Blogs from Si Phan Don, South, Laos, Asia - page 9

Don Det At this stage of our journey we made some great friends. We all crossed the border into Laos at the same time and are still with some of them now! (8 March) Don Det - one of the '4000 islands' found on this little stretch of the Mekong was great fun, very laid back and beautiful. We enjoyed a lot of 'Beer Lao' - the immense national brew - and spent a couple of lazy days on the river. They call Laos 'the land of a million elephants' - but we found the elephants have all turned into roosters/cockrels that don't obey the 'only crow at dawn' rule. We hate them and sometimes have to go out into the night to throw mud at them. Now we have bought catapults to hit them ... read more

Today is our last day in Laos- its a 12 hour night bus to Hue in Vietnam tonight - so its a prime time to look back on our time here. We said goodbye to the sophisticated chain-smoking French Tourists of Luang Prabang after an 8 day stay. We decided rather than deal with small villages and more hills further north in Laos, that we would journey to the South, which has a reputation for being laid-back, even by laid-back Laos standard. We had "unfinished business" in the capital Vientiane: the particularly holy Pha That Luang (expensive toilet!), lounging all afternoon poolside at a swanky hotel (a first for me), and beer o'clock at one or other of the delightful bars in wooden huts near the Mekong. As we journeyed South, the tone changed somewhat. There ... read more

Other than having a bus that was literally falling apart - dropping stuff on our heads as we chugged down the road, the drive down was surprisingly dull. We settled into a row of bungalows that faced some dry rice field, providing some nice ambiance once the moon was up and the cows moved in. Nicholas, Peter, Lam Jo and I did a whole lot of nothing in keeping with the Islands culture, and this was only interrupted by a ill-fated attempt at doing a Canoe trip to go around Don Det. We went downstream at first, thinking that this was a blast, and then tied up, had something to drink at a riverfront guesthouse, went swimming with some young Buddhist monks, saw some water buffolo cooling off, and were just having the best of times ... read more

Hallo, wollt nur kurz mitteilen das ich gut im Sueden angekommen bin, wenn auch ein wenig anders als anfangs gedacht. Ich bin hier in einem schoenen Guesthouse, und mache jetzt erstmal Urlaub vom Urlaub. Erhol mich und komm hoffentlich zur Ruhe. Genauere Berichterstattung gibts dann wieder im neuen Jahr. Wuensche Euch allen, die ihr so fleissig meine Reiseberichte lest ein gesegnetes Weihnachtsfest und an sauguaden Rutsch ins neue Jahr!!!! Don Det, 4 ganze Wochen bin ich hier haengen geblieben, aber ich hab mich richtig erholt, und strotze wieder vor Energie!!! Als ich ankam hatte ich 48 Stunden Busfahrt hinter mir, war fix und fertig und wollt nur noch schlafen. Tip, meine Vermieterin holte mich mit dem Boot ab, ich blickte ihr in die Augen und wusste das wir uns gut verstehen wuerden. Wir fuhren auf dem ... read more

Apologies for the increasing length of our blogs, this one will be short as we have been doing NOTHING for the last week!!! We left Ubon Ratchathan, shunning the V.I.P. bus in favour of a cheaper ‘local option’ involving the old Bob Marley and the Wailers tour bus (see pic of G writing previous blog) followed by a ute-cum-tuk tuk that could fit 45 people at a squeeze, which they proved. We crossed the Thai-Laos border only to see our only option to reach Pakse was on the same V.I.P. bus that would have taken us all the way. We boarded the most luxurious bus we had ever been on in South East Asia having saved 50p!! We left immediately from Pakse to the 4000 islands at the very Southern tip of Laos. Here the Mekong ... read more