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 ;)