The Amateur Backpacker: Island Hopping in the Mekong

***Apologies for the delay in posting - I blame it on a combination of writer's block and exhaustion after days of traipsing around ancient ruins....***

The Four Thousand Islands is an area of Southern Laos right next to the Cambodian border, where the Mekong fans out and becomes even wider and slower. Hundreds of little islands and outcrops of land are scattered around these waters, which are also home to the rare Irrawaddy dolphins. The islands feel almost as if they could be in the Caribbean - they have sandy beaches and palm trees and the Mekong here is a clear and clean blue.

We travelled on Monday 1st of March to the largest of the islands, Don Khong. We went by local bus, a journey that was meant to take four hours but instead lasted six. Along the way we saw women on the roadside selling bunches of a large, white fruit/vegetable which appeared to be a cross between a garlic bulb and an onion. Most of the people on the bus bought a bunch and began eating them like apples. A local woman, seeing our curious faces, offered us one each to try - they turned out to be bunches of water chestnuts, but much fresher than the tinned kind we're used to in Britain.

Don Khong's riverfront in the main town was lined with restaurants, all selling cheap beer and good food and boasting romantic views of the river, lit only by dim strings of fairy lights. We spent the night out there with our books, after bumping into some backpackers we'd met at the waterfalls on the Bolaven Plateau. The following morning we hopped on a boat going to another of the islands - the rugged and unspoiled Don Kon - or so we thought.... After a picturesque boat journey, we ended up instead on Don Det, a more touristy island joined to Don Kon by an old railway bridge built by the French. The boatmen claimed that water levels were too low to take us all the way round to Don Kon....hmmm.

We could have stayed on Don Det but opted to head over to Don Khon anyway, where we settled into a bungalow on the riverfront, with a veranda and of course a hammock. While excellent for relaxing on, the open-plan nature of the bungalows meant we spent a lot of time inadvertently eavesdropping on our neighbours, an odd couple comprising an arrogant American and a weedy-looking English guy with hair twice the length mine is at the moment. We also saw two English women who were around fifty about a lot - they were easy to spot as they were surrounded by clouds of cigarette smoke and cheerful exclamations. The islands are for the most part uninhabited, and electricity is fairly new to these parts. Don Det is developing into a bit of a backpacker scene, and the riverside there is thronged with cafes and travel agents. At the moment it is still fairly easy to escape/ignore this but in a few years I suspect it may be more similar to Vang Vieng....

While on the islands, we tried another Lao speciality - steamed fish cooked in banana leaf,pictured above. It tastes of lime and lemongrass and melts in the mouth, although the soft texture is a bit odd. As you would expect, fish is very prevalent in the islands and I also tried fried catfish and chips. It was very good although it did make me a bit homesick!

A lot of our time on the islands was spent reading and drinking fruit shakes, but we also managed to rent bikes and go on a trip to one of the waterfalls on the island. It was a brutally hot day and even in the shade we dripped with sweat. After a while we were looking longingly at the foam of the rapids and fantasizing about leaping off the craggy rocks. There was a popular swimming spot nearby which we headed to afterwards - the river there was almost as warm as a bath, and the sand burnt our feet when it spilled into our sandals.

On our second full day on the islands we woke up early and biked across Don Kon to the rusting French pier at the southern tip. There we organized a boat trip to see the Irrawaddy dolphins in the wild, along with a chatty Canadian girl travelling by herself. She was going to be starting a Phd on dolphins in September, so she was pretty excited about the whole excursion. Personally I enjoyed the scenery and the boat trip more than the glimpses of the dolphins, although the day was so still we could hear them making snuffling noises. We saw them several times in the hour, usually just glimpses of fins and slippery backs as they slid through the waves.