Laos - A week of R & R, Tadlo Falls and 4000 Islands - Day 210 (18,914 miles)

All this driving around gets tiring you know, OK we know we don't deserve any sympathy! For our last week in Laos we met up with John and Kelly for a 1 week, 2 centre 'holiday'.

Our first 2 days were spent relaxing near the Tadlo waterfalls, the accommodation on the falls was rather over our budget but we stayed in a nice modest little guesthouse just down the road.

Life on the river.

Our guesthouse was called Tim's Place and Tim was quite a special guy. Very quite and unassuming but dedicated to providing schooling for the local kids. In this very rural area the government do not provide any finance or resource for education so Tim uses the profits from his business to fund a school. He relies on European volunteer teachers and he also teaches, fundraises and acts as an interpreter for the volunteers.

Next we were off to the 4000 Islands, an very scenic part of the Mekong just above the Laos border with Cambodia. We had a fairly long, hot day riding to the ferry and had no idea what type of transportation to expect. Well, it's Asia so the 2 longboats and a wooden platform loosely roped together were no real surprise! John and John were negotiating a reduction in the rather inflated ferry fare when 2 young dudes making some kind of Jack Ass type TV programme for an American cable TV channel came along and agreed to pay full price (obviously on expenses) so jumped the queue and ruined our chances of a deal! Now we were not only paying more but travelling on a vessel that looked pretty unseaworthy with dusk fast approaching.

On your marks, get set...



Go!

Both John's managed to get up enough speed to get off the sand and up the ramp without going off the back of the boat and splosh into the Mekong (just!).

We then had a pleasant 10 minute ride to Don Dhet Island with one of the crew bailing water out of the boat as fast as he could.

This picture really doesn't tell the story, when we reached the other side we were faced with a 20m long 40 degree soft sand slope with a shop front a few metres from the top, and it's getting dark!

After much deliberation "can it/can't it be done", "how much will it hurt if it goes wrong", "shall we leave the bikes on the beach" and anyone that knows John Mc will realise the last one was never an option! Anyway with some help from others it happened and we could start to relax.

In the photo above John, John, Kelly and I are joined by 3 young Aussies who helped us get the bikes up the beach the night before. They had bought old small bikes in Vietnam that were still going strong a good few thousand Km later. They had a great "anything is possible" attitude and were filming their exploits along the way with a view to some kind of TV/DVD deal sometime in the future (if not it will probably all be on YouTube!)

What more could you ask for?

It's a pretty place.

This little chap loved the sheepskin.

This is as wide as the streets get on the island, no cars at all.

Luckily getting down the beach and back on the boat to leave was much easier. However......

When we got back to the mainland the beach had been turned into a building site so a few more challenges before we got on the road to Cambodia.

Our passports including $1 bills, this is the Laos customs officials "special payment" and the only way we were going to get stamped out of the country. Surprisingly they were "unable" to provide a receipt!

Before being granted entry into Cambodia we all had to have our temperature taken by this young man. He looked about 12 so we were glad he didn't have to carry out any more complicated medical tests!