Dolphines, hammocks and Yathzee

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Hello Everyone,

Yet another blog ;-) We will be travelling for quite a few days so no time for internet probably until the end of the week so I just have to make you jealous about our 5 day stay on the 4000 Islands in the South of Laos.

The day before we left for the islands we went on an active culture day tour to the Bolaven Plateau - well known for its coffee and green tea plants. Unfortunately our guide did not speak such a good English (as we were promised) but with Danielles creative body language we did learn some stuff about the great Arabica Laos coffee beans. ( I won't bore you too much with this on a blog though ;-) )
We also walked and climbed too see several different waterfalls in the area and we visited some local tribes. Normally we find these tours very touristy and tend to avoid them but as we were only 3 of us we did kind of avoid the tourist-with-camera status.
The evening we spent on the top of the Pakse hotel with a sunset view of the Mekhong with a great variety of nationalities & a gitar.

The next day we got on the mini-bus to the 4000 Islands - Don Khone to be precise. Imagine a small island in the middle of the Mekhong without electricity or paved roads. Do you see us walking at night with the torch under the stars?? Hanging in the hammock with a book watching the sunrine above the river??? Me running right across the islands at sunrise with some stray dogs running with me chasing away the buffalo on my path.. ;-) )
Am I getting you jealous??

We did do other stuff besides lying on the beach and jumping of rocks into the Mekhong ;-)
We went on a bike ride around the island (where several bridges were missing along the way but big local guys were all to helpfull to carry the bikes and almost us...), we took a mini boat (those made out of a big tree) and watched the sunset as we went to watch the river dolphines at the boarder with Cambodia. The dolphines were about 200m away so we couldnt see them that well but when we jumped in the river we could hear them talk under water - now THAT was cool! ;-)

As the island was very small and only has one road we kept on seeing the same people over and over again so this made it a very homely place as we all became good friends for the time being. Of course this was again a large variety of nationalities stuck together sharing stories (damn I still have to visit lots of places!!)

Of course our time there had to come to an end as we will now make our way to Vietnam. This will unfortunately be a looong road with very slow and hot busses... Whish us luck! Chat to you from country no. 3!

CIAO

Some more impressions as usual!

1- Lao men really dont work (the women do!). They sit, smoke, drink Lao-Lao whiskey and play jeux de boulle (sometimes they go fishing..)
2- Too much sticky rice is bad for the bowel movement (we have several witnesses.... :-S )
3- every morning we watched the locals wash in the river (including brushing teeth) from our bungalow and wondered if they actually felt clean afterwards.... As we discovered that we did the exact same thing for 4 days with the only difference that it came from a shower head we got the answer... Nope.. ;-)

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