Thursday May 28th 2009 4000 islands

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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 through the midday heat catching up on the sleep missed on the boat and headed out for a wander. Didn’t take long to discover that there isn’t a hell of a lot to do here except stare out at the mighty Mekong which spans for about 300m on either side of the island to the shore. It’s pretty immense. Sat out on the very comfortable front porch and chatted to the rest for a while. The others decided that they were going to Dong Det the next day but we decided we’d just sit back for a day and relax. We had been rushing through Laos we felt and needed a day of nothing and this really felt like a place you had no choice except to do nothing. We had a late lunch at about 4.30 so weren’t too hungry for dinner which was lucky because when we headed out at 8 we found most places shut up for the night. This really is the heart of the native country side. We got some water in the guesthouse reception and headed to watch a movie on the laptop for the night

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