Si Phan Don

In southern Laos, close to the border to Cambodia, you can find a unique landscape during some time of the year. When the water level falls back in the dry season, thousands of small islands rise from the river, giving the area the name Si Phan Don, "Four Thousand Islands". The biggest island is Don Khone, a peaceful and quiet place, two smaller ones are Don Det and Don Kon.

As Don Det is, at least in the high season, getting overrun by tourists, I decided to spend Pi Mai Lao, the Buddhist New Year celebrations in Laos, on Don Khone. It was more than what I expected: not only quiet, but practically "dead". I felt sort of lonesome...
As I had set over to Don Khone around noon, I had plenty of time for the rest of the day. I rented a bicycle and cycled around the island, a 32 km-trip on a quite good road with almost no traffic. It was nice, too hot, of course, but interesting. I was passing all kinds of villages, smaller forests, dry land, and even some rice paddies, where people were harvesting right now (dry season!) thanks to irrigation systems. As everywhere in Laos, nearly everyone was greeting me... there really don't seem to be too many tourists here...

In the evening I had to take a decision. Other three days were waiting ahead of my, before the festivities would be over. So I thought it would be the best to go where at least a few people would be. The problem was very easy: I've been to very remote places in Latin America, but there I could talk to the locals, as I spoke their language... I just didn't want to shut up for the next three days.
Next morning I waited at the ferry landing, where the longboats would cross the river. Suddenly a German girl showed up, she was sort of lost here and wanted to go to Don Det. Just perfect... One of the locals brought us in his longboat directly to the landing point on Don Det. It was much easier and only slightly more expensive then the regular crossing, taking then a bus to the next ferry point some 20 kms south, then taking another boat... and it was definitely much more spectacular: the whole ride took one and a half hours, we were passing through hundreds of small and smallest islets, sometimes only rocks, sometimes overgrown by bushes... this trip alone made it already worth coming down here...

About Don Det there's not much to say: it's a backpackers hangout, in a few years it will probably be a light version of Bangkok's Khao San Road. There are plenty of small bungalows to rent, most with a veranda overlooking the Mekong, equipped with a hammock to laze the hottest hours away. The rest of the time one can swim in the Mekong, hang around with other folks or walk about the island... it's a very small place, it took me only one hour to walk all around.
South of Don Det is Don Kon, one can get there by ferry or just walking over an old railway bridge between the two islands, built by the French in colonial days... Don Kon is supposedly quieter and has some nice waterfalls... but as it was really hot these days, and as I have seen plenty of waterfalls in my life, I committed myself to staying on Don Det. Besides, also here it was quiet, not too many people, most spend the New Year festivities probably in bigger cities...
I had ended up in a guesthouse with only five straw-thatched bungalows, overlooking the Mekong towards sunset... but as every afternoon clouds turned up, we had to live without sunset...
Anyway, I did what I described earlier: lying in the hammock, reading, swimming in the Mekong, or just sitting on the veranda of our guest house's "restaurant"... and as the other folks who occupied the bungalows, were from Switzerland, Austria and Germany, there was definitely no language problems...