Laos - Don Det

Don Det is an island in the middle of the Mekong River.  Only about 8km long and 2km wide, but part of the are known as 4000 Islands.  Depending on whether the river is high or low, depends on how big these islands are, or even if they're there

We arrived after dark and found accomodation.  The next day we were lay in our hammocks and heard squelching and a bad smell arose.  We looked out of the back window and there were water buffalo cooling off in the muddy puddles

They stank!

We hired bikes and went over an old railway bridge built by the French, to Don Khon. 

If you forget the islands, the Mekong is about 14km wide at this point!

On Don Khon, you can see the rare Irrawaddy Dolphins (obviously freshwater).  There's not many left now unfortunately and may die out completely despite some attempts by conservation bodies and locals.  We didn't bother seeing them as saw a program about them before we left and was way to hot!

It's quite shallow in some parts and the locals go out fishing and bathing.  You sometimes have to be careful where you look.  The locals on Don Det were very rude and obnoxious.  At first we thought we must've of done something to offend them, but they were all like that, regardless of what we did.  We worried that perhaps all Laos people would be rude, but this was the only place.  Not somewhere I'd recommend purely for that reason.

This is the very south of Don Khon and it's so close to the Laos/Cambodian border, you can see Cambodia in the distance in the top right of the picture

These were the boats of the fisherman who would take you to see the dolphins and what they liked to refer to as a beach, behind

Not quite the sort of beaches we've seen recently, but there was sand

We went to Don Kong, the biggest island, at 18km long.  To get there we hired a boat, like the one here

It was just Paul, me and the driver

It was quite a pleasant trip upriver

This was Don Khong.  Not an awful lot to do there and was extremely quiet.