A sigh of relief
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2006
1
132
155
Trip End
May 27, 2008
Don dhet,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, March 8, 2008
When it was time to go we were sent down to the river with a bunch of other backpackers, shoved onto a small boat then crammed into a people carrier to the border where we had to pay $1 for the privilage of getting our exit stamp and another $1 for our entry stamp into Laos
The boat depot
. There was no transport around and it didn't seem to have much through traffic the driver kept insisting that our only option was to buy yet another ticket to get to Don Dhet which seemed overpriced...so much so that 2 guys decided to start walking towards the next town but we decided against it after speaking to a Korean backpacker on a mountainbike coming from Laos who insisted that it was indeed too far to walk. We drove to a group of taxi vans and were transferred to yet another vehicle and Mr T told the Laos driver about the 2 backpackers who'd decided to walk and instructed him that he should not pick them up unless they agree to pay the full fare (such a kind caring guy!). We ended up driving back past them and they still insisted on walking (which was perfectly fine as transport wasn't that far away after all to be fair). We were then driven down to the small boats and went across to the island of Don Dhet.....at last!
Since we'd taken pretty much most of the day getting out of Cambodia most places were full and we ended in with a crappy small room. We explored the bars and restaurants and ran into Jesse (a Canadian from our border crossing trip). We played pool, had a few Lao Lao cocktails (well, maybe more than a few), some expensive food (as everywhere seemed relatively expensive anyway and we were on a island to be fair) and managed to find some roti which was lucky as everything seemed to be closing down at 10
Spicy local food
. On our way back to the room we bumped into the 2 guys that walked from the border and lucky for them they managed to hitch a lift and saved themselves some cash!Today we moved to a basic bungalow on the river (with our own verrandah and 2 hammocks!) which was run by a Westerner called Andy. Myself and Ollie decided to laze away the morning on the hammocks and had a good giggle over some milkshakes whilst reading my travel diary I'd been keeping of all our mishaps in Cambodia. We then decided to be energetic and headed off to take a look at a bakery we'd read about - oh my word, I wasn't disappointed for there were huge iced chealsea buns for 60p (a lot of money to spend on such a luxuary item in this country but they were certainly better than Greggs!) and other goodies. We then found a restaurant where we tried our first 'authentic' Laos dish of spicy fish wrapped in banana leaves which almost blew my head off it was so spicy! I went back to the bakery and wasted another 60p (10,000kip!) on a carrot muffin then we went to drink more Laos Laos at the sunset bar where we ran into a Canadian couple, also from our border crossing.
