Part III - Getting out of the 4000 islands!

Pakse, Laos - So the 4000 islands is described as idyllic, quiet, timeless etc etc. I would agree with quiet. There is no electricity on the islands except for a few hours a night when the generators kick in.

The 4000 islands is the widest part of the Mekong River and depending on the water level it is said there is up to 4000 islands in the river. Only a few of these are actually inhabited

This wouldn't be so bad if the temperatures weren't so oppressive. Lonely Planet describes March-May as hellishly hot in the 4000 islands and they are right.

We had planned on spending several nights on the islands but it was so hot and uncomfortable that we only stayed one night. It was 100F (35C) during the day with probably 80-90% humidity. Trying to sleep under a mosquito net in those conditions without a fan (or AC) was impossible.

We did enjoy our one afternoon though. We rented bikes and biked around the island stopping at some impressive waterfalls where the Mekong narrows into a gorge and drops several hundred feet and also stopping to see an abandoned French locomotive.

The French had built a short railway track the only one ever built in Laos but abandoned it almost immediately.

Lunch at a restaurant along the Mekong, dinner at our guest house and a sleepless night and it was back to the mainland for our 2.5 hour bus ride to Pakse.

We arrived in Pakse around 2pm and quickly found a nice hotel, with AC, Wifi and a few english tv channels. We could stay here forever!

Pakse is a large (by Laotian standards) town of about 36000. We will probably be here a few days as there are a few interesting day trips and Pakse seems like a nice town.

We had a good meal of Lao Style Noodles, pork in chili paste and a couple of cold Beer Lao's on our hotel's rooftop restaurant overlooking the Mekong.

The 4000 islands were nice but way too hot for us to stay long. We actually ran into a couple that had been on our boat from Vietnam to Cambodia and they too had left the 4000 Islands after only 1 night because it was too hot.

Part II - Onward to Laos

Don Khone, Laos - In the last post I talked about our trip from Phnom Penh to the border town of Stung Treng.

We were up at 6am, as we had to get breakfast and packed up and ready for the bus to pick us up at 730am.

There was a bit of confusion as to what bus we were supposed to get on, first a big bus then a small bus and finally a minibus.

Finally by 8am we were off to the border about 50 miles away. Our minibus consisted of a couple of Lao guys, a Vietnamese woman, a Japanese girl and ourselves.

The roads in Cambodia have been surprisingly good, many seem like they were recently paved in the past couple of years and the road to the border was no exception. It will be interesting to see if they are maintained going forward.

We reached the "border" in an hour. I say "border" because all it consisted of was a little hut on the Cambodian side with a gate across the road, followed by a walk of 500m down the road to the Lao hut and accompanying gate.

We got our passports stamped to get out of Cambodia (with the requested $1 to the border guard to "stamp" our passport). No dollar no stamp was how it was politely explained to us.

Same thing with the Lao side, a $1 contribution to the border guard got your passport stamped into Laos and given back to you. A few people grumbled a bit but what are you going to do, these guys are out in the middle of nowhere getting paid nothing I have no problem giving them a dollar if it gets me through the border quickly and painlessly.

The funny thing was that in the 90 minutes we were at the border we saw one person (a buddhist monk) on the back of a moto come through the border. This is the only border crossing between Cambodia & Laos and it doesn't seem to be a busy one.

Anyhow now into Laos we waited about 45 minutes for our Lao minibus to arrive. Out scrambled a half dozen Aussie backpackers going the other direction, we got into their minibus and were off to the 4000 Islands. A few stops (some for no apparent reason??) and an hour later we were at the boat landing to go to our island in the Mekong Don Khone.

We went down to the boatmen and handed one our ticket we had purchased in Cambodia he motioned us towards one of the boats in we hopped with the Japanese girl from our minibus and 20 minutes later we were being dropped on the beach.

We stumbled up the hill with our packs to the main road (dirt road about 10 feet wide) and went in search of a guesthouse, we looked at one that was too expensive and found another that was right on the Mekong River with a nice veranda for only $12/night.

After a day and a half of traveling we were in Laos and settled into our guest house.