Blogs from Khong Island, South, Laos, Asia - page 2

Saturday May 30th 2009 4000 islands We had had enough of been stuck on our island and really wanted to see some of the rest of the area so we booked a full day boat trip. Most of the more interesting features are about 15km down river on Don Det so we boarded a boat and sailed slowly down for about an hour. We came ashore on Don Det and it looked like a pretty thrown together shanty town where the locals have lashed up a couple of bungalows here and a tourist restaurant there to serve the back packers, and the river was really no more beautiful there than where we had stayed so our decision to stick to the comforts of electricity was the correct one I reckon. Once ashore we had to rent ... read more

Thursday May 28th 2009 4000 islands We arrived in Chumpon at 6am and waited for a bus to take us down to the 4,000 islands. We had originally planned to go to Dong Det which is just before all the waterfalls but upon hearing that electricity runs only there by generator between 6 and 10 pm leaving you without even a fan to sleep with we headed to the more settled local island of Dong Kong where they are hooked to the grid. Met a South African couple and an Israeli guy on the short longtail over the river and we all headed off to look for accommodation. Found a fine place with ac for 100,000 kip. A lot cheaper available but its still less that 5 Euro each a night so feck it. We slept ... read more

DON'T MISS THE ENGLISH VERSION! PLEASE SCROLL DOWN IN ALL OF OUR BLOGS. ;-) Tag 138 bis 159 22.600 km gefahren von Galway Wir warteten einige Zeit auf die Faehre um den Mekong kreuzen zu koennen. Letzendlich gut auf laotischer Seite angekommen ging es auch schon gleich zum Zoll. Die Grenzformalitaeten gingen mit unserem Zolldokument (Carnet de Passages) absolut reibungslos ueber die Buehne - prima Sache! Bei der Passkontrolle gab es auch gleich noch das Visum eingestempelt und schon waren wir fertig. So schnell kann’s gehen ... Hier trafen wir auch auf ein Fahrradtrio (2 Basken + 1 Brite) und eine hollaendische Reisegruppe. Mit beiden hatten wir immer wiederkehrende nette Begegnungen in Laos, mit den Radlern saßen wir oefter bei dem einen oder anderen (verdammt leckeren!) Beerlao. Schon auf den erstem Metern fiel uns sofort ... read more

Dolphins where are you.... Off we go, by what? - bus, no boat, no bus, OK boat and then a bus, organisation in Laos is wonder full. We went to the boarders of Cambodia where we had the chance to see the fresh-watter dolphins, we had to hang around for sometime. We saw them, although there were quite in distance, however they are so rare, we were lucky to see them at all. Next was Khon Phapheng waterfalls, the biggest by volume in South East Asia, pretty powerful and amazing, and that was a dry season. Next more watter falls.... and then back by boat on the Mekong. It did look like we going to get caught in heavy rain, but we were lucky and managed to get back just as the sun was setting down. ... read more

By the time our stay in Champasak had drawn to a close we were looking forward to be moving on. There isn’t a great deal to do there once you’ve taken in the sights of Wat Phou. We had intended to leave the previous day but it had rained so hard we thought it better to sit it out. So sods law says that when you leave it a day because of the rain, guess what’s in store for the next morning?? It rained even harder! This time though we were going no matter what! It wasn’t as bad as we’d thought and by the time we had caught the ferry, jumped off by the first bus & jumped into a waiting second bus the rain had stopped! Our second bus shall be forever immortalized as ... read more