Don Det

At the bequest of Colm's aunt I'll try to catch up and write what we have been doing since Laos. We traveled south to an island called Don Det which is in a group called "The 4000 Islands" about 13 miles north of Cambodia. We spent eight days there which mostly consisted of renting a tube for 50 cent and floating on the water looking at the scenery. It was one of the most chilled out places we have been so far, exemplified by the Laos people who used any free time during the day to sleep in the shade! The island only got electricity 4 months ago (I think) so at some point it will start turning into something like Vang Vien, but for now it is a great place to come and relax.

We landed on our feet pretty well upon arrival when we met Linden an English guy who has been living there for 3 months. He pointed us in the direction of the sunset side of the island and 10 minutes later we were chilling in a hammock looking at this.




A local fella who was pushing a cart stopped by our hut on the first night and told us all our futures based on our birthdays and by drawing in the sand. He then proceeded to give all the girls a free massage, none for myself or Colm though :(







We had hit the jackpot with the huts, they were new and clean, toilets attached (which was rare there) the great view as shown onto the water and finally one of the best places to eat on the island was about 10 meters away from us. All this combined meant we spent the first night sitting on our decking have a few drinks and encouraging people to join us. We met some great people on the island but Linden has to be the most memorable. He was very like Gary (my brother) sarcastic, kinda mean, but still somehow loveable and funny!






I'm struggling to remember what activities we did at this chilled out place, one of the days we rented bikes and cycled to a near by waterfall. The entire Mekong was craving its way through an area about 1 miles wide, very impressive. We managed some (careful) swimming further along from the base of the waterfall.



One night leading up to the full moon Linden mentioned that he had previously rented a boat and gone up river to watch the sunset. This idea was forgotten until about 3pm on the day of the full moon, we found Linden, left him to organize the boat and myself Colm & Alex started wandering the island to gather people. Within the hour we had 15 people who were interested waiting on the beach for pickup. But our selling ability turned out to be too much for the boat which started sinking when we loaded everyone on! A half hour later with had one extra boat, unfortunately at this point the sun was almost set but never mind we still had a boat full of booze, Lindens 1980s Beatbox and 15 people up for fun so we set off anyway!




We got back about 9pm and Colm, Alan & Alex went to bed. I stayed up and headed for the nightly bonfire on the beach. Not much to fill in until 1am, I chatted to a bunch of English and Swedish people I had met way back in Luang Prabang then Linden arrived after his cat nap and joined him instead. A couple of the English guys went swimming and after 45 minutes someone noticed one of them, Francis, hadn't come back. The general consensus was the guy was a bit of a prick and probably joking about so it took another 10 minutes before everyone was genuinely worried. We shouted for him across the water but got no answer. A Danish guy who hadn't been drinking decided to go looking for him, he started swimming out and we lost sight of him pretty fast. I could still hear him swimming though so thought it was all OK. Then silence. We couldn't hear him swimming, he didn't answer from shouts to him. I yelled at everyone to shut up and 20 drunk people sat quietly on the beach listening intently for 30 seconds for any sound. Scary! I was at the point of jumping in as well when we heard the Francis voice. A couple of minutes later they appeared out of the darkness.

It turned out the current (which was pretty strong) had carried him around an island off the beach and he had swam to that to rest. He couldn't hear our shouts with the island in the way and had no idea everyone was looking for him. The Danish guy had found him and swam next to him the whole way back. Scary story of how close it was to being a bad accident!

The second to last day Colm & myself went to go see the river dolphins which live near the border into Cambodia and then onto see the largest waterfall in Asia. The dolphins were a flop, but the waterfall a success!











Our last night in Don Det was a Dutch national holiday. Queens day! Three Dutch girls went to a huge effort and organized a party in one of the bars. They contacted the police on the island and pensioned for a bar extension to 1amm, they found balloons and decorations from somewhere and decked out the bar in orange and they campaigned to such an extend that the place was filled with 200 people. I didn't even know there was that many foreigners on the island! It was a great night, lots of dancing to terrible 90s music and the longest conga line I have ever been in.

We rose in the morning, discovered Alan was going to stay Don Det a bit longer and booked our tickets to get the flock out of there. We spent the remainder of the day busing to Ubon Ratchantani in South Thailand. Next stop Chaing Mai.

Muang Ngoy

OK, I'm still on less than one hours sleep but we'll give this a shot. We left Luang Prabang after new years and took a bus (5 hour tuk tuk really!) north to a town called Na Khon where we boarded a boat for the hour long trip upriver to Muang Ngoy. The town itself can only be reached by river or a couple of day trekking through the jungle. it it a small village with about 80 families, no electricity except generators at night, no net etc. There was 9 of us when we finally reached the town, Daniel & Alex who have been traveling with us since before Hanoi & then 3 others (1 Mexican, 1 american & 1 dutch girl with a Bristol accent) who we picked up in Luang Prabang. On the boat we also met a middle aged chap called Alan who was traveling Laos by himself for 3 weeks before meeting up with his daughter. So that was our group!







We all went for dinner the first night and with no electricity pretty much everyone was in bed by 10:30pm! The next day we rented some tubes & went on a trip up river to an even more remote village. The new year was still in full swing here as the locals invited us into their huts for singing and some lao lao, which is home brewed rice wine they all drink. 50% alcohol and burns the stomach, we all politely had one shot then tried to avoid having any more! The rest of the day was spent floating down the river, we had met two other Irish people who had some great stories to exchange on the lazy 3 hour drift. It was pretty much the same story with bed that night, all tucked up at 11pm. The roasters had no problem waking us at 4:30am every morning so going to bed early became important. Teh kid in the picture below was our landlords son, 3 years old and he knew how to ask my name in English. I spent about 40 minutes playing with him and his brother, probably the best time I had in the village. Great kids!





The third and last day we spent trekking to some caves about 5k away, I don't really have any pictures as my battery was dead for most of the time we were at the village. Hopefully Colm & Alan can provide some in the future. The caves were pretty deep and connected by a river, I had to admit I chickened out to a certain extent as I didn't want to explore too far in with the touches we had. No fun getting stuck in there! On the way out we met a German couple who had swam up one side of the cave, he had pretty much the same touch as me and it was not water proof! If his head had dropped below the water it was bye bye light! Brave or stupid I dunno.

So that was our Muang Ngoy experience, we have since spent the time traveling from there to the 4 thousand islands in the very south of Laos. Yesterday was a long day, 1 hour boat, 5 hour tuk tuk and 12 hour bus. We have a 12 hour lay over in the capital Vientiane and then its onto another bus for 13 hours. In fact I better get heading to that so I'll leave you all with some pictures I took of a fire in the city today. Was pretty crazy, the locals all joined in fighting it to try and save their own shops. The heat from it was so bad other locals were spraying water on everyone within 25 feet and I saw on car had its side melted!

Luang Prabang

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this I've been traveling from Muang Ngoy for 26/28 hours with about 1 hours sleep so don't expect much from below! I'll try to update the blog with some witty comments and interesting stories another day ;)

So with that in mind lets do a quick run down of the last week or so, we left Vang Vien & heaed to Luang Prabang for New Years. It is a beautiful town and much more traditional than the drinking partying Vang Vien. We suffered a bit of confusion with our hostel when we arrived, being that it wasn't booked. We ended up staying across the road at a rip off price for the first night and transferred to the dorms across the way the next night. Alan missed out on the dorm but lucky a couple we had met tubing offered him the spare bed in their room so it all worked out!

The next 3 days were spent having water fights, boozing it up with Laos and eating great food. Our hostel even invited us to walk in the parade after which we got totally soaked to the bone within 5 minutes. I did manage to shoot some people high up in windows though, no on was safe! :D







One of the days we headed out to a waterfall near by, myself & Leon went up to the top where we found an amazing deep pool that ran straight up to the edge of the 30 meter drop. I still couldn't swim so left it to Leon and took some pictures. A bunch of Chinese guys took an interest in me when I went under one of the smaller falls and I had to pose for a few photos. Nice to be famous!







Leon's last night was one of the funniest we had there, most of the group went home as the bars shut at 11:30pm, but we bumped into some other travelers and hung outside a shop. At some point 2 Laos guys joined us and one of them started to hit on Leon. When he had no joy he moved onto me! Once we convinced the two guys we weren't interested we had a great night with them, we set them on passing travelers & one very nervous Australian dude. The guys knew shops that still sold beer at 4am so a couple of quick scooter trips were made, I think we stumbled home at about 5am and that was the last I saw of King Leon III.

Next stop up on the trip was a jungle town called Muang Ngoy which I will post about later today.