New Year - New Country

Mekong waterfalls

Mekong Car Ferry

Irawaddy Dolphin

After a fantastic four weeks in the UK over Christmas when we were able to celebrate with all the family and catch up with friends we returned to Vientiane in Laos. Mike's garage had greased all the wheel bearings and we had the air conditioning checked and a small leak repaired. Hopefully we will be able to keep cool from here on. With nothing else to detain us we headed south towards the Cambodian border, stopping for a couple of days at 4000 islands, an area of many small islands in the Mekong River where it cascades down over a rock shelf. The river at this point is several kms wide so there are many waterfalls between the islands. Just south of the lower island there is a pod of the endangered Irawaddy Dolphins so we took a boat to where they live and were privileged to see several surfacing around 50m from the boat. The island of Don Khong is only 8kms long and is serviced by a passenger ferry. Despite being a backpacker destination and a good stopover on the route from Cambodia to Vientiane it is relatively peaceful (apart from the overnight concert) so we hired bikes to travel round visiting another waterfall, and a couple of very sandy beaches. During the French colonial period a short railway was constructed along the island to get two gun boats past the waterfalls, so they could patrol the upper Mekong.
Finally on Sunday we crossed into Cambodia through an almost deserted border post, with one of the fastest border crossings in this part of the world so far. Cambodia feels very different, fewer vehicles on the roads and much flatter, but we will discover more over the next couple of weeks.

Mekong sunset



Water Buffalo