Finally, the country I’ve been so so so excited about visiting! When we moved to HK, this was the one place I wanted to see and I was really looking forward to it, having heard so much great things about it from others.

The journey from Siem Reap to Si Phan Don was ‘interesting.’ We had to take a series of mini buses and each one seemed to get smaller, however there was the same amount of people in each one- resulted in lots of squashiness from a considerable part of the 10 hours it took. The Cambodia-Laos border is a gigantic joke. There’s all the usual tourist taxes and accepted bribes everyone has to go through, and security was non existent.

Once we arrived in Nakasang, a teeny village 25km from the border, we were herded onto a raft to wait for a boat. At this point, we noticed a group of men downing beer to the side of the raft. Oh wait……they’re the boat drivers? Excellent. Sometime later, we landed on Don Khone, one of the bigger islands and found our super cute guesthouse.

I think Sam and I are divided about Don Khone- I really liked it because it had a rustic village feel to it. We hired bikes and cycled out to rapids and waterfalls, temples and through rice fields. Sounds great, yes? Sam did not seem to think so. A) Sam is not the biggest fan of cycling and we have already done ALOT during this trip. B) It was either roasting hot or pouring down with rain. C) There was mud. Everywhere.

I LOVED IT.

We ate overlooking the Mekong in cheap restaurants, read in hammocks outside our room whilst looking at views like this, and slept a lot. What’s not to love?

After a couple of days, we traveled 4 hours to Pakse for a connecting sleeper bus to Vientiane, the capital. This was not the most fun I’ve ever had. All in it took 22 hours and although I’m glad we’ve done it, I’m not looking forward to the next one in a few days.