Blogs from Don Det, South, Laos, Asia - page 12

The mornings always started off well with its French influenced breakfasts - So good I started a Baguette-o-Metre. Finishing with the figures of 26 Baguettes in 25 days. This was just one of the Superlatives that Laos produced as a destination. Laos finished off with the relaxed 4000 islands. A group of islands along the Mekong River. I stayed at Don Det Island, an island with cheap wooden bungalows with hammocks outside for as little as a dollar. Nothing much is done really except either relax and do nothing or ride a bike along a rocky path through farm fields to Don Khon island where the waterfall & beach is. The Somphamit Falls are the strongest waterfalls in SE Asia. The water joining together from the numerous islands forming multiple falls. Once they reach the bottom ... read more

So, I got the hell out of Dodge (Cambodia), and after the usual harassment in customs, I landed in Pakse, Laos. I wanted to go straight down south to Si Phan Don (the 4000 Islands) so I needed to get me some transportation to the southern bus station, conveniently located 6km south of town... I tell ya folks, they have this cartel thing going here in South East Asia, where you almost always have to take a tuk-tuk or something to get your ass into town or to some bus station if you don't want to haul your 15-30kg of baggage a bunch of K's... Anyway, I thought I'd get mobbed as usual by tuk-tuk drivers foaming at the mouth desperately trying to get my attention. Boy, was I wrong! Only one dude asked me if ... read more

Sabadee motherfunkers..... sorry for being long updating this thing! So, my last post was from Pai, i'm now in Cambodia (Phnom penn) but i've spent the last 3 and a half weeks travelling through Loas....so here's a rough summary from memory.... spent 2 days on a boat getting from the border of thailand into laos, which was painfull and stupidly overcrowded at the best of times...I shared the journey with many random animals (including a live pig, in a bag) being transported with us during the 2 days...i also met the most insane person i've ever had the unfortunate luck to meet (who thought he was the prophet 'mohamad', and thought that he had cured the world of aids, and that he had conceived an elephant via osmosis....we also learnt that he had previously been kicked ... read more

And so in quick progression (due to the democratic process of petitions you facebookers!) we hit the next blog!! Having arrived in Vietienne after a hectic and extreme sports day, we set about finding some cheap, clean, and good accomadation. We quickly realised that 5.30pm was not the best time to arrive in the city, as all the cheap places were already full, and you could see by the panicing rush of people that places were getting tight. Me and Macca left the group to patrol the area and find some accomodation, finally securing some rooms at the Ministry of Information and culture. This was not an exteneded part of the governments sleeping program, rather an imaginatively named guesthouse, albeit with no culture, and limited information. It did however have satelite TV and aircon! the name ... read more

EN FRANCAIS PLUS BAS MORE PHOTOS HERE It is exactly as the Lonely Planet puts it: "just when you thought your blood pressure couldn't drop anymore, you arrive in Si Phan Don," the so-called 4,000 islands on the Mekong, bordering Cambodia. And that's coming from Northern Laos. As I was coming from Cambodia, I really needed that morning in bed to help me adjust right away with the pace of life on Don Det! People here are mostly self-sufficient, growing their own rice, vegetables, coconuts, raising cattle, chickens, pigs and chickens, and fishing. They have accepted the influx of visitors and backpackers in search of a slow paradise as a way to complement their livelihoods with commodities such as generators, but they don't seem to need them really. They've built small and simple wooden or th ... read more