Four Thousand Islands

Have you been at the end of the world ? If not you are welcome to join us at the Don Khong island. We are at the southern corner of Laos close to Cambodian and Thailand border in the middle of the Mekong. Actually our trip from Vientiane in the sleeping, ‘hand made’ bus with 50 almost full size beds inside, it was not so bad at all. Early in the morning after 10 hours we arrived to Paxe . We didn’t have any detailed plan how to get the final destination, but the local guide appeared from nowhere and offered minibus. After short negotiations our backpacks landed on the car roof and… we waited 45min to collect more passengers, when car was full we started our trip, but stopped after 5 minutes in the town, our driver disappeared. As we parked close to the restaurant we thought that it’s a kind of friendly invitation ( driver didn’t speak English at all ) for breakfast. After next 30 minutes the bigger bus parked close to our minivan and driver carried our luggage to the bus. We had been told that we will travel the bigger bus now… fine why not . Just only a short stop close to the ATM and refuel our bus ( definitely not at the petrol station ) and we were on our way to the 4000 Islands. It’s a place where the Mekong is around 14km wide and create archipelago , locals say that it’s many islands here so it’s why they called it 4000 islands – Si Phan Don.
Today we had an organized day, jogging at 6.45, breakfast at 7.45, 8.30 ‘ferry’ to the Don Det and Don Khon islands, 2 hours bicycling, minibus to the waterfalls at 2 pm, 4 pm small boat ride to see freshwater dolphins and back to our island… it was a long day! You can believe or not but we saw dolphins even they have only 10 of them in the Mekong!
Today's lunch