No, it's not. Because there's no such thing.
Don Khong is quiet and often overlooked by your regular traveler as there's not a lot to do. We don't care. We've had enough of buzzing round cities for a bit and it's ideallic. There's one strip of guest houses and restaurants and that's about it. The four of us, Martin and Stephanie have come this way too, settle on Mr Pon's Guest House and it's restaurant looks out over the tumultuous Mekong. Jo and I hire bikes to ride round the island. We stop breifly at the car ferry port where there's a sign saying 'Welcome to Khong Island' which makes me feel all geeky and hoping there's a massive ape running somewhere but then I remembered that it's called Skull Island in the films and of course there's no 'h' in Kong. There's also no 'f' in ape. Anyway, we get a third of the way round when one of Jo's pedals falls off. The walk back to the guest house is actually a highlight as locals are really friendly greeting us as we walk past, some laughing quite rightly at our daft predicament. The children are the friendliest of all waving and calling to us, some in English, some in Laos. As the temperature has dropped somewhat, many are out in the paddy fields working the land. They too, are happy to say hello.
The night's entertainment consisted of chatting to M&S about their travels and playing cards with them too. It's been a while since I played Shithead but it seems pretty much same the world over. They've been traveling for their honeymoon which will, when they finish in a month or two, have lasted a year to the day. Their stories of South America and Antarctica are enough to get us planning more trips than our means will allow.
We leave 45 minutes late on Mr Pon's charter to Don Det eventually waiting for some Imodium to kick in as the fish in coconut milk the night before left me somewhat unsettled. the other couple we get it with are very patient and relieved to get going as it's a pricey trip if there's only two of you. The boat trip takes ninety minutes and I use the time wisely to count all of the islands we see to get a rough idea of whether there is in fact four thousand of them. I counted seven. Even then, one of those was a large tree in the middle of the river so may not count. I think there has maybe been an exaggeration somewhere down the line.
Arrival on Don Det feels victorious as neither the boat nor I needs bailing out during the journey. Good times. Within all of two minutes on the isle, we bump into Cody and Julia again. We join forces and head for some riverside shacks. The Lonely Planet paints a few of them in a generous light and we feel we should go see what the fuss is about. We went, we saw, we said bugger that. We stop for a drink at the charming Mr Phao's but the amenities are a little too basic. We end up staying Little Eden which is at the pricier end and kind of confirms my fear that we are creeping into the ranks of flash packers. The thing is, it's plush and it's still less than eight pounds a night between us. It's run by a nice Belgian called Andrew who we met first of all on our guest house hunt and he said we'd be back. And we were. We also needed to do some laundry. The hotel charged one and a half times what all the other laundry places were charging so we elected to take it else where. Andrew spotted us leaving the room with our stuff in a bag and called us over. He did two things. He weighed a 1.5 litre bottle of water which came us 1.5 kg as it should. This is a trick I've repeated a few times since to great effect. He then weighed our things which came to 5.2kgs. He insisted we go to the other laundry places to see how much they weighed it at. We tried the first place and when our sweat ridden togs weighed. the scales were already a kilo over before we got near it. Fair enough, we'll just take a kilo off. The lady then sat our washing on it and the scale went round to just over twelve kilos. Twelve. Ok, even with taking the first kilo off, that leaves us well over double what it actually weighs. We'd seen enough and gladly took it back to the Belgian.
That first night we met two German physicists one of whom was half German and half Vietnamese. He had striking looks, dreadlocks and was a big guy. They were really good fun and told us of their experiences of coming over the border and the corruption involved. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. Had a great night drinking by the Mekong with beers from the supermarket after the bars had closed as there's a strict curfew even on this remote settlement.
Jo and I hired bikes and travelled across the bridge to Don Khon, not to be confused with Don Khong from earlier, and tripped down to the south of the island. We stopped at a strange river dock thing that clearly had a past role that has been defunct for a long, long time. While we're stopped there are some kids playing and a girl comes over and asks if she can ride one of the bikes. There's a few adults around and no-one objects as she starts riding round. Another girl comes over for the other bike and she too soon starts flying round. They then both take on toddler passengers at which point we're worried they might get shouted at but the little uns hold on like they've done it before and they all cackle in glee. It's a great sight and we're happy to sit and watch while we enjoy a cold can of Coke.
After that we head to the waterfalls which are intimidating even from a safe distance. We then realised that the quiet hum we can hear from the guest house a few kilometres away is actually the roar of these falls. Water crashing over rocks at terrific speeds and absurd quantities. The skies start to darken and we head back to avoid the incoming storm. Thunder and lightening, very, very frightening, punctuate our ride back to Don Det village. We were ten minutes away from home when the heavens opened. Soaked doesn't cover it. Torrents of water are running through the village as we wade our way back. It's a matter of yards but there's not a dry stitch left on us.
Another lazy day in Don Det means we are to leave Laos and head for the border at Cambodia. No Mans Land becomes a well trodden path for us but more on that next time.
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