Life is great

Today is my 6 month anniversary of travelling! I am still loving it and am not yet ready to be coming back to reality. I am having such a great time and I plan to be travelling or as long as I possibly can.

I have spent a few days on Don Det, which is one of the islands in the 4000 islands. This is not one of the best islands I have been on during my travels. However it's a very simple islands. It's not packed with tourist markets, no late night bars and no high class resorts. Of course the island is tourist orientated as that is what the locals live on, but it's very relaxed. It doesn't matter if you decided to spend a few days doing nothing besides lie in a hammock all day reading, snoozing or just thinking.

Traveling is a funny thing. You think you say goodbye to the people you have befriended and then just randomly meet them weeks or months later in a completely different place. Yesterday we bumped into a girl we used to train Muay Thai with in Thailand. She went on to Cambodia when we went to Laos. Now all of a sudden she is here at the 4000 islands at the same time as us. This has happened to me a few times already and I love the fact that's its a very small world that we all live in.

Me and Gemma will be moving on soon though. On Monday we are of to Cambodia. Our plan is to celebrate Christmas at the beach. We will find ourselves a small palm tree or bush and decorate it with whatever we have got. Also we have decided to do a secret Santa with some of our friends that we are meeting there.

Kayaking down the Mekong

Today was a great day. Me and a bunch of people decided to go kayaking. How often do you get a chance to kayak around the Mekong river!

We booked a kayaking trip so that we would have a guide that would take us to some great spots. We started of by going down some smaller rapids and through some of the channels created by the islands. In the end we ended up at a massive part of the river which connects with Cambodia. There we got a chance to see the rare Irrawaddy dolphins. Most of us were not expecting to see them, but there they were. What I was happy about was that the guides did not try to push us closer to them or disturb them in anyway. Instead our entire group kept a respectful distance and just watched the dolphins for a while. Nearby I could see 2 larger Laos motorboats ( longboats with a motor and propeller attached to them, nothing like the western motorboats) filled with tourists all trying to get closer to the dolphins. Of course every time the boats tried to get closer to them, the noise they made scared of the dolphins. Which in turn was lucky for us. We all stopped paddling and just floated for a while and eventually the dolphins came a lot closer to us.

After having watched the dolphins for some time, it was time for lunch. We crossed over the river and had lunch in Cambodia. Actually, it was an island which was on the Cambodian side of the river. Never the less, it was still Cambodia. So I spent the day in 2 countries today. After lunch we paddled up the river back into Laos and onto the shore where we got on a tuktuk style bus and made it to the widest waterfall in Southeast Asia. It was amazing! If you ever come to the 4000 islands this is one of the must see places.

From then on it was starting to get late, so we went a little further down the river got on to the kayaks again and went back to our own island. It was a fantastic day with fantastic views! :)

Pakse and a day trip to wat phou temple complex

We have been spending the past few days with 3 other guys. We all met at the Tha Khek loop and then travelled together to Pakse, where we met up with our friends Miriam and Britt. Gemma, me and the girls met in Pai in Thailand and have been meeting up at most places in Laos as they are travelling a few days ahead of us. By now we were quite a fun group. So we all decided to go to wat phou together. This is a large temple complex about 30km from Pakse. Of course we all decide to rent scooters and head out there. Obviously no scooter ride and be perfect. Halfway to wat phou Britt got a flat tire. Luckily that happens about 20 meters from a small local roadside restaurant. We roll the bike over and let the man of the family that owned the establishment fix the tire. While we were waiting we decided it was a good moment to break for lunch. So then we just order some noodle soup from the wife and had a lovely time until the bike was ready to go again.

From then on everything went smoothly. We spent the day by the temple and got to see an amazing view and even got to cross the Mekong river with the local ferry. All in all a very successful day.

Tomorrow me and Gemma will head of to the 4000 islands. Everyone else left today already, but we just felt we needed one day of calm and relaxation with no travelling.

A few pictures from the Tha Khek adventure

Here we have the collection from mine and Gemma's 3 day scooter tour around the Laos countryside. Hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed taking them.