Our Big Explore: The 4000 Islands, Laos

A "normal" travel day in Laos

Tuesday 19^th Nov.

Well, there wasn’t much to do on this island, so we just chilled out on different restaurants during the day.

Don Det island definitely lost a certain element of its Laoness, but we were happy to be surrounded by a big traveler crowd. Only few years ago the 24 hours electricity arrived on this island, and is now working its way through guesthouses and bungalows.

It’s a paradise of bungalows, but unfortunately I’m not that much into nature houses (= animals), so we stayed at a guesthouse, but a nice one with a little garden and sun beds. To remain the locals satisfied with all the tourists, all the bars are closing at 11pm.

Don Det have a huge selection of happy shakes, happy pancakes, happy pizzas, and of cause normal alcohol. You can turn everything you eat and drink into happy, and only a few people know exactly what it contains, but it said that it is drugs from the nature there. We didn’t try this though, but apparently it’s a big drag for younger people. The Indian food we got for dinner, was well prepared and surprisingly good.

There’s a bar called Reggae Bar, where a true copy of Bob Marley is working, and running the business, for some locals. He’s dark, very relaxed in his own little world, always with a smile on his face, and the atmosphere in the bar is awesome. And of cause they’re playing Bob Marley, Jack Johnson (my favorite music for chilling) and a lot of other nice music. We met a swiss couple, Lisa & Flo, in there that night, and had a good time with them. It so easy to meet people and everyone is so easy going, relaxed and is sharing the same passion for traveling.

The comfy guesthouse

Wednesday 20^th Nov.

We rented bikes, through our guesthouse in the morning, 10.000kip (7kr) for a whole day. You can barely get a spray of oil on your chain at home, for that amount of money.

We biked on small bumpy paths and broken bridges, while water buffalos were getting cooled down in the river just next to us, some were in the shade of a tree chewing grass, chickens were in sight most of the trip, and small piggies and dogs were playing around. We got to the bridge that connects Don Det island with Don Khon island. Here we got charged 25000kip each to cross the bridge, corrupt!

We biked further on into the little island, still on small unfinished and narrow paths. Went to see a waterfall, and a beach in the bottom of it. We didn’t go for a swim, because at this time of the year the water is a bit dirty, but other people were swimming there, and when we got back to Don Det later that day, we heard that someone just died there the day before, the person apparently got carried away by the current, and wasn’t found as far as we know. Very sad! After a little break at the waterfall, we went to a dolphin view point, but didn’t see any.

We got our lunch there, and waited almost an hour for one portion of fried rice with chicken. Laos really is an amazing country when it comes to time. Never in a rush! The afternoon went by with watching movies at Adams bar, and enjoying the fat, big and famous burger there. I even kept myself awake for all the 3 movies we watched, time to make a cross in the notice book.

Water buffalos playing hide & seek

2 very beautiful travellers

Monkey trees

School yard on Don Khon

Thursday 21^st Nov.

We woke up by the sound of roosters, as we do every morning here. It’s both annoying and charming at the same time. The sun was burning outside and we needed a day for a better tan, so the sun beds in the garden, came in handy.

After sweating for hours, we then remembered that we, the day before, saw “reggae bar” posting something about a boat trip around 2pm. We immediately booked that, together with Lisa & Flo.

It was basically a beach visit, where we on one side could swim in the river, in Lao and the other side in Cambodia, they brought music, big blankets and beers. It was unlike any other boat trip, we had such a great and funny day, met a lot of other travelers, sharing travel stories, while drinking beers, swimming and playing foolish games. We felt absolutely lucky to be able to do this.

We quickly connected with a finish guy, Juha and a lithaun girl, Liucija, so while Manie aka. Bob Marley, were handing out Lao Lao cocktails to us, we enjoyed ourselves more and more, eventually the sun was setting over all the small islands, a fantastic sight, and it was time to go back to Don Det.

At night time when we reached the town again, we arranged dinner with Liucija, Juha, Lisa & Flo. I was really knackered after a whole day in the burning sun, combined with beers and Lao Lao cocktails, so unfortunately we went home really early. Maybe also because we had to leave the next morning, and with the great and funny company we were in, it could have been a blast to go out all night, but then we wouldn’t be able to leave the next morning. So we were the old and tired ones that night.

Sailing on the Mekong river, Liucija & I.

The boat trip crew

The 4000 Islands

Friday 22^nd Nov.

Time to leave the beautiful 4000 island, and enter Vietnam again. Liujica joined us. We would need an over-night stay in Attapue. So the next two days would be travelling days.

The morning started out with a delayed, over loaded long boat to the mainland again. Then after getting safe out of the boat, we were told to wait for 20 min, for a minibus. I then asked the “bus girl” if we would make it in time to Attapue, and she promised that off cause we would make it in time. When the 20 min had past, we realized that it was the bus right in front of us that should drive us. Funny thing was that I already asked if that was that bus, and the bus girl said no. So now I was wondering if we would make it in time to Attapue.

I might have mentioned it before, but they use the public transportation for all kinds of cargo.S o before we even left the bus station, in Pakse, around 2 tons of tiles, were loaded in the trunk of the bus, there were people everywhere, a lady was caring a plastic bag with 3 big koi fishes in, some guys were jumping in through the windows (it was easier than passing all the people in the isle), we stopped on every possible corner – the bus got loaded with more cargo, used tires, old furniture, rusty machines, there is no limit for what people brings on to the busses. The bus drive should be around 6 hours.

At one point it smelled like something was burning, as the smell got spread in the bus, the bus drivers eventually stopped , and now we could see a big cloud of smoke coming from the rear wheels of the bus, it turned out, that it was the brakes that were smoking hot. Oh my god, we weren’t even half the way to Attapue, and we were driving downhill, so we definitely needed those brakes. After cooling them down with water from a nearby river, we continued our “pleasant” journey. It wasn’t long before the bus pulled over again, and same procedures got repeated. It didn’t help on the brakes, that it was unfinished, bumpy mountain roads. But eventually we got use to pulling over every now and then, to cool down the brakes. Just as we thought we hit our destination, it was just another bus station, more people entered the bus, and chairs, goods and big bags of all kinds of food (probably rice/noodles/sugar) was loaded up to the rooftop of the bus. We were shocked, and really couldn’t understand that this was happening. It seemed so incredible stupid, how in the world could they even think of loading the bus with more shit… Security is definitely not a word they use, or know of. Amazingly we eventually made it safe to Attapue, “only” 4 hours delayed.

We had no clue of how far away the town was form the bus station, and it was already 9pm. We were told that the bus to Nam would leave early in the morning around 6am, so we didn’t bother finding the town. We just decided to stay at the guesthouse next to the bus station.

First room he showed us, had no light in the bathroom, next room had light, but the tab in the sink wasn’t connected to water, so we had to use the showerhead to wash our hands after toilet visit. This little missing detail gave us a discount on the price, so we agreed to stay there for the night. Outside we saw both cockroaches, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, flies and something we didn’t know what was, but some kind of huge flying ant. First thing that needed to be done inside, was to kill all the spiders in the corners.

Then we realized that we only had breakfast, and needed some food. Our only option were the restaurant on the bus station, sadly they closed down the kitchen, so the only thing they could provide us, was a small bucket of cop noodles and hot water. That’s really not what you want when you’re starving, and especially not what Erik wanted. He thought he was gonna die during the night, so I had to teach him that he can live without food for several days, but not live without fluid. He was really NOT happy with his cop noodles, but who to blame!?

Getting back to the room we had to secure the big hole between the door and the doorframe, to avoid mosquitoes coming in and sucking on our naked skin. After a long and exhausting day of travelling, Liucija & I fell in a deep sleep. In the middle of the night Erik was getting annoyed of the many roosters outside, woke us up with his trample outside the door, only wearing boxers and swearing that he was gonna kick them away, so he could have a prober sleep. Shortly after he returned, we could still hear the noise from the roosters. It turned out that there was like 6-7 cages filled with chickens in the backyard of the guesthouse, and they kept going on with their noise the whole night. I was having a hard time to fall asleep again. This was too frustrating.

The ROOSTER sound!!!

Brave lady carrying fishes home in one single plastic bag

Loaded bus

This is a guys hand, and a common sight in Asia

Brakes are burning hot

Covering up to avoid the dust flying around in the bus

Saturday 23^rd Nov.

We weren’t totally sure that the bus would leave at 6am, and after asking on the bus station a few times, we realized that the bus were leaving from the town center, so now we had to go into town anyway, because we didn’t get a right answer the day before.

Apparently we were in a rush to catch the bus from the town, so we quickly turned to wake up the guesthouse manager, to pay for the night. After a while knocking on his door and window, he still didn’t wake up or answered us. A tuk-tuk was waiting for us at the same time, and he told us to hurry up, so our next step was really awful and unfair, but we jumped into the tuk-tuk and left, without paying. We didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t have the exact money that we could have left for him, and we really didn’t wanna pay extra for that crappy room. Bad tourists!

In town we realized that we had plenty of time, before the bus arrived. This tells how stupid and difficult it is to travel in these countries, they’re telling you that you’re in a rush, and then when you enter the bus, for an example, it turns out that it leaves in an hour or so. In this situation we had a decent amount of Vietnamese dong, but we couldn’t use them there. Lucky for us, we had breakfast for our last kip and a few dollars. The restaurant owner was understandable for our different kind of money, since he knew that we were going to Vietnam, and didn’t wanna take out more kip from the ATM.

All of a sudden 3 different busses showed up, and now we were confused of which one we should take, because they were all going to Ngoc Hoi in Vietnam. The one was a big local bus, which we would avoid at anytime, the others were two minibuses, so we jumped into the one where the drivers seemed nicest. Crossing the border into Vietnam again, wasn’t giving us troubles and sooner than we thought we were back in Nam. Very impressing, and unreal to be ahead of our travels.

Ngoc Hoi is a big tourist hop into a lot of destinations in Vietnam. After a while bargaining around the bus station, a minivan pulled up on the road, and asked for 200.000 dong, to bring us to Danang. There was a big bright sign on his van saying that it cost 140.000 dong. So that’s how obvious they are trying to rip us off, and I bet they’re getting away with that a lot, but not with us. As soon as I pointed at the sign, he seemed embarrassed over himself, and it sure looked like he was regretting that he had put the sign outside of the van. But how stupid do they think we are!? He was one of those aggressive drivers that thought he owned the road, he made that trip through the mountains a crazy and annoying one for all of us.

Getting off in Danang, and once again fighting for our rights to pay the right price to get to Hoi an. Again the sign with the right price was loud and clear showed on the bus, and still they’re trying to get more money from us. At this point we just entered the bus, the bus lady kept saying 50.000 dong (right price was 18.000) we kept ignoring her, and when the bus were rolling we payed her 20.000 each, she was still not satisfied, but we continued on with our poker faces, and got to Hoi An, for the 20.000 dong.

It’s usually really small amounts of money, that we bargain about, but it’s a lot of money in the long run, if we let them fool us over and over again, plus it has become a principle for us, not to be ripped off (or pay more than the locals do).

After 9 hours and 29 min of travelling (+waiting and bargaining time) we could now relax in Hoi An, for a few days (something that is really nice to think about after 2 days on the roads).

We (us & Liucija) found a backpacker hostel, near the city center and dropped off our stuff. We knew that we wanted to get some tailor made clothes, and knew that it would take some days to make it, so after checking in, we all immediately went to a tailor shop, to sort out what we should get and got it all measured up. Had a late dinner, and went out for some cheap drinks afterwards. Oh my god, Hoi An is a nice and beautiful little town!