On the weekend I travelled further South in Laos to a place called 4000 Islands. It's a bunch of islands (though probably the '4000' part is a little bit more figurative) on the Mekong - right near the Cambodian border. Because it's the wet season heaps of the islands are submerged. You're supposed to be able to see Irawaddy dolphins sometimes (very rare river dolphins) but the closest we came was ducks. But we did see lots of ducks and some of them were really cute. We also saw lots of water buffalo, monkeys, dogs and cats. And chickens. And some pigs. And about seven billion ants. And lots of rice paddies.
We stayed on an island called 'Don Det' which has the reputation of being the 'party island' of the two where most people stay. It's obviously low season because there wasn't a whole lot of partying going on, but it was quite nice, aside from the very muddy roads that have left my feet a permanent orange colour. We didn't really get up to that much except walking a lot, and sitting in a restaurant that we came to love very quickly. Logan, a kiwi who has been in Laos for five months, used his Lao to charm the waitress who took a shine to us and gave us free stuff.
This week was also the exit of the second half of the Kiwi team. It was nice having them around to hang out with, even though they would still occasionally make fun of my accent (I'm really not used to being a minority among New Zealanders!) and I particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm they had for food. We went to a patisserie type place for breakfast one morning and I couldn't get over how excited they were about a croissant.
ants loving sweet chilli sauce
monkey.. chained to a tree :-(
the cat who liked our verandah
We stayed on an island called 'Don Det' which has the reputation of being the 'party island' of the two where most people stay. It's obviously low season because there wasn't a whole lot of partying going on, but it was quite nice, aside from the very muddy roads that have left my feet a permanent orange colour. We didn't really get up to that much except walking a lot, and sitting in a restaurant that we came to love very quickly. Logan, a kiwi who has been in Laos for five months, used his Lao to charm the waitress who took a shine to us and gave us free stuff.
gross feet
'mou mou' the dog who became my best friend at the restaurant
This week was also the exit of the second half of the Kiwi team. It was nice having them around to hang out with, even though they would still occasionally make fun of my accent (I'm really not used to being a minority among New Zealanders!) and I particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm they had for food. We went to a patisserie type place for breakfast one morning and I couldn't get over how excited they were about a croissant.
I also had my last classes this week. Finishing was as it usually is happy and sad. Or as Thakmani would say 'ohhh so good so bad.' I had some really cool students who I had a lot of fun with, but am also looking forward to travelling more.
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