Stop. Hammock Time!
After yesterday, I’m on a roll – so let’s push on…
My next journey was to be another mammoth one – 20-odd hours, first retracing my steps to Vang Vieng, then on to the capital Vientiene (my second time passing through without stopping) and on down to Don Det in the 4000 Islands via the town of Pakse. This involved three buses and very small boat with a misguided skipper – but more on him later. The first 8 hours were relatively uneventful, before it was time to change to the night bus. I climbed aboard and on first glance my berth looked spacious and comfortable. It wasn’t quite double bed sized but certainly a generous single. Except it wasn’t. It was meant for two! Soon I would meet my bedfellow for the night, a Swedish lad by the name of Stef. On paper a tall Swede called Stef sounds great! In actual fact it could have been a lot worse. He was a friendly bloke (but not too friendly if you know what I mean!) and given the girth of some of our fellow passengers I think we felt like we could have done a lot worse.
After getting more sleep than I expected (I was getting good at the whole night bus malarkey by now), we arrived in Pakse around dawn. The usual craziness of touts abounded once again, but since we were booked all the way through it wasn’t too bad. We changed to a mini-bus before being rounded up to exchange one ticket for another – again. This was standard practice in Laos in particular, but all over the region. You have one ticket for an entire journey, but operators insist on making you queue up to swap it for another one countless times during a journey. They are on their way to being swamped in paper-based bureaucracy with the rest of us!
When we eventually got on our way again there was a sobering moment as we drove along a remote road. Lots of villagers were milling about and there had clearly been an accident between a scooter rider and a mini-van. The concern on the faces of most people told us that the rider might not make it. I’d heard stories about traffic related deaths in this part of the world but this was the closest I got to seeing it. Not pleasant.
The last leg of the journey was by a small narrow boat. We loaded the bags aboard and hunkered down on the squat seats. On the journey I met Andy and Helen, an English couple that I ended up searching for accommodation with. Back to that wayward captain. Most of the boats come in at the south point of Don Det, where most of the accommodation and bars are. Basically the heart of the action, such as it is on Don Det. Despite this our man took us half way up the island to another drop off point. To add insult to injury, we were then pointed away from the busy end when we asked some people for where we should stay. After much traipsing around, we eventually got two cheap rooms. Shame they were about a 40 minute walk from where we wanted to be.
Later that evening we ventured down to the main end and I met up again with Babs, Emma and Gina. We’d had such a great time together in Vang Vieng but it was great to see them in the chilled out surroundings of Don Det. The next day myself, Andy & Helen moved down to the same area as everyone else and found some great accommodation with hammocks outside our rooms. A few hours got whiled away in them! Although there are only a few islands that are inhabited, this part of the world is known as 4000 Islands because in dry season the water level drops, revealing lots of small shrubs and out-crops of land. Which looks like masses of little ‘islands’. It is a stunning and tranquil part of the world. The pace of life is very slow. The locals are so laid back they rarely lift their heads out of their hammocks – and it’s easy to follow their lead! Other than that, we spent our days strolling round the island, eating or relaxing with a couple of beers.
The most energetic we got was when we hired bicycles and headed to the bigger island, Don Khong, which you can reach by bridge. There was yet another waterfall to visit, and while it was impressive enough, our day was more eventful because of the people we met there. Our friend Babs is mixed race – Ugandan/Irish – a wonderful mix! This part of the world gets a lot of Chinese tourists and apparently not many of them have seen black people before. Babs got a lot of attention – mostly intrusive and unwanted. They would stare and most would try to sneakily take photos or video clips. The rest would nod and wave a camera as a crude attempt at asking for permission. Seeing a white bloke in the company of a black girl was also apparently a big deal. At one point myself and Babs spent about 10 minutes grudgingly posing for photos with a large Chinese family – one by one! Very surreal.
The only other event of note while on the islands was a random local rave we were invited along to. It was off the beaten track and the only place to get a beer after the handful of bars closed. The music was appalling and we didn’t hang around too long! But it was another funny little episode of the weird variety that seems to happen when you go with the flow.
After a few blissful days it was time to hit the road again. Myself, Emma, Andy & Helen were heading on to Cambodia, while Babs and Gina were off even further afield. Babs was making her way to Vientiene to ultimately head down to New Zealand and Gina was off to Bangkok briefly, before heading to Brazil via a quick pit stop back in the UK. They are both fantastic girls and great company – will definitely be catching up with them whenever our paths next cross…
There could only be one song for the tune of the day. This is Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney with Ebony & Ivory:
