Where the dolphins are. Apparently.
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2007
1
11
62
Trip End
May 03, 2008
Don Khong,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The'4000 islands' are right at the southern edge of Laos, where the Mekong widens, on the border of Cambodia. The original plan had been to head up to here when we were in Cambodia, crossing into Laos without the massive detour via Thailand. However, Cambodia-Laos seemed to be pretty tricky (even though Laos-Cambodia is fine) so we took a little trip down south from Pakse to visit the area.
We decided to stay on the largest island, Don Khong, because...well, the guide book made it sound nice. Thankfully, for once, the guidebook was right! However, a lot of other people had been reading the guidebooks - including some package tour annoyances so the few guest houses on the island were pretty full. After tramping around to a few (and picking up the local nutter on the way, who followed us chanting as we tried to find somewhere) we nabbed the last room in a really nice little place just off the main road.
Main road is a pretty accurate description. Not because the road was full of traffic (a couple of cars and a motorbike or two every now and then maybe), or because it went anywhere (it went around the island in a loop...) but because it was pretty much the only road. Marvellous we thought, teeny tiny river island. And we duly hired bikes for the afternoon.
Apparently the President of Laos has a house on Don Khong, so it has some of the best roads in the country. There is the main, big loop road. And then another couple that cut across the island. We were staying in the main village - Muang Khong (sp?) - and there were maybe a couple of other tiny villages and a few places where the little farmsteads got a bit closer together. So these nice shiny roads didn't really get a lot of traffic. So what did we do? Decide to head off the main roads onto the little tracks that wound through the farms along the banks of the Mekong.
I'm not sure that very many tourists explore Don Khong, as pretty much every child we passed yelled 'Saibaidee' repeatedly at us as if we were the most interesting thing they'd seen all week. Sometimes the adults joined in. Unfortunately, whilst I managed to return their greeting I couldn't wave back as I was too busy trying not to fall off the bike, which had no gears and no brakes but very cool 1950's style handlebars and a basket.
Taking these little tracks meant that although we saw a lot of very cute chickens (and baby chicks), some very cute pigs, some cows, some buffalo thingies (including a baby that had lost its mum and was making the most heart-wrenching noise...) we did manage to miss the wats and things we were supposed to be looking out for. Oops.
Little question - does anyone know why buffalo always lift their heads as if they are peering through bifocals when they walk??
About three hours later we had managed to get around just under half the island (and back across the middle) and realised that although Don Khong was pretty quiet, it certainly wasn't that small!
The second day we took a boat down the Mekong to take a look at a couple of the other islands. Don Khone and Don Det. Described by our guidebook as 'the pot of gold at the end of Laos' we had wondered whether we should have stayed there instead of the bigger island. However, although they are certainly pretty enough - with some fairly impressive waterfalls, they reminded us a bit of a strange theme park. Lots of white middle aged westerners were being shown around on bicycles, calling 'saibaidee' to all the other tourists as they passed on the clean, well-kept sandy paths. Every now and then there would be a little immaculate restaurant or cafe where groups of tourists would be duly encouraged to buy souvenirs T-shirts and bits of tat from the islands as lunched overlooking the river. Elsewhere there were little huts along the banks of the Mekong for people who thought they were hippies to pretend they were on a Thai island, not in the middle of a fairly carefully managed Laos tourist destination.
These islands are supposed to be one of the last places you can see the Mekong River Dolphin. Except on comparing notes between all the guidebooks we could see and the information up around the island, it would appear at the last count there were only about 3 left. Which considering how wide the Mekong gets at that point, and the fact the Cambodians are still using dynamite to blow everything up in the river as soon as it crossed the border, we didn't really bother with dolphin-spotting!
In spite of the fact that we would miss the boat racing (again! We'd left on the day it started in Phnom Penh too!) we decided to head back for Pakse the next day - the islands are lovely, but apart from Don Khong, they were on the whole a little too tourist-sanitised for us. We did visit the pre-boat racing night festival, where they had the most amazing bouncy-castle ever (for children only unfortunately), many stalls selling either food, flip flops or baskets for sticky rice and a stage set up for what sounded like yet more Thai kareoke. Painting the town red, Laos stylee....
