Siem Reap-KOmpong Cham-Stung Treng-Don Det

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We waved the temples of Angkor goodbye and boarded an early morning bus to the central part of Cambodia, a town called Kompong Cham. Our plan was to cross the Cambodia-Laos border as soon as we could. It still took us almost 3 days to get from northwestern part of Cambodia to the border in northeastern part. Luckily, Cambodia has improved its roads substantially over the past 3 years, mostly because of the growth of tourism. Still, the national "highways" are of about the same quality as local roads in remote parts of Slovenia.
We arrived to Kompong Cham after a 6 hour bus ride. The town itself was nothing special, but since we had to overnight there, we had a look around. Doing so, we met Mr. Wanat, a local teacher, who enjoys mingling with tourists. He was happy to answer all our questions on Cambodian people and their culture. Thus we found out why everybody in the country has a motorbike, but almost nobody a car. Its obvious, because of the price of petrol. The lower consumption of petrol makes a huge difference, more so beacuse a primary school teacher, like Mr. Wanat, earns only about $50 per month. Still, with the price of petrol being about $1 per litre, Cambodians drive surprisingly lots.
From Kompong Cham, we took another bus to Stung Treng, a small town about 30 km from the border. Not much worth mentioning was going on. The next day a minibus took us over the border. We didnt know what to expect at the border and were quite afraid since there were rumours about extortionate border officers demanding $5-10 from every tourist. Nothing like that happened and the trip to Don Det was smooth. Well, except the terrible "road" that wasnt sealed and lasted about 5 km from the border on in Laos.
Don Det is an island, one of many on Si Phan Don, or 4000 islands, one of the places to be in Laos. The islands arent on the sea, but on the river - the mighty Mekong. We arrived to the shore of Mekong around noon. There Laos showed a very pleasant face to me. In my first shopping experience, I wanted to get 2 bananas. The only English words the seller spoke were numbers. 5000 kip (about 50 cents) was the price. But after paying it, I didnt only receive 2 bananas, but a whole bunch, about 20! So for the next two days, I had more than enough bananas to eat...
Don Det. An island where time stops. Bungalows, palm trees, family owned restaurants, a couple of shops and cyber caffes on about 500 m2. Where theres electricity only between 6-10 PM, when the islanders turn on generators. Where drinks are cheap (1$ for 640 ml bottle of beer, $0.5 for a strong cocktail) and everybody smiles. I can honestly say Ive never been to a place where life would be taking a slower pace. To examplify: after getting a bungalow, we went for lunch. We both had some rice with veggies and Andrej added some eggs to the order. Believe it or not, it took them an hour to bring us our food. On average we waited about half an hour to have a meal served. Don Det is an island, where theres 3 things to do: relax, eat, drink. If you really want to stretch, theres some trips you can do. I went to see the dolphins and The Pearl of Mekong (see photos). We also rented bikes for a ride around the island and to see the Li Phi waterfalls on a nearby island of Don Khon. Other than that we were relaxing, relaxing and relaxing (plenty of time for reading - I strongly recommend Sex Slaves: The trafficking of women in Asia by Louise Brown).
On Monday, 3 days after arriving to Don Det, we had enough of chilling out, so we went north - to the elephant village of Kiet Ngong...

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