Hitch Hiking To The 4,000 Islands

It was a lot more difficult to leave Champasak than it was to arrive; we were headed south and so had to cross the Mekong.

The journey started in a minivan which picked us up from our bungalow and drove us to the dilapidated boat pier at the northern tip of town. We eased our way down the muddy bank that served as a pier, and on to a narrow, wooden boat with a 12 year old boy at the helm. On the other side of the Mekong we climbed up another mud bank and onto the back of a flat bed truck. Perched on oil cans and bottle crates we bounced along a pot-holed dirt path to the main road. We were told to wait there for a bus which would take us the rest of the way to Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands), our destination.

We waited, and we waited, we ate some breakfast from a street vendor and we waited some more. We chatted to an angry American and we continued to wait. After some time we gave up on the fabled bus and waved down a passing car.

The friendly, English-speaking soldier was going our way and was happy to practice his English with us while speeding down route 13 at 120km/hr. He dropped us at a car ferry terminal on the southern tip of Laos, where we were to take an ancient wooden canoe 100m across the river to Don Khong island. Our new friend’s only request was that we pose for some photos with him before saying goodbye. 

When we alighted on Don Khong we found that we were still 5km away from Muang Khong town, the island’s biggest settlement. We set off walking down the dusty, single track road towards the town in the midday heat but luckily it wasn’t long before a passing pick-up truck stopped and allowed us to climb in the back, all the way into town. Despite travelling by minivan, boat, truck, car, ferry and one more truck, the whole journey took only three hours.

Si Phan Don is a landlocked archipelago carved out by a web of rivulets in the south of Laos, where the Mekong marks the most southerly boarder with Cambodia. It is here that a long length of ferocious rapids cut straight across the river, providing the one and only obstacle for boat travel along the Mekong from Tibet straight through to southern Vietnam.

We spent only one night on Don Khong. Despite being the biggest island it has very little to offer other than a crowded strip of guest houses and a handful of simple Buddhist temples. We spent the afternoon reading and relaxing before heading off early the next day.