had read in a guide book to try the lao-lao drink (or so we thought. Later, we re-read and it said to try orange lao-lao, something different). so we ordered it from the menu. Lao-lao is a rice whisky that is brewed in Laos, and technically is illegal (apparently), but no one cares. So the waiter brings over this glass filled with a clear liquid, so Mike takes a sip and acts nonchalant, so I take a sip - ew! It was the worst taking thing ever! It was so strong! We heard different people throughout our trip say that lao-lao can be up to a 85% alcohol content! Needless to say we did not finish the drink! While enjoying our Beer Lao after dinner (a large
bottle cost 1$), we started talking to the other hotel guests and met a group of 3 guys from Canada who were traveling before going to Australia to work for a year. We had a great time chatting with some friendly faces from back home and ended up spending a lot of our time on the island with them.
Tired from a long day of traveling, we flopped into bed and for the first time the entire trip, slept past 7am! Actually I think we slept until 9 or 10 and it was glorious! We took our time getting our things together hoping that someone staying in a riverside bungalow was checking out so that we could switch rooms (our current room wasn't riverside!). While we were eating breakfast (baguettes with jam/cheese) we scored the jackpot and got a riverside bungalow for 40 000kip (the other room was 30 000kip and 40 000 kip is 5USD). Our new bungalow had two hammocks on the balcony on which we could lounge and planned to watch the sunset from later that day!
We left the hotel and rented some bicycles from a convenience store for 1$ each and took off
on wheels around the island, heading for the next island, Don Khong, connected by a bridge. Somewhere along the way we took some wrong turns, but the island was small so we made our way to the bridge before long. The main "road" (more of a dirt walking path than a road) goes around the outside of the island and is scattered with guesthouses and native homes (usually the family that ran each guesthouse). Crossing the old bridge, we had to pay a fee of 20 000 kip each (25 cents) which had been increased from 10 000 the previous day for whatever reason! Don Khong was home to Li Phi, the small waterfall and that was our destination.
Leaving our bikes we walked through some trees to find the small water fall. The waterfall was pretty small but very pretty! It was surrounded by lots of rocks and there were a bunch of different places from which to contemplate the beauty of the falls. After breaking for a cold drink, we explored some more down some paths, found a man fishing and ran into some cute kids who were killing time while their parents tried to make a
buck selling drinks and food to tourists.
Deciding it was time for lunch, we headed back towards Don Det, and after a quick spill on my bike, we chose a restaurant, which ended up being one of the best restaurants we ate at the entire trip! We enjoyed some delicious fresh fruit shakes and a type of stir-fried dish, then went back to our guesthouse. We had decided by this point that it was time to wash some of our clothes. At most guesthouses (including ours) they have a laundry service and will wash your clothes for you for 1$. However, they don't have the luxury of washing machines so they do it by hand with water from the river. Well, we figured, we can do that ourselves, for free! haha. So off we go, down to the river with our dirty clothes in tow and proceed to rub all the dirt out of them. This would have been a perfect plan if we'd had some soap to go with it, but as it was, the clothes we at least a little fresher! We hung them out to dry on our balcony and indulged in a little tubing afterwards
out in front of our bungalow. We also decided that rather than shower in the public showers in our guesthouse, where the water is cold and pumped right in from the river, and back into the river, that we would just bathe while tubing, and so we brought our packets of shampoo down with us and washed our hair in the river! Somehow, we actually felt cleaner after this, although I'm sure we weren't reallllllyy that much cleaner! The river water wasn't THAT clean, after all!!
After a quick chat with our Canadian friends about the possibility of a trip the following day to see the big falls, we went to buy our bus tickets out of the island the next day. Because my sickness in Siem Reap had set us back a day, we decided to not spend an extra day in the islands, as we had originally planned, so that we could keep on schedule and get to do the rest of the things we wanted. We paid 220 000kip for the ticket, which is about 25$ and that included a ferry to the mainland, a ride to where we would meet the bus, a VIP bus
to Pakse then transfer to a sleeper bus to Vientiane. We would leave the island at 3pm on the 26th and arrive in Vientiane at 7am on the 27th.
We returned to our bungalow just in time to flop down on our hammocks and watch a beautiful display of colours as the sun set behind the clouds and trees. We spent the next few hours chatting with the Canadians, exchanging travel stories, since they were headed where we just came from and we were going where they just came from! We all went for dinner and met another Canadian, Cookie from Vancouver, and together, the 6 of us spent the whole night talking like old friends. Dinner took a long time - there was 1 cook for the entire restaurant (and I think it was the same person as the waitress!). For dinner that night I had a pumpkin burger because I had seen it advertised everywhere and was intrigued. When it arrived, it was certainly delicious, but a burger it was not! Rather, it was small pieces of fried pumpkin put on a bun with all the fixings...there was a definite lack of "burger" in my burger, but
I enjoyed the taste regardless. Mike had a beef burger (because if you order hamburger, you get ham on a bun) and it was fresh, homemade and one of the best burgers he has ever tasted!
We spent that evening drinking beer with our new friends on the deck at our bungalow, beneath the stars, hardly able to believe that we were in this place at this moment.
The next morning we all convened at Cookie's guesthouse for a delicious breakfast of omelet (Mike) and french toast (Danielle) before boarding a boat to go see the big falls, Khong Phapheng. The boat took us to the mainland where we climbed in a minibus for a short drive to the falls. Our boat driver acted as a guide, showing all the different vantage points from which to see these giant falls. We were told that this was the biggest waterfall in all of SouthEast Asia, so we were excited to see it. We were, however, also told that it was the widest waterfall in the world, and as 6 Canadians, we were immediately skeptical - come onnnn, wider than Niagara, ya right!
Side Note: Apparently this set of waterfalls
is a death trap for tourists, as it is not fenced off in anyway and many of taken 1 step too many to try and acquire the best view or picture
Well, the falls were indeed big, and unlike Niagara Falls who flow smoothly over the edge, these falls had many different levels and areas where the water was falling from. I still doubt that these falls were wider than Niagara, but we did visit in the dry season, so this could be a whole other story in the wet season! We spent a couple hours checking out the falls and the different areas that, without the guide, we wouldn't have known about. Once we were satisfied with the falls, we walked through the little market set up there, where the 4 guys became boys again when they found a shop that had lots of trinkets and old coins for sale. After a long time of sifting through the coins to find the best or oldest one, one of the guys actually bought a coin for about 12$!
Returning to Don Det just after noon, we had just enough time for a quick swim/bath in the river then
packed our belongings, said goodbye to our new friends and had lunch before being sent on our way to Vientiane. We had a great, relaxing time at Don Det and enjoyed spending time with some fellow Canadians who shared our sense of humour and we very similar to our friends from home. Actually, on of the guys reminded me so much of our friend Mark, that everytime he spoke, I imagined that it was Mark talking! It was also nice to slow down for a couple days, and just enjoy the atmosphere and the scenery, compared to the on-the-go way we had been traveling up to this point.
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