Four Thousand Islands

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Hi Blog,

I'm back in Bangkok, and after a horrendous bus journey leaving Cambodia (I will never take tarmac for granted again) I arrived exhausted back on the Khao San road. Its peeing it down now so found quite a swanky internet place to escape from the rain.

So now I've left Cambodia, I'm up to my last few days in Laos. Even though I was there for so long, it feels like ages ago now. Alex and I headed down to the Four Thousand Islands, an area where the Mekong becomes 14km wide and is dotted with...four thousand islands. Getting there from Champasack involved a short cramped moto ride to the ferry, a quick jaunt accross the river on the scariest looking ferry I have ever seen...completely delapidated and overcrowded, another tuk tuk ride to the main road once on the other side, and then a wait on the main road to flag down the next 'bus' (a van with a roof and two benches down each side, and one in the middle). Once I had flagged it down however, I saw that it was crammed full and so waved it on, but the driver assured us there was in fact plenty of room, so despite our protests our bags were chucked on the roof and we squeezed ourselves in the back along with about 20 other Laos folk with about 5 blokes hanging off the back. Not the most comfortable couple of hours, but a good laugh. At one point Alex dropped her book off the back, and after screeching to a halt (about 200 metres later), the bus conductor jumped off and comandeered some poor old fella's bike and then cycled back up the road to get it. See why i love it here?

Arrived at our destination and stayed in a gorgeous guest house on one of the islands...hardly any cars...or visitors, lovely restaurants and scenery. Perfect. The next day we took a boat trip around the islands and stopped at the waterfalls (sorry can't remember what they were called) which were spectacular, but after an hour or so the boat journey was fairy uncomfortable and long, and when a storm started we had to take shelter in a local temple other wise the boat was in danger of being blown over.

That night me and Alex splashed out on a bottle of red wine..a total luxury and generally talked a lot of rubbish. Oh and we saw a cat get run over...not nice, but noone seemed to know what to do, and then half the village came out to have a look. Meanwhile, I was left feeling quite nauseus...as in fact I am now with celine dion warbling away in the background.

More later...

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