4000 Islands, Laos

People warned me to load up on cash before heading to 4000 Islands,  but - as per usual - I didn't listen. Le fail. 

The ATM in the mainland town was down for a couple of days, so I really had to keep myself on a budget during my time there. I had to be pretty creative by the end ;) 

I stayed on Don Det Island, and would have loved to do a day biking around the larger island of Don Khong, but I unfortunately ran out of cash. I still managed to do a couple of awesome activities!

Tubing on the Mekong River

Deciding that we hadn't already done enough tubing, we rented tubes on our first day to float around the island. 

Turns out the island is a lot larger than we thought, so we floated down from the buffalo beach where water buffalo casually lounge around with the swimmers there, and made it to about halfway down the island before we got on shore and traipsed across the island - also a lot longer than expected - and floated back in time to catch the sunset. 

Kayaking on the Mekong River

We decided to splurge on the kayak excursion, which is the thing everyone says not to miss when you go to Don Det. 

It was amazing! 

We actually ended up kayaking for a substantial amount of time in between stops to see the largest waterfall in south east Asia (supposedly). 

As well as swimming stops. 

And lunch stops. 

And even saw the rare Irrawaddy dolphins! At first, I thought our guide was full of it when he pointed off into the distance and said 'look, dolphins!' But they ended up swimming super close to us once the boat traffic calmed down a bit. So cool! 

We actually went all the way to the Cambodian border - it was only a short swim across the Mekong. We decided it probs wasn't a good idea to attempt it ;)

I can def understand how people get stuck here for a little while, when money permits. 

Island life is always good, especially when cute little bungalows by the water, delicious Indian restaurants, hammocks and happy shakes are on the menu ;)

Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos

If you've ever heard of Vang Vieng before, it was probably in relation to the tubing that happens there. 

Now, I'ma be real with you, the tubing scene has changed in the past couple of years. There used to be dozens of bars along the waters edge, with crazy slides and rope swings. 

However, there was on average 1 death a month, cumulating to 22 deaths (mostly Aussie's for some reason...) in 2011 when the Lao government made a huge crackdown on the area. 

Now, there are only 5 bars, without any slides or ropes, but it's still a ton of fun. 

[Momster and Popster, you may want to skip this one...]

We started off at the first bar at about noon and were given a shot and a bracelet. People make it their personal challenge to collect as many bracelets as possible, so this usually means copious amounts of shots and beers. We played a game of beer pong and then started the exodus to the second bar. 

We floated for about...2mins and arrived at the second bar, where we collected more bracelets and played a game of beach volleyball. 

We carried on to the third bar, about a 5min float this time, when a Lao guy launches out a rope with a water bottle attached at the end to pull you into shore. 

We played more beer pong, volleyball and hula hooped up a storm before heading to the final bar. 

Now, I'm not going to lie. We were acting a bit snooty: 'look at these kids with their reckless drinking, so stupid, so immature...ya, sure, grab me another beer and a shot'. Usually people take a tuktuk back to town from this bar, but we had the bright idea to keep floating down the river since we had floated barely at all at that point. 

After a heck of a long time, we realized it was starting to get dark. Like, real dark. 

We continued along the river til we saw what looked like a hotel and clambered out. Pretty much the start of a horror story, but they were really lovely: gave us water and called us a tuktuk. 

We ended up getting back to town at around 8pm, 2 hours past the time when we had to get the tubes back (and our deposit. Le fail). 

So, lesson learned: don't keep floating down the river, even if it seems like a good idea. Oh, and don't make fun of others and then proceed to be the stupidest of the bunch. Point finale.