Si Phan Don

After our motorbike adventure we needed a vacation. Si Phan Don (Meaning 4000 Islands) was the perfect place for that. It's located in the southernmost part of Laos, next to the Cambodian border, where the Mekong river is 4 km wide. The river is dotted with thousands of smaller and bigger islands. We chose Don Khon and Don Det, two bigger islands in the south, connected with a bridge.

First we spent four nights on Don Khon, mostly chilling at our guesthouse while gazing over the Mekong and occasionally going for a swim to cool down from the heat.

Sunset over Mekong, the mountains in the horizon are in Cambodia 

Cows gone amok in a garden near our guesthouse

The biggest sight on Don Khon was the Tad Somphamit Falls.

Here we also got really close to some water buffalos. They didn't mind us at all.

We also took a boat trip with a local to go see the biggest waterfall in Southeast Asia: Khone Phapheng Falls. It's not very high but the water volume coming through here is gigantic: 9 500 000 litres per second (double that of Niagara Falls). The best part of this trip was that our local guide took us to a small island right next to the waterfalls. There was no one else here, but we could see all the other tourists standing on the other side of the river.

(Picture by Vanja)

We also had some delicious grilled Mekong fish

From Don Khon we moved to the other side of the bridge to the southern tip of Don Det for four more nights. Here we had a bungalow next to the river from where we could watch the sunrise from our balcony.

Here we also enjoyed our last cup of Lao coffee so far. Lao coffee is very strong an thick, and served with sweet condensed milk.

Every once in a while we went cycling around the islands

On our last day in Si Phan Don we went to the southern tip of Don Khon where you can also see Cambodia in the horizon.

Our main reason for coming here, though, was the possibility to see the very rare and nearly extinct Irrawaddy Dolphins. In Si Phan Don there's only a couple of them left. We took a boat early in the morning and since we were the first ones here the dolphins were actually quite active. We didn't get a good photo of them but if you look closely you can see the fin and back of a dolphin in the picture. Sometimes they came quite close to the boat but mostly they kept their distance.