Eight Days on Sunrise Boulevarde

KHAO SAN: So the greatest gap in my blog so far would be the eight day odyssey that was Don Det, one of the islands in Si Phan Don (4000 Islands) in Southern Laos. The place is so named because the Mekong fans out dramatically at this point creating, well I didn't count them, but something like 4000 islands. Some of them are huge and inhabited while others, like some of the islands in Thailand, are little more than rocks with a tree growing on them. Don Det, is the backpacking mecca.

It basically consists of two streets, one Sunrise Boulevarde, and the other the Sunset Strip, lined with bungalows that face the river. In the hinterland there are rice paddies and abandoned stupas which provide a reminder of the island's simple past as a farming community. The two streets actually ring their way around the entire island, a six or seven k round trip if you're up for it.

My daily routine was simple. Wake up early. It's Lao, nobody sleeps in. Eat some breakfast and navel gaze for a little while. Wander up Sunrise Boulevarde and choose a bicycle. After two days I had this sussed. Every shop on the island has identical bikes but I found the place with the newest ones which meant brakes, no thrown chains and no flat tyres. With my bum in the saddle I would cycle back to the bungalow, collect my shit and then ride down the end of the island and across the old railway bridge to Don Khong (another island). Taking a detour through a wat, I headed down to the big waterfall for a look at the churning water and then on to "the beach".

The beach was a little sandy cove carved out, I guess, from the churning seasonal rains that dramatically transform the landscape. The place provided ample opportunities for swimming down some gentle rapids, rock hopping and jumping. But best of all was swimming out to the rocks that protected the cove, clambering over them to the other side and then swimming alone in a vast, open section of the Mekong with only the very occasional fisherman for company. There is something incredibly eerie about being fifty metres from shore, surrounded by cliffs on all sides, and being completely and utterly alone. I could have actually swum to Cambodia, but I got halfway there and then started to think about this picture of a giant eel held aloft by about fifteen marines and got spooked and swam back.

The other great thing about the beach was watching the fisherman, who also act as impromptu tour guides, touting for customers to see the 'rare' Irrawaddy dolphin. "Dowfin, dowfin, you see downfin?" was the standard pitch. But the guys spoke virtually no English and spent most of the day drinking and playing cards. When there were no girls sunbaking on the beach they would sit up under the shade but when there were girls around they would sit down by the beach leering at them, speculating on their ages and nationalities. Priceless.

Another outstanding element of Don Det was the food. Three nights we ate buffallo steaks with mashed potato, another night a French chef I befriended cooked for all of us while on still another night we had an entire duck and chicken barbequed for us.

It was also the first time I've really had a group of guy friends to knock around with since arriving in Laos. Other than the Japanese crew that is, but this was different. There was Shaun, an engineer from Sydney, Mike, a cynical Texan English teacher living in Taiwan, Matthieu, a French chef in search of a restaurant, Andrew, an American viticulturalist living in Melbourne and Jeremy, perhaps the biggest wanker I've met all trip. It was a good crew to hit up the nightly beach parties, complete with a resident water buffalo, in style.

I mean that's not all I did in Don Det. One day I hired a kayak and explored the treacherous currents of the Mekong, including the numerous, massive rocks that are submerged everywhere and dramatically alter the flow of the river. There was a whole lot of nothing on Don Det. Just sitting around watching the sunrise or set.

Oh and I also visited the preperations for a Laos housewarming. This involved a group of women sitting around, working well past midnight, butchering a water buffalo. When I arrived there was only a thick cord of spine, like a bloody lump of 4X2, left but about eight women were eagerly clevering away at various parts of the animals anatomy. In another part of the compound we watched some guys shave a dead pig before hacking off it's head and dragging it's entrails out. Delicious.

So that was Don Det. But it was a whole lot more...