pakse was super uneventful for me. this is the point when the size of the group started getting me down. i guess i just missed the freedom to be able to go where i want when i wanted, or at least only had landon to answer to/vice versa. the group always made group decisions which was fine but it did get to me after a while. sometimes it seems like we never relaxed so when they all made a decision to see some khymer ruins out of town i decided against it. they're basically ruins from the angkor kingdom that managed to be within lao borders and i saw a weeks worth of angkor in cambodia and to be honest, didn't care. i just relaxed all day in my guesthouse while everyone went out. i'm happy because the transportation wasn't cheap and upon their return they told me it wasn't REALLY worth it. basically didn't make me feel bad for not going. like i said, pakse was uneventful and after drinking a beerlao tower at a nearby beer garden we left for the 4000 islands, which is hyped by people i've met on the way almost as much as vang vieng. we arrived in a short 2 or 3 hour minibus ride on the shores of the mekong river, which widens significantly and makes room for... well, 4000 islands. not sure if there are actually 4000 but there's quite a bit. the first one we did was don khong. also uneventful, but man did it have some awesome thunderstorms. i ran out of money and should have known better that, in a country so poor where they turn the power off even in bigger towns to save money, they wouldn't have an ATM on these tiny islands. luckily they had a western union and i had some american and thai baht to exchange. nothing else really happened on don khong. just watching movies and thunderstorms. it wasn't long before we headed over to don det. don det comes highly recommended by everyone. i was expecting the world of it, and maybe that was the anti-hype working against it then? it was a let down.
.....
maybe it wasn't when i think about it. it was natural and beautiful. i think me and lando were just not used to staying in crappy budget bungalos. which is pretty much all they offered. our first night, i woke up out of deep sleep because i felt something crawl on my arm. tiny little feet! i immediately sprung out of sleep and spun around onto my hands and knees looking frantically for the source of legs. lando woke up abruptly aswell and we were both scanning the area with my cell phone flashlight. "what is it...?" asks lando. i finally see it, a bloody cockroach. not down with sharing a bed with cockroaches. we both slept in the hammocks on our porch, which wasn't actually that bad. and a bonus is that it was cooler to sleep outside, because in the room it was roasting. no fans or AC on this island! the next morning i woke up with enough time to see lando's hammock break and see her smack on the ground. pooor lando! we all grabbed bikes and took a nice and very hot bike ride to another island that was connected by a bridge. we ventured out to this waterfall, which was alright i guess. not much else happened on don det. i washed in the mekong river one afternoon with johan. i was kind of frightened about being penetrated by a fluke worm, as it turns out i'm okay. or.... am i? anyways. our last day was a whole lot of deliberating on how we get to vietnam. we were at the south most point of laos and we wanted to start in hanoi, which is north vietnam. we could have started in ho chi minh city, but that would have resulted in a journey through cambodia. it came down to 2 decisions. go to vientianne and then bus to hanoi through north laos from there. or go to pakse and then take a bus from pakse to hue, which is mid- vietnam. and then from hue to hanoi. i don't know why we chose the latter. but we did.
....that's an entry for itself.
