First day on Don Det

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Today we slept in until we rose (hey, we’d had a long couple of days) and at about 12:30 or 13:00 went to lunch and rented bikes. We had been told that Don Kane island was the more touristy one and thought it would be worth it to wander around there. It was a short and very bumpy ride to the bridge connecting the two and we were unhappy to have to pay to get onto the island. We didn’t really know where we were going so we just started riding and ended up at Long Beach. There are three restaurant huts there and I think it’s the place you have to go to in order to catch a boat to see the dolphins. We just wanted to explore and I wanted to cool off in the river, so we started walking along the rocky beach and found a place to wade in. The water was absolutely perfect and it felt amazing.

After swimming I needed to dry off before putting on more sunscreen, so we went to the closest hut on the beach and got a beer. While we were sitting there we saw some kids playing with some sort of ball, my guess was a hard fruit, but I was very wrong. They were playing with a fish. It was sort of rubbery and hard and they inflated it by blowing into a straw.

We didn’t have time to see the waterfall before the sun set, so we had some food at a restaurant over the water and then returned our bikes back on our island. After, we walked to book a tour for tomorrow at a place not too far from where we’re staying, Happy Sunset Tour (it also has a guesthouse and restaurant). The sign said we’d have a BBQ (sticky rice, meat, fish, and chicken) and go tubing and see the sunset. It was 100,000 per person but a French Canadian couple made us equal four, so he lowered it to 80,000. Tour at 12 tomorrow!

Technical Details
* bike rentals are either 8,000 kip a person or more commonly 10,000 kip and usually have to be brought back around 19:00
* passage onto Don Kane island is 20,000 kip per person per day but I’m not sure if he was charging us for the island or for the waterfall – we couldn’t get it sorted out so we just paid

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Photos

view from bridge
bridge connecting don det and don kone