The 4000 islands

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The ride to Si Phan Don is the longest I've been on so far, it seemed to go forever. The annoying part was that the stupid bus stopped so often...everytime I wake up from a nap, we'd be at a stop for loo or food. I dont think I get memba myself on the bus when it was moving. We also had our CNY reunion dinner on the bus...banana chips for entree, main n dessert. Shared snacks with the locals as well, they didnt stop eating !!

Si Phan Don is very village-like. And it kinda reminded myself of the Pulau Ketam trip I did when I was really young. I rented a dodgy n crooked bicycle and went around the islands. There is no traffic on the islands at all as there is only one road. The trails I took was probably wide enuff for bikes....so no dirt n dust. I hurt my groin badly tho coz the trails were really bumpy.

Here, everyone does all the activities in the morning. By afternoon, you just lounge in the hammock in the veranda overlooking the Mekong river. It was so relaxing. And I tried my first Lao Lao here, which is a strong local cocktail. Visited Mr Vath's happy restaurant and I'm very sure he can make anyone happy. Rolf managed to persuade Mr Vath for a free second happy hot choc coz the first one didnt make me happy.

I had a little toilet incident later that evening. As our bungalows didnt come with attached bathroom, we had to walk a distance to the toilet. I didnt realise that there were separate toilet and bathing room. So thought the toilet was the shower as well. It was so tiny and dimly lit, there wasnt anything you can hang your clothes on. Got really frustrated and made a lil hammock with my towel to put my clothes in. There wasnt even a running tap in the toilet, so I had very limited amount of water to shower with. After the shower, I didnt have anything to wipe my body with coz all my clothes were in the towel. Then this old lady came knocking on my door trying to get me out of the toilet. She sounded really angry and I just pretended to ignore her. When I finally got out, she pointed the real bathroom to me. I was dumbfounded.

I was supposed to go out on a dingy for dolphin watching. But I had to do it alone and would cost US$7, so gave up on the idea (I just found out that they're not endemic to Mekong river, we have them here in Kinabatangan, Malaysia too!!). Rolf went twice and only saw them on the 2nd trip from about 50m away!!?? He didn't even bother to take a snap. I got a pretty good shot of the mammal nonetheless :p

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