Si Phan Don (The 4000 Islands)

Our final destination in Laos was Si Phan Don, or The 4000 Islands. They lie in the south of Laos, the name is slightly misleading since Laos has no coastline. The Islands are contained in the Mekong river. There are three main islands that are inhabited permanently; Don Khong, Don Det and Don Khon - the latter two are connected by a bridge. The bus we travelled down on was a sleeper bus - so there were beds lining the length of the bus. Was a welcome change from the other buses we had been taking in Laos - I actually slept really well. We changed bus in a place called Pakse which was our last chance to withdraw any money since there were no ATMs on Si Phan Don (they've only recently got 24 hour electricity). We thought we may have been staying til the sunday (about 5 nights) so had to withdraw enough to see us through.

What we had read about Si Phan Don had got us expecting crystal blue waters that would be great for swimming in and a bit of a pristine spot for some hammock chilling. We were a bit let down - the water was the same dirty brown Mekong we had seen in the rest of Laos, and the accomodation was all a bit shoddy and not cheap - it wasn't the most chilled place we've been by any stretch. Also, presumably because it was on the river, there were so many flies and bugs all over the place. Anyway, it was fair to say it wasn't quite what we expected - still lovely, and completely unique, but not what we had hoped for.

We arrived at 11am which gave us plenty of time for the day. We rented bicycles again and started exploring. After paying our dues in tourist charges to get onto Don Khon we headed for the waterfalls. There would be no swimming in these ones though - they're the biggest, by volume of water, in all of south east Asia, apparently. They were pretty awesome.

After the waterfalls we headed to the south of Don Khon, where the rare Irrawady Dolphins hang out. You can't see them from land but can get a private boat to take you out to see them. We gave it a go as it was pretty cheap. After travelling to a certain point (the journey was worth the money alone to be honest), we stopped - our boat driver told us that we were at the border with Cambodia and so couldn't go any further. The only problem is that the dolhpins were all in Cambodia too. Apparently, we later found out, you can pay a bit extra to go over there, which I think are driver tried to tell us at the time but we couldn't really understand him. Still, we did get to see a couple of them, albeit from a distance.


Beyond that, there isn't really alot to do on the islands, and since we weren't really comfortable there, we didn't see the point in hanging around to chill out. So we decided to head to Cambodia the following morning. This presented us with a problem since we had about two and a half million kip on us - and you can't exchange kip outside of Laos. We also know (from our previous encounter) that on the borders you get absolutely shafted on exchange rates. We managed to bargain with someone who bought our kip at 8,100 kip to the dollar - meaning we lost about 3 dollars on just over 300 - not bad. It's a good job too since the following morning the people running the buses would only offer dollars at 9,000 kip, and on the border 10,000.

Grabbed loads of film soundtracks for the iPod before I left as well, Thomas Newman is pretty much the don for me. He's done the soundtracks to loads of great films, this one is probably his best known one though (from American Beauty). Sublime.