Another day on Don Det brought yet another water activity and this time it was kayaking - who needs beaches?! The four of us set off early that morning in two-man kayaks, paddled to a nearby beach and stopped off to walk through a village to get to a small waterfall. What we thought would be a fairly relaxing day was rife with hazards (slight exaggeration); Vic and I were determined to be the quickest kayaking team and because of our furious rowing we almost ended up with a gnarly tree in our faces - also, we paddled very close to some huge water buffalo that looked like they were going to charge at us! The highlight of the day was kayaking with the Irrawaddy dolphins - a strange looking creature with a humped head, closely related to the killer whale - we spotted about five of them. After stopping for lunch in another tiny village we boarded the back of a truck where we crammed fourteen people in with a pile of kayaks and visited South East Asia's largest waterfall.
That night we decided to go for a 'night out'. I say 'night out' like this because there really is no nightlife to speak of on Don Det island however we found a few bars and spent the night at a small party around a bonfire on the river bank 'beach' after the bars closed at 11pm.
After five days on Don Det we decided to start moving towards the north of Laos. A ten hour bus journey took us to a town called Thukhek and the driver said we weren't allowed to sit at the front of the bus where there was more leg room because those seats were reserved for men! I'm not going to even mention the sexism but what I will say is that Lao men are half the size of western women! I get the impression that not all the buses in Laos are official and some schedules are casually assigned to whoever happens to own a bus; this bus was missing a door which was great during the day (hello natural air-con) but ridiculously freezing when it got dark because Laos gets very cold during the night. The journey was long and we were starving; no Laos bus journey is complete without the 'meat-on-sticks' ladies who board at every opportunity so we decided to try some to save us from our deathly starvation (again, slight exaggeration). We had a tiny inkling about what the brown meat morsels might be, especially after I saw the outstretched carcasses on sticks during my last bus journey, but our suspicions were confirmed when we tasted it. It was rat meat.
Kayaking.
Just after the 'near-death' tree incident.
We walked through tiny Lao villages - past chickens, pigs, dogs, cows and waving children.
Humongous waterfall!
We also went for a swim in the river to cool off after being in the sun all day.
Our room was for three people but there were four of us so we pushed the beds together - this meant we were paying less than £2.50 each a night.
We bought local hats - I've been wanting one for ages and I don't care if I look like an idiot tourist so there!
River-beach bonfire.
After five days on Don Det we decided to start moving towards the north of Laos. A ten hour bus journey took us to a town called Thukhek and the driver said we weren't allowed to sit at the front of the bus where there was more leg room because those seats were reserved for men! I'm not going to even mention the sexism but what I will say is that Lao men are half the size of western women! I get the impression that not all the buses in Laos are official and some schedules are casually assigned to whoever happens to own a bus; this bus was missing a door which was great during the day (hello natural air-con) but ridiculously freezing when it got dark because Laos gets very cold during the night. The journey was long and we were starving; no Laos bus journey is complete without the 'meat-on-sticks' ladies who board at every opportunity so we decided to try some to save us from our deathly starvation (again, slight exaggeration). We had a tiny inkling about what the brown meat morsels might be, especially after I saw the outstretched carcasses on sticks during my last bus journey, but our suspicions were confirmed when we tasted it. It was rat meat.
Rat meat and cold sticky rice anyone? No?!
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