Don Det, Si Phan Don: The Most Relaxed Place on Earth
The title of this entry probably makes it seem like my first days in Laos were sunshine and roses (or at least hibiscus flowers) and for the most part they were. But first I had to deal with getting away from the border.
The only songthaew (truck with rows of seats in the back) driver at the border said he’d charge us five dollars per person for the 25km trip to Ban Nakasang, the first sizeable village north and the departure point for ferries to many of the Si Phan Don (4000 islands.) This was gouging in the extreme, but he must have figured he could do it, since it was late afternoon and there was nowhere else to go.
Not willing to let ourselves be cheated, my three Belgian companions and I started walking up the road, sure that we’d find a small village, or be passed by someone else who would be asking a more reasonable price.
We started walking and had gone about 3km when we were passed by a young man on a motorcycle who offered to take two of us for $1.50. Noel and Vanarra climbed aboard. Since my pack was considerably heavier than theirs, I traded bags with Noel and Dirk and I carried on walking up the road.
After another 2km, we came to start of the main road and turned north towards Ban Nakasang. We’d walked about another 2km when a songthaew pulled up alongside and offered to take us there for $2 each. We insisted on no more than $1, and after pulled away and driven 500m or so I guess he was convinced we were serious and agreed to our price.
This whole trip had left me very nervous about my pack. I was walking with the third Belgian, Dirk, and I had Noel’s pack, but I couldn’t help but worry a bit. Thankfully when we arrived in Ban Nakasang (Ban is Lao for village) we had little trouble finding Vanarra and Noel and my bag. After re-forming our party, we headed down to the ferry docks to see about a trip across to Don Det, one of the many islands in the southern Lao Mekong. As with the songthaew driver, the boatmen seemed to figure that since it was 19:00 or so they could charge whatever they liked. We headed up to the village, found a guesthouse and checked in for the night.
After a nice dinner of noodle soup, we headed off to bed. Since the guesthouse was very full, Dirk and I had to share a bed on the floor in the large hallway, and spent the night covered by a charming pink umbrella-style mosquito net.
The next morning everyone was a bit slow getting going, but we did eventually find our way back down to the ferry docks, where we paid the standard $0.80 each to cross over to Don Det on a slim wooden boat.
As we pulled up to the beach at the north end of the island, I could see bamboo and wooden bungalows lining the banks of the river, lifted up above the water on stilts. As soon as we stepped onto land it was clear that this was a super-relaxed paradise island. The roads were just wide enough for two motorcycles to pass one another. Every building was constructed of natural materials (I did see a bit of concrete later on though.) The bungalows were all tended to by smiling Lao families. Palm trees and beautiful flowers were everywhere.
At first we tried the more sparsely covered west (sunset as it’s called by the locals) side of the island. There was only a single bungalow vacant there, so we headed back to the east (sunrise side.) After a short walk down the road we found a place with two bungalows. In no time we’d moved in and then quickly come to the conclusion that it would be better for me to move to the group of huts next door instead of sharing a room with Dirk. After all, for US$1.50 a night, it’s not as though it would break the bank.
The place next door was almost the exact same, with a few important exceptions. First, it had a pretty open air restaurant attached. Second, it had an English part owner named Martin (he’d lived in Laos for two years.) And finally, it had a monkey (Martin’s pet named Squeaky.)
I dropped my pack on the floor of the simply furnished bungalow and went out onto the balcony overlooking the river for a sit and a read in the hammock outside my door. After a short time resting there, I walked around to the attached restaurant where I chatted with Martin about his in-progress plans for expanding the restaurant. I tried, but eventually realized the futility of trying to offer advice on the sorts of structures that usually get built in Laos. Not only are normal models difficult to apply to them, but the use of normal models suggests that they shouldn’t even be standing.
After this I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in one of the restaurant hammocks, reading and occaisionally popping across the “road” to order some food from the family that did the cooking. After a while another group of people appeared and joined me in my lazing. They included 2 English women, 2 English men, a Scot, an Irishwoman, a kiwi lady, a Dutch couple, another Canadian and an entertaining (verging on comical) Australian fellow. As the days passed I’d end up spending most of my time with these folks. We all soent a very pleasant evening eating, drinking and being merry under the battery powered lights of the restaurant (their generator was broken and the island has no electricity.)
The next day began with still more lazing about in my restaurant hammock. Some of the crew from the previous day arrived and started chatting. Dan, an Englishman observed “this is the most chilled out place in the world. Even if you set out to create a more chilled out place you couldn’t do it. Why would you even want to?” or words to that effect. I couldn’t help but agree.
One of the probable reasons for the relaxed state of the island is the fact that so much of the food is “happy.” Shakes, cake, lao lao (rice whisky) all come in normal and happy varieties. With that in mind, my compatriots and I all spent a happy early afternoon, enjoying the delicious and cheap food available at the restaurant (the fried spring rolls were probably the best I’d ever had.)
As the afternoon wore on, I started to wonder how long I could go without moving more than 100 feet from my restaurant hammock. I set a goal for myself of three days, laid back and read some more.
As fun as it would have been, I ended up breaking my vow that afternoon and going for a walk down to the south end of the island with Kate, the kiwi woman mentioned earlier. Everywhere we went on the island was just as quiet and beautiful as our portion of it. The smiles of the tourists walking along the pathway/road were only eclipsed by those of the Laos in their homes alongside the road.
Kate and I chatted as we walked and 3km later we arrived at the railway bridge that marks the island’s south end (during colonial times the French built a railway across Don Det and Don Khon to its south in order to bypass a series of rapids on the Mekong.) We sat on the bridge and watched the last rays of the sun shine across Don Det and onto the river. We started back in the light, but it was still almost entirely dark by the time we arrived back at our bungalows.
On returning, we dicovered that most of the usual crowd had arrived. I had yet another wonderful meal and spent most of the evening sitting up with a few of the others who were in a very relaxed state and continued ordering plate after plate of food (I think there were about 11 orders of fried spring rolls consumed that evening.) Occaisionally one person would get up to walk across the road and order food, and before leaving would be serenaded by a chorus of other requests for the Lao ladies at work in the kitchen. I was amazed by the fact that they stayed up just as late as we did, working all the while, and always seemed to be up and about before I rose from bed. Admittedly, their work had strong elements of fun. All of the family, especially Tan and her two sisters sat around talking with us (I loved having conversations with them. We’d take turns speaking sentences in a language entirely foreign to the other party, but still managed to convey something or other. Usually just happiness and good humour 🙂
Tony, the entertaining Australian spent much of his time debating which of his two bungalows he should return to. Funny as it sounds, Don Det was exactly the sort of place that makes one get two rooms in order to shorten the walk home (it doesn’t hurt of course that they cost US$2.50 in total.)
The next day after a blissful breakfast and yet another lay in the green restaurant hammock, Kiwi Kate and I made another foray out into the island. We headed to the sunset side, talking more and also just soaking up the beautiful quiet atmosphere. We headed back to our bungalows (christened “The Monkey Bar” by English Dan, who just loved playing with Squeaky) for lunch.
By this point, we were all getting to know the family that ran the restaurant with Martin quite well. The Lao women were constantly teasing us (especially Dan and I, probably because we had the most entertaining reactions) and giggling. They’d poke our ribs as we laid in hammocks, throw little things at us now and then, and smile and laugh wonderfully when we walked back across the road to return our empty dishes.
After lunch the whole crowd sat around waiting for the arrival of the boats that would take us back south towards the Cambodian border to visit with some Irrawaddy dolphins and to see a waterfall on the Mekong.
A boat trip, a songthaew ride (we had to change vehicles partway through the trip when ours broke down) and another boat ride put us on an island in the middle of the Mekong. We stood around staring out into the water. I’d already seen these dolphins in Cambodia, so wasn’t TOO worried about spotting more, but after 15 minutes of no marine mammals, others were growing disappointed.
Finally one dolphin popped up above the water, followed by dozens more over the next half hour. We weren’t quite as close to them as I’d been in Cambodia (actually, come to think of it, the island we were standing on was technically in Cambodia too), but we probably saw even more of them this time. On the way back to our songthaew we passed the border post and the guard who made me so grumpy and miserable a few days earlier.
Another songthaew ride took us further up the river, back firmly in Laos, at one of the more spectacular waterfalls I’ve ever seen. The height of the falls wasn’t particularly impressive (indeed, it was really more a series of huge rapids than a waterfall) but the sheer volume of water roaring past was amazing. As we left, I enjoyed some palm sugar candy (it tasted not entirely dissimilar to maple sugar) and tamarind that Kate had bought from a nearby vendor.
The sun disappeared over the horizon in beautiful fashion as we headed back to Don Det from Nakasang by boat. The number of passengers aboard was rather larger than normal, so we were drawing a similarly larger amount of water. Which is what led to the boat running aground on a sandbar about 3/4 of the way across. It’s fortunate that the bottom was soft and that the shallows were large enough for several people to get out and push the boat back into open water.
After arriving back, we spent the usual night happily drinking beer Lao, talking and eating. On that particular evening Martin had arranged for a duck to be killed for he and some friends and several of us enjoyed the (large quantity of) duck they couldn’t eat. I even walked across the road to the family home and was invited to sit down and have a few spoonfulls of duck’s blood that had been cooked and then seasoned with basil, peanuts and garlic. As with so many things, it was delicious, so long as you didn’t think about what it was.
Everyone seemed a bit more active that night and there was more consumption of Beer Lao and less lazing about, so before long there was something of a party going on at Monkey Bar. Towards the end of the evening Kate and I shared a bottle of lao lao (Lao rice whisky) that had been provided to us by one of the family from across the road. It was very hard on the throat and stomach, and terribly potent as well, as evidenced by Irish Ursala tumbling backwards over a cracked handrail and being spilled onto the ground below after having drank a fair bit of it across the road. This event seemed to draw the party to a close and everyone headed back to their respective bungalows for the night.
The next day proved to be my most active on Don Det. It began with the usual lay about in the hammock and delicious breakfast, but before too long Kate and I dragged ourselves up and rented bicycles for a pedal around the island. The islands of Si Phan Don seemed almost made for cycling, save for the bridges over small streams. Their main structural elements (though I hesistate to call them that) were parts of the old French railway, while the running surfaces were either woven bamboo or loose planks of wood. It took a great deal of care to remain
Our trip took us inland on Don Det, past dried out rice paddies and almost no buildings. The path looped back around to the railway bridge that we’d walked down to previously, and which we then crossed over to the neighbouring island of Don Khon. While Don Khon was very pleasant it didn’t have QUITE as relaxed an atmosphere as Don Det.
On Don Khon we rode along the (slightly larger) roads to another group of waterfalls/series of rapids on the Mekong. We stopped and parked our bikes (for some reason bicycle parking was free on one side of the road and 1000 kip on the other side) and walked down to the falls. While they didn’t have the same volume as the ones we’d seen earlier, these made up for it with their length. We continued walking perhaps 500m downriver to the end of the major rapids. At this point we spied a swimming spot that the Dutch couple (Usfar and Elaine) had told us about earlier.
Hot, sticky and slightly dirty from the bike ride, we quickly stripped down to bathing attire and slipped into the water alongside the pair of Lao boats near the shore. The water temperature was perfect: refreshing but not cold. Better still, the swimming hole was only just visible from the trail so we had the place all to ourselves.
The water there was protected from the strong current out near the river’s centre, since it was located in a small inlet off the main stream. Nonetheless, it did still have a bit of movement to it and swimming against the current was hard work.
We spent an hour (I think. The atmosphere in Si Phan Don wasn’t really conducive to paying attention to the time) swimming and sitting on the rock outcrop in the middle of the pool before finally climbing back up the bank and sitting on the rocks there for another hour or so.
We finally dragged ourselves back up to the trail, back past the falls and to our bikes. At that point we headed further down the road to the beach at Don Khon’s south end.
The beach was nice, but not quite as good a swimming spot as we’d the one we’d been at earlier. It was covered in beautiful soft sand containing specks of mica that glimmered in the late afternoon sun. The sand sloped steeply down to a beautiful part of the river, while on higher ground there was a beach volleyball court in constant use by young Laos and two small restaurants.
We sat at one of these and enjoyed a couple of soft drinks before starting our trip back in order to ensure that we arrived at the bungalows before sunset.
Our trip back was memorable for a couple of reasons. First was the fact that we passed some of the bizarre menagerie of public transport vehicles that exist in Laos. Second was the Lao on a bicycle headed in the opposite direction. He was swerving a bit, but made it past Kate with no trouble. When approaching me however, he began drifting to the right, almost in slow motion. I was on the far right of the path and he was coming from my left, so there was nowhere to go. We collided and I smashed my big toe painfully against the ground, ripping a chunk of the nail. I sat on the ground cursing and holding my injured appendage for a minute or so before I finally looked up to see how the Lao man was doing. His foot and lower leg sported droplets of blood from an unknown source but he was smiling and apologizing profusely.
It was only after we headed off in our respective directions that Kate further salved my (already mostly clear) conscience by telling me that the man had reeked of alcohol.
We returned our bikes and walked back to the bungalows with no further ado, and sat down, eagerly anticipating the evening’s meal: a roast pig. I’d seen this pig earlier in the day, making it twice in two days that I’d seen my evening meal in a lively state before seeing it in less lively one on the table. The usual Monkey Bar crowd, as well as a few others were there. By the time dinner finally appeared everyone (especially me, not having eaten since breakfast) was ravenous. Which was a good thing, given the huge quantities of pork crackling, bowls of meat, home-made apple sauce, garlic potatoes and fruit pancakes that appeared.
After our huge dinner everyone sat around engaging in the usual conversation and laughter. I even got to impose my musical tastes on everyone (something which I dearly love, but feel guilty doing) since there were speakers but no source of music except for my MP3 player. Everyone had a joyous evening, even Dan who spent a nervous while with the monkey sitting on his lap. Normally the two of them got along wonderfully, but the previous night it had fallen asleep in his arms then woken in an unfamiliar place and become a maniacal squeaing bundle of nails and teeth.
As on other nights, it felt terribly late by the time everyone retired but was in fact little after 22:00.
The next day was our last in Don Det (I say last partly because by some coincidence almost every one of the Monkey Bar crowd was leaving and partly because Kate and I had decided to head north together for a couple of days.) It was also to be an exciting one. All of the major islands in Si Phan Don were converging on Ban Nakasang (the town on the mainland near Don Det as you may recall) for the annual boat races. Despite his terrible cough and cold, Martin (as well as all the Lao residents of the islands) had been awaiting these anxiously for some days. The previous night the noise of the pre-race party had kept many of us up until the wee hours, and most of the family running our guesthouse had disappeared for the evening, night and early morning.
Once again the same group of people converged on the Monkey Bar in the morning and then headed back to the mainland by boat to watch. The atmosphere was amazing, carnival-like. Huge rafts of boats lined the shore and swarms of people milled about on the riverfront. We wandered about on the riverbank amongst the throngs, stopping a few times to peruse the food for sale, happily accpet offers of lao lao from the race officials and later on to grab delicious coconut ice-cream from a bicycle riding vendor.
After our wandering was fone, we set down at one spot on the banks and listened to Martin’s drunk and confused explanations of what was going on in the boat races for a while, but none of it really seemed to make sense. At one moment the Don Det team were the ones wearing red bandannas. Then the team in orange bandannas won a race and apparently THEY were from Don Det. Later on, Don Det were wearing no bandannas at all. Despite all this, it was really cool to sit around on the riverbank watching the races amongst the carnival atmosphere and just soak it all in.
Partly due to our lack of understanding about what exactly was going on everyone got a bit tired of the races before they actually finished and made plans to head back to Don Det for another afternoon of relaxation. Martin originally piled us all into one boat (perhaps 23 people) claiming that he would drive the heavily laden vessel back. Common sense did prevail and we split off into two boats, but not before his monkey bit a Lao little girl hard, but not quite hard enough to break the skin.
Elaine (the Dutch lady as you may recall) did her best to minister to the girl, pulling the first aid kit out of her pack, and by the time we returned her crying had ceased, and later in the afternoon I saw her walking around with a bandaged arm and a smile on her face.
The afternoon was a typical one, until sunset came. I’d been too unbelieveably lazy to make the 500m walk across to the sunset side of the island so far, and had been watching some of the most incredible sunsets I’d ever seen from an inferior vantage point for several days by then. Finally I got off my butt and walked across there that day. Sadly the sunset wasn’t up to the stunning standard of previous days, but it was pleasant enough, and I also had a Mojito Lao there, so the trip wasn’t a complete write off 🙂
While the afternoon hadn’t been spectacular, the evening (since it would be the last in Don Det for most of us) was a more memorable one. After we’d eaten supper, Tan and her sisters did a stripped down version of the Lao Baslli ceremony (to wish friends good luck in travelling) for us. Basically it consists of tying strings around the recipient’s wrist while repeating ritual chants. In addition to the wrist strings, the girls also made us flower necklaces. This was fun for everyone. For us because we got to experience yet more of the warmth of our hosts and for the girls because they got to continue flirting with their favourite falang (foreign) guys (myself included.)
We all had an early start planned the next day, and since we were leaving together there wasn’t a huge need for a big farewell party or any such thing, so after a few more beer lao or smokes (depending on individual preference) we all headed off to bed.
The next morning’s events proceeded in unplanned, though entirely expected fashion. First I had breakfast and paid my utterly ridiculous (in a good way) bill for the past five days (it came to US$32.80, including my bungalow and food) After this, a boat was supposed to come by to pick us all up at 09:00. Due to the prevalence of “Lao time” it didn’t appear until 10:30. Fortunately none of us were in a great hurry to get anywhere, so it didn’t matter terribly. When, eventually the boats (there were two actually) did appear we all climbed aboard and headed back over the water to Ban Nakasang, waving farewell to the Martin, our Lao hosts and Don Det as we went.
After climbing up the beach we walked a short distance to the waiting bus. We’d been meant to have a private vehicle for the ten of us, but another group of ten had been suspiciously booked on the same one. It didn’t really matter, however, as there were about forty seats for twenty people.
After waiting for the local bus to depart (since the driver didn’t want our private vehicle to be constantly hailed by those looking for rides) we were off. After a flurry of exchanging e-mail and other addresses, everyone settled in for the ride and mostly read quietly, listened to music or chatted in pairs. In this fashion, the two hour trip to the city of Pakse, capital of Laos’ Champasak province slid by quietly. We arrived on the outskirts of town and all piled into a songthaew for the trip to the city centre (where, for some reason, buses weren’t allowed.) Upon arriving I said my final goodbyes to everyone, save for Kiwi Kate, who I’d decided to travel with for the next few days.
Thanks very much to all my new friends from Don Det, including Martin, Tan&Pon Sai&their family, Kate, Tyf and Mel, Jason, Dan, um… Tony, Ursula, Usfar and Elaine. I’m sure I’ve missed someone and I feel terribly guilty about it, but that will have to do for the moment…
Tags: Laos
Llew