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Published: April 5th 2010
We arrived in Vientiane and had to go to the local International Hospital as Holly's leg had taken a turn for the worse (what a wolly!). Turns out only rest would make it better so we treated ourselves to a posh hotel with TV and Holly got some HBO and MTV therapy while Dee went out to explore the capital city. There isn't a great deal to explore here compared to other capital cities so we didn't stay long. We took an overnight bus to Pakxe, a big town right in the south of Laos and did more relaxing in another nice hotel until Holly had recovered.
Eventually the leg was on the mend so we took a minibus further south to the beautiful 4000 Islands area known as Si Phan Don and a boat to a small tropical island called Don Det. This island was once only known for rice paddy farming but now has a small but decent selection of bungalows, restaurants and bars catering for travellers. They only got 24 hour electricity in March 2010 so it is still very low key and basic. We got a nice bungalow (think B&Q shed with balconly!) with a river
view. The weather was a scorching 35C and both Dee and Holly suffered from prickly heat rash, which was most annoying! We spent a total of 7 days on Don Det relaxing in hammocks, bike riding to see waterfalls and to find beaches, playing with the many puppies and kittens there, tubing (actual tubing on the river not the bar crawl kind!) and hanging out with the wonderful friends we'd made.
One night we hung out with a older Canadian gentleman called Bob who used to do a lot of voiceover work in the 1980s. Turns out he did the voice for 'Grumpy Bear' in the Care Bear films and cartoons and Ralph in the Racoons cartoon...........how funny......childhood ledgend!
We took a sunset boat ride from nextdoor island Don Khon to see Irrawaddy dolphins. We had already seen them down river in Cambodia but wanted to have another look as they are rare and very cute. After a while, we saw a pod of 3 dolphins and enjoyed the beautiful sunset over both Laos and Cambodia. It was very nice.
We then made our way north again to a town called Savannakhet, famous for its French architecture
and for being a trade route between Thailand and Vietnam. The town looked quite wealthy and we stayed in a lovely guesthouse owned by a friendly family (Leena GH) for 2 nights. We hired bikes to explore the town and treated ourselves to a nice dinner at an upmarket French restaurant to use up our kip. We ate a scrummy 3 course meal for 65,000 kip = 5 pounds each....which was mega expensive by local standards. Typical prices around here were - big filling pork noodle soup for 7000 kip (50p), 20 cigarettes 3000 kip (23p) and petrol 7500 kip per litre (54p/L).
Next day we flew out of tiny Savannakhet airport on a small Air Lao flight to Bangkok. We were now 6 months into our 18 month trip. 6 down....12 to go...........
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Cherise
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Celebriti3es
Callum Best and Care Bear guy. Seriously, you just need to meet up with the Rock of Love or Flava of love (as they are equally cool and legendary) and you will be made up for the trip methinks!