Time to leave Vientiane, time for another ride on a tuk tuk, then the night bus, with a van in the morning to take us on to the ferry port. The tuk tuk came early evening to take us to the station and on to the night bus. We were the third and fourth on the tuk tuk, which at six started to look a bit full, and we seemed to be going in circles looking for people to fill it further. My jaw nearly fell open as I saw Yank and English walking out of a hostel as we rocked up. Luckily we only picked up a few Dutch and such before heading to the switch to the van. We switched to the bus, which was somewhat special. For the lonely traveller this could be a wonder or horror, depending on one’s luck and one’s point of view. Despite the bumpy start with the driver who didn’t speak much English (again I say this with no detriment to him, as we are foreigners I his land, he is in no way obliged to know our tongue, point is simply that it makes life difficult for us lazy none Laos folk) and that he wouldn’t entertain one request to be on the bottom deck, as she had arranged this prior with her travel agent. Which to be fair to him, I highly doubt had happened beyond the tour operating having just said yes to the travel-sick lady’s request, then thinking exactly no more of it the moment the money touched her handflesh. We were all sent upstairs to the top deck, and here’s where it gets weird. The bus is simply a series of double beds. Conny and I were set, one bed, one couple. The German girl, the American lady, the Dutch girl and a couple of others… not so much. The thing is, you are simply assigned a number and go to bed. If you are a solo traveller, your number is simply paired wit that of another solo traveller and you share the one bed, with nothing dividing you. Odd as fuck. It did work out alright for the American and German who were paired together, I can’t remember who the Dutch girl got but I don’t think it was too terrible. Once the bus got underway, the driver for some reason locked the toilet and hid the key. Which was fine by me but the girls were not overly happy. A bit later on the locals started to fill the bus up, and then someone came around with food. Only none got to us at the front. That said, we did see from the Dutch girl, who was last to get some food among those who did, that it was not exactly appetizing. All I can describe it as was some attempt at a sandwich. It was a kind of meat-hair with sauce splodged in the middle of a square of sandwich bread of the worst order, and folded into a triangle. It looked, to be honest, as if someone had taken a distinctly vigorous wipe of their arse with a piece of bread, after a not-pleasant poo, and had in their vigour, dislodged some bum hair which got caught in the poo smear. Stranger still the bus stopped and the driver ran out to the shop on the corner. He gleefully ran up to the front of the bus with what was clearly the replacement for the “food” that we had sadly missed out on. A strange alternative, but I think a million times better, they handed us all a “natural” soy milk carton. Natural my arse, it tasted like sweet porridge, but still, sweet porridge or stale-bread-arse-wipe? I know my feelings on the matter.

The ride itself was pleasant enough. I just know that it could have been awkward given that I heard stories of young ladies being given beds with strange men who at best have hogged the bed, and at worst taken liberties. Save from a few moments that the bus clattered the over-hanging trees or it sounded like a wheel fell off (the first few times we were felt assured that the bus had 6 wheels…but after a few more it started to become a little worrisome!)

We arrived at the bus station and had to wait before climbing in to our next van. Not exactly a luxury affair, a Mercedes from the early 90’s we then had to pick up a few more guest house folk…upon watching the large framed, inappropriately dressed and sour faced lady mount the bus, we knew we were going to have to put up with some noisy opinion being spouted for the next few hours. We were not wrong. It started with her moving around a bit to try and keep herself the “good seat” Then it was her getting in the way whilst trying to protect the good seat from invaders. Somewhat amusingly 20 minutes in, the good seat failed under her not inconsiderable weight. The back of the seat fell back, less fortunate for the girl behind’s knees, but it did make me chuckle!

Furthermore she loved to tell tales of her hollywood lifestyle, being some sort of studio exec. As her tales progressed, I was not surprised to find that she was less of a bigshot exec but more of a hanger on and wannabe. Her initially glamorous tales of going to the Oscars and such became later that she was one of those people paid to wait outside and fill seats when the stars went to the loo, lucky for her she was of a certain size, perhaps she could charge double, after all, if you have to pay double on a plane to sit on a seat, why not get double for doing the same?

We arrived at the port…well… ish…we were somewhat unceremoniously dumped at the end of a road, which clearly led to some water, and were told to head that way. We did so, we also figured out that we had to exchange our bus tickets for boat ones. None of this was made clear, nor was any of this obvious, but we motley few loaded with backpacks front and back puzzled our way through. If I’m honest, I think we were the local sport, all those folk pretending to go about their days and their jobs were really just spectators placing their bets on who’d get it, who’d erupt in anger or who would fall/lose their luggage to the Mekong. We were on the same boat as some of those from the bus, including the travel sick girl from the big bus. It turns out she has a name. Her name is Kari(strangely pronounced Kerry) and she is entirely lovely. She is an American, it also transpired that she thought exactly as we did upon seeing the large sour faced lady climb in to the bus and the more more she heard her speak the further she sunk into her seat through shame for her great nation. She became our best bud for our time on the island. We headed out in search of a bungalow on Sunrise side. Yes, so called because that is the side of the island that the sun rises on. The other place you can stay is Sunset side, I think you get the picture.

We headed up past “town centre” by town, on Don Det, we mean slightly populated, a few ramshackle restaurants and guesthouses, a couple of even more ramshackle bars and not much else. Just beyond the big smoke of the city limits lay some basic riverside bungalows. 30 000 kip a night, further up were some more but as the heavens opened, Conny got cranky and decided she could not be arsed to search. We settled for the most basic of basic, not even with wifi, but realistically that was ok by us. Kari carried on up the way a little and found one for 40 000 kip a night, but this one did have wifi. I have to say I enjoyed the 4000 Islands. It’s very rough and ready. Not really for the luxury seekers (that’s not to say there aren’t some posh places to stay, one chap wanted 200 000 kip a night in his somewhat mediocre looking hotel, but on the other islands there were some more high caliber looking places). If you were to go to one of these more plush affairs,, you would still be on these same islands and to be frank, their entire charm is their relaxed un-refinery. There are some gems though. The first is the café in “town”. As you traverse to Sunset side from the town centre, there is a cafe, called Bamboo café. Owned and operated by a lovely Korean chap, who made awesome freshly grounded drip coffee. The soundtrack was also excellent and I had many a delightful coffee in his place, the girls had a few coffees and a few beers. We never actually had his food, which was a shame, because he did some traditional Korean stuff…If I recall correctly it was due to my vegetarian-ness that we didn’t but it looked delightful. That said, the food on Don Det was generally excellent. And super cheap. We are talking a dollar or two for a main meal. Usually delicious ones at that. Breakfasts could be as little as 50p. I personally found it nicer to stick to the more out of the way places that were pleasant and cheap. The exception to the rule is the Indian restaurant on the main road, called Jasmine. It cheap and wonderful. In fact there was another wonderful Indian restaurant over on Sunset side too, but the name escapes me. Jasmine is surely the winner on the basis of it’s mint sauce alone. Minty cool and Chili hot all in one rich yoghurty gloop. Awesome.

The next big selling point to Don Det is the Irrawaddy Dolphins. These are a very rare species of dolphin, although not as rare as we were led to believe (there are only ten left on Earth!) no but still very rare and definitely troubled. The ones in Laos do number only around 10 and breeding it transpires is somewhat challenging for them as they fear a set of dams on the river have separated the boys from the girls of this particular group. Still, in order to go and see them we could either take a tour which would be very costly or we could rent a bike for the day and just head that way on to Don Kong, then take a local boat to go and find them. We opted for option 2 which we think was a win. This way we cycled up along Sunset, over the bridge (there is a small fee to pay as a kind of day ticket thing but nothing extravagant) and then on to the waterfalls. They say waterfalls, but really they are giant rapids. Beautiful giant rapids, carving through rock and tree as far as the eye can see. Lucky we came on our bikes too, because the entry to these falls is through a park, which your day ticket covers the cost of! We headed down from the falls on one of the two roads we could take. At the end was a spot called Dolphin Boat Jetty. Here, rather than the extortionate tour rates we found that three of us could get on a boat and mosey out with a local to the exact area the dolphins were chilling in. By far the best way to do it. If just for the boat ride itself it was worth it. These guys know this ever changing beast of a river like the back of their hands. The driver took us straight to the dolphins who we watched for an hour or two doing their dolphin thing. It truly was lovely(and bear in mind at this point we thought we were witnessing the last six) and I do hope that the measures the Laotian government is putting in place to safe guard them pays off. That said, don’t know what they are going to do about the lack of mating pairs. It is my understanding that they are quite territorial and wouldn’t necessarily just take to another dolphin being dropped amongst them.

As our final day drew we headed to the ferryport once more and made the journey across the Mekong. Then onward to Pakse. We stopped in Pakse just one night, a beautiful little bungalo by the river, super cheap, dinner provided by none other than Jasmine Indian Restaurant, Pakse branch, quite by accident as we stumbled upon it. Then further the next morning we climbed aboard the bus from hell to Danang, Vietnam, more about that in the next piece.