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We have never before gone anywhere to do nothing. That would be odd. However, for some reason that´s exactly what we did. After days of bumpy roads on a motorbike it just seemed right. As such we went south to Don Det with only one plan - not to sit down on our painful behinds.
The trip there was fine, bus followed by a little long boat ferry to the Island, a pretty place, little bamboo huts lining both sides of the island and lots of farmland with water buffalo and chickens roaming around.
Sadly though, the villagers are increasingly leaving farming behind to use the land to house tourists and the island has become, in the last few years, one of the Laos´must sees. This has had the unfortunate accompaniment of Don Det also becoming well known for being somewhere tourists can easily get hold of marajuana, not a problem in itself rather the type of people attracted by this being one of the selling points. Traditionally, the plant has always been used in moderation in some Laos cooking but as soon as tourism took off in the country it became clear that the Westerners liked much more of it in their food. In reality, due to its traditional place, it is widely available all over the country though technically illegal. However, if a guide book mentions it as being associated with one place then that is where some will flock and as a consequence you can now get nearly any dish on any restaurant menu in Don Det with the addition of ´Happy´, which means a sprinkling of weed.
I am aware this all sounds like I´m being a bit negative, I´m not - the place is lovely and you would not even notice any of this going on at all unless you were aware of it but what we didn't like was that it gives a biased and poor image of western culture to these traditional farmers and fishermen and more importantly their kids who see relatively affluent young westerners smoking and eating weed as if it is a very normal thing to do - surely this gives the wrong message out.
Anyway, rant over, it is somewhere very pleasent to relax for a few days. We didn't really do that much there, we rented some lovely pink bikes with baskets on them (there honestly were not any other bikes we could get our hands on. Really) and cycled donwn to Don Khon, a bigger and less touristy island where there is a good chance of seeing the rare irawaddy dolphins in the river if you rent a boat out (we didn´t). We also had some great food but overall we just took a few days to decide on the rest of the trip.
This led to the following conclusion -
We have to go back to Pakse.
Again.
Pakse.
Bloody Pakse.
Then we have to leave Laos as our visa is about to run out, this means a trip to Thailand before a return trip to see Mum and Dad who are meeting us in Luang Prabang in one week. Unfotunately, the only place we actually want to visit in Thailand is in the very far south, a place called Railay, so we will be spending 2 days getting there and 3 days getting back...another mammoth journey approaches...
It does have some of the best rock climbing in the world though...
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