4,000 Islands, 4,000 Stories

Si Phan Don translates as 4,000 Islands and is an archipelago within the Mekong in Laos that's made up by an absolute s load of islands, hence the name. I counted them though, there's only 3,987 - it's clearly just a marketing gimmick.

We reached the first of the main islands - Don Khong - with 11 days left on our visa and the intention to nail doing S.F.A. and maximising the equation of beers drunk + time in hammocks.

After three nights in Don Khong we squeezed into a long-tail with the rest of the foreigners and puttered down the Mekong to spend a night on the bottom of Don Det before crossing the Old French Bridge to spend the rest of our time on Don Khon. Yes, Don Khon not Don Khong. Both pretty much sound the same but make buying bus tickets to either a whole heap of fun.

A variable that we hadn't factored into the above equation was the stories that we'd walk away with. You genuinely couldn't walk down the street without seeing something strange, interesting or funny thanks to the locals that still call the islands home and a lot of the rustic beauty that's been retained. Little kids still run out into the street to give you high five and yell sabaidee and there's still a nice feeling of community on the islands.

Here are some of those stories.

Honk-a-Doodle-Do

My favourite is I was going for a walk to get beers one night and about seven or eight kids had just been for a swim in the Mekong. The youngest of the group was stripping down nude and as he did one of the older boys leant over, gave his willy a bit of a honk, they both had a bit of a giggle and the little boy wandered back home.

They See Me Riden'

From eight days old to eighteen years old the average Laos kid is so much more capable and mature than a kid of the same age in the Western world it's borderline embarrassing. It should therefore not have come as a shock when we watched an eight year old take four of his five year old buddies around for a ride on his Dad's tuk-tuk but it still did. It always will. The kid has swag.

Motorboating Monks

When you think of a monk you think many things - speed demon is not one of them. The young kids around this area build these tiny, one man, streamlined boats and soon as school's off they tear up and down the Mekong fighting tooth and nail to edge the other. Watching this was fun enough but seeing a monk in one... Well that's certainly a sight that you'd never expect to see. And unlike their normally peaceful, harmonious demeanour they're gunning it as hard as the next guy.

It's Curtains for Kermit

In the search for our perfect bungalow we were shown through a heap and got sick of the 'thank you, we have think, will come back' line and the owner's look of yeah, sure you will. This one time we didn't feel so guilty.

By this point we'd picked up this guy (whose neck sweat and shoulder are a cat's best friend) and we waited around whilst the guesthouse owner grabbed the keys to open up her bungalows.

We walked into the first one which was nice enough and came already furnished with a fist sized frog. I pointed out to Tom he had a friend in this one and we all had a bit of a laugh but whilst we were looking at it the old lady noticed it too and made a half hearted attempt to shoo it out the door. It was then, about mid strike, we learned this poor frog's fate and gasped in unison.

Down came the hard end of her straw broom, in went a few straw barbs and she then picked it up and placed it on the balustrade before pounding it into oblivion and turfing it into the garden - it wasn't even dinner!

We had a friend of our own at one of our bungalows. A foot long gecko who guarded the entrance to the room. It's like seeing an artist take something small and make it huge, it just looks cool. This giant gecko also had a lot of swag.

Waterfalls and Stuff

On Don Khon there are two waterfalls. We made it to Khon Pa Soi early one morning which in all honesty was pretty average. The only fun bits were our own personal guide, who was beyond excited to have her first visitors for the morning, and the varying degrees of difficulty and construction of the bridges that connected the place together.

The other however - Tad Somphamit - is a sight to behold. By volume of water it's the biggest waterfall in SE Asia and in wet season would be one hell of a dangerous beast. You can look out over the top of the falls and see the Mekong just meandering along, as it does, then it reaches the end of the plateau and gushes down in bone crushing torrents. It's a stark reminder of the Mekong's deceptive power - I can take life as quickly as I give it, DO NOT f*ck with me.

Despite that word of warning, there's a pool around a bend in the river, just down from the falls, where you can cool down in the heat of the day in bath temperature water. So refreshing.

The greatest pleasure down near the pool was watching three little boys running amok. Two were d*cking around playing some ramdom game with a polystyrene disk that they'd found whilst the more mature of the three went off hunting. Fifteen minutes later the hunter emerged from over the top of the rocks with five giant frogs slung over his back, he rounded up his pals and off they went. Job done. 

Can You Drive a Boat?

Years ago a heap of Irrawaddy Dolphins made their way up the Mekong with some finding themselves a home around Si Phan Don. Thanks to continued dynamiting of the Mekong by the lovely Khmer Rouge a lot of the dolphins were killed. However a pod still exists in a pool off the bottom of Don Khon.

We rose early again (what is this "alarm" business?) and made our way down to the southern tip of the island where boatmen would be waiting to take us out to see the dolphins, or so the internet had informed us. We got there and a young guy looked at us and said "dolphin?", to which we nodded and he looked at another bloke and you could see through each of their mannerisms that the conversation went something like this:

Young kid: Can you drive a boat?

Older guy: Sure

Young guy: You know where the dolphins are?

Older guy: Yeah, out there somewhere. Do these guys need life jackets?

Young kid: Nah, the cheap bastards didn't pay for a tour. They should just be happy that you drove a boat once when you were fourteen

Maybe a slight exaggeration because our boatman was great. Through a lack of sleep, food and caffeine we scanned the waters around us hoping to spot just one in the distance. We saw one, then a second, a third and possibly even a forth. Given they believe only 10 still exist in the area, we were pretty chuffed with the experience. And we got a super close-up of one of them. Jealous much?

Your Galapagos photos ain't got nothing on that, MM

You might want to check out photos of them here instead. They're far from your average dolphin.

Brown Mangoes 

And finally, Nix's favourite story. We were sat there having lunch one day and Nix said, "look!" At the exact moment that we all turned around a boy who'd hitched his shorts up into a silky g-string to expose his little brown butt instinctively spun around to see us all looking and laughing. He very quickly pulled his shorts back down and sheepishly ran inside. It was a good moment. 

Laos is beautifully simple and simply beautiful. We very forlornly left our hammock and this great country behind and prepared ourselves for battle at the Laos/Cambodian border. 

War was waged, blood was shed, we saved US$3 each on the other foreign suckers who used the services of a visa runner at the border. Travel isn't a contest but if it was we'd be winning because we know how to fill out a visa application form all by our self-righteous selves. 

It may not look like we covered too much ground but when 400km is a 10 hour journey, I think we did OK...

From Bus to Bus to Bean to Cup - Luang Prabang to Pakse

We awoke at 6AM to squeeze in a noodle soup and a Lao coffee before hopping in a tuk-tuk to catch a bus bound for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. This is a face I've become oh so too familiar with in Asia - the half asleep, zombified Nicola drowsy yet content with her bowl of porky broth.

The bus took off half an hour late - no biggie, clocks and time aren't really a thing in Laos. They're just a rough guide and we'd become accustomed to that by this point. 

We left Luang Prabang and crawled up mountains for hours finally stopping at 1PM for lunch after the requisite couple of roadblocks and pee stops. However this was a fancy farang bus, no roadside bush weeing here. Instead you pay 2000 Kip for bathrooms with no doors and for the second time in two months I opened the door to a woman squatting, stretching desperately to try and push the door shut. Really? Why me?

We shared lunch with this dude. He was cool, if a bit sad.

On we pushed in our VIP King of Bus and it was mid afternoon that we realised this bus wasn't getting to Vientiane by 6PM, or anywhere near that time. Car after after truck after truck after crazy truck-bus thing were lined up not going anywhere. 

We got off the bus and the entire village was by the roadside watching proceedings and it became apparent that this wasn't your normal roadworks stop. Something a bit more serious was at play. The rumours began - 'someone's rolled their car and we're stuck', 'there's been mudslide', etc, etc...

After about an hour watching ladies bathe in their sarongs and pigs snorting around all over the place our driver threw his hands up, tooted the horn and signalled for everyone to get back on the bus. We drove slowly past the procession of vehicles and discovered why we hadn't gone anywhere - a two k stretch of thick, wet, muddy, clay that no one was willing to attempt driving through. Bar our exceedingly optimistic bus driver.

We began to crawl through the mud, you could have literally walked faster. At one point we almost slowed to a stop, the wheels began to spin in the mud and a couple of locals gave a look like what the f*ck does this guy think he's up to. Bravery is rewarded though and he somehow got us through it. Now only a further five hours to go on old bumpy roads that are falling to pieces lay ahead.

All of this would have been a lot more bearable if not for the five young, very obviously private schooled, English girls who talked sh*t the entire journey. They genuinely didn't have an interesting, enlightening conversation during the 15 hour trip. And one of them would decide to sing a few lines from a Spice Girls song every now and again. That pretty much epitomised the intelligence of the pack of moths that populated the back of the bus.

We finally arrived at the bus station, still a half hour tuk-tuk from central Vientiane along roads and through a part of Laos that made you feel like you were arriving in the most backward of backwaters - not the capital of a country.

Once in Vientiane, we circled a couple of blocks looking for a guesthouse where by 10pm all were either full or had rooms available at thrice our budget. We fluked a cheap room with a fan, no bedbugs and the faint smell of sewage being emitted from the bathroom. It was a win at the time.

The great thing about arriving late somewhere in Laos is the 11PM curfew so by the time we were ready to hunt out dinner everything was closed and the best we could do was a cup of noodle soup, a five day old steamed bun, a chocolate bar and a beer from a mini mart. We were smitten with Vientiane at this point.

Aside from an epic storm the following day complete with exploding power poles, fire extinguishers caked in five years of dust and grime and the very real concern that we were about to witness someone getting electrocuted whilst they fiddled around with the power pole in the rain in thongs, Vientiane didn't really make us regret our planned one night stop.

Here are some awe inspiring photos from Vientiane.

Thankfully, we were heading south and Vientiane was just a stepping stone to Pakse. We took an overnight sleeper bus. This wasn't just any bus though.

All the seats are taken out and replaced with flat beds complete with pillows and Winnie the Pooh blankets, making for the best overnight transport experience you could ever imagine. Oh, and the fact that we took enough Valium to knock out a water buffalo.

We landed in Pakse at about 730AM and were checked into a guest house by 756AM. Can you imagine doing that in many places other than here? 

We'd intended to do a trek from Pakse but when the guy at the travel agency was like, "oh, you might be lucky and hear some birds in the distance", we decided to save the US$340 and hopped on a scooter and headed to Tad Fane waterfall instead, where Koffie runs tours of coffee plantations and takes you through a roasting workshop. Yes, you read right, Koffie's Coffee.

The tour was interesting seeing the differences between the Robusta and Arabica trees and tasting coffee berries but the workshop was the headliner.

Koffie moved to a town not far from Pakse and through trial and error taught himself to roast beans in a wok (an implement you're obviously never far from here).

Within an hour Koffie had us in control of the wok and whilst we aren't able to get the kind of consistency in roasted beans that you'd get from a bag at home, we'd created something that was very drinkable.

Koffie immediately ground up the freshly roasted beans and we enjoyed a still quite green tasting but very enjoyable cup of the good stuff. By this point the sun was starting to drop and Koffie pushed us out the door, two freshly roasted bags of beans in tow, and we cruised back to Pakse with Nicola clinging onto the back of our moped and the sun sinking down below the mountains making for a beautiful end to one hell of a great excursion.

Koffie's concept is simple. You don't get there and fiddle around with tens of thousands of dollars of machinery and create a cup of coffee that you have no hope of replicating at home. You wok roast the beans, grind them up in a simple burr grinder and brew them with the classic Italian moka pot. You walk away with the confidence that with a bit of your own trial and error you'll be able to reproduce a decent coffee at home, from green beans to cup. 

On top of all of that, Koffie is a cracking guy learn from. All details on his workshop can be found here.

Now it's time for hammocks, beers and nothingness at Laos' famous 4000 Thousand Islands.

Why the French Aren't the Best Thing about Luang Prabang

All those great things you've heard about Luang Prabang? They're true.

But no, they're not true thanks to the French. They left behind some nice buildings, coffee and baguettes as good as you'll find anywhere but let's not kid ourselves, the French were here because they wanted the place for themselves. At the time, the bastards couldn't look at an ant farm and not want to colonise it. Maybe they did do that and there's a colony of ants out there running around in berets, sipping cafe noir and annoying the shit out of any other ant that comes within earshot of them. I lost that analogy near the end there but what I'm trying to say is that Luang Prabang has way more going for it than just some nice French colonial architecture and a European feel about it (in the tourist zone that is).

What made Luang Prabang great for us then?

1 - meeting these crazy coots (brokelemons) and convincing them into just one more beer (after sharing snake/lizard/centipede/other unidentified animal infused whisky) that caused them to miss their overnighter to Vientiane

2 - squeezing into a sampan with locals to cross the Mekong and wander through the villages checking out a couple of lovely old temples and constantly getting stuck in the mud, much to the pleasure of the locals

3 - some delicious street food including a perfect Khao Piak Khao complete with blood chunks

4 - enjoying a beer in the fancy part of town, down on the Nam Khan with "free peanut"

5 - reflecting on the top of Phou Si Mountain and chatting with a monk on the way up who drilled us with questions about the world and our own country

6 - finally finding a decent Laos coffee

7 - heading out to the spectacular Kuang Si Waterfall

Observations Made on the Songthaew to Nong Khiaw

Given we were packed in like sardines it was hard to see much but we did share the ride with one very well behaved chicken and almost ran head on into a truck. Fun times were had by all, chicken included

Barrie-ometer of "Feel" - "I'm Monsoon Moon, I rain down the pain!!"

Things That Make Us Go Ou

The bumpiest eight hours of our lives placed us in the most strikingly picturesque place I think we've both ever seen. This was what presented us as we crossed the bridge.

We spent the next few nights hanging out in our riverside bungalow, chilling in its hammock and counting down to sunset when we'd grab a couple of beers and watch the sun go down and the little boys fish on the banks of the Ou River. It was an unbelievably memorable few nights.

What made the bungalow particularly memorable was this little guy.

Each night before we go to bed it's my responsibility to check under the sheets and make sure we're not sharing our bed with any unwanted guests. The first night there I pulled the back to uncover our little skink pal and watched Nix climb the wall quicker than I've seen any gecko. Despite his best effort to convince me that he should stay he eventually scurried away, probably sleeping under Nix's side of the bed anyway.

When we could find the desire to drag ourselves away from Nong Khiaw we signed up to the region's, now famous, 100 Waterfalls trek that was only discovered in 2008.

The boat ride there through the mist shrouded karsts was spectacular.

As was the trek through the village.

And then the walk up what is essentially one big long waterfall was a shitload of fun.

Other highlights were the two pooches that climbed the waterfalls with us,

one of whom had puppies of her own at the village and puppies half way been the village and the waterfalls that she was wet nursing

and nailing the trek in my newly purchased Lao hiking boots (read best thongs in existence).

The funny thing about Nong Khiaw is that a lot of people just regard it as a stopover point on the way further up the Ou River to Muang Ngoy.

Until only recently the only way to get to Muang Ngoy was via boat but you can now get there with a two and a half hour ride on dodgy mud tracks with a moped. We chose the boat. You can see why.

Muang Ngoy was good but not great. It has 24hr power now, WiFi, hot showers and the ratio of foreigners to farang is way out of whack. You can see where the charms once lay but they've been washed away. In saying that, we did get a semi taste of the old as the only time the power came on was 30 minutes prior to us getting back on the boat to leave.

With the benefit of hindsight we would've stayed another night in Nong Khiaw but like everyone else before us we thought maybe the grass is greener on the other side. As is so often the case, it wasn't....

Observations Made on the Van to Nong Khiaw

• Being held up by roadworks is a reality of travel in Laos. We had our first taste on our way to Nong Khiaw spending more than an hour stood by the side of the road, going nowhere 
• Three chickens chasing a moth is up there with the most comical things I've ever witnessed
• An old guy smoking a bamboo bong on the doorstep of his bamboo house
• The ringtone compilation. We worked out that the van driver had his phone plugged into the car playing music so at one point his playlist reached the phone's included ringtones and we listened to those for half an hour. It was a sometimes dramatic, sometimes peaceful, sometimes suspense filled, sometimes uplifting half hour