Si Phan Don: Buck up, you're still on vacation.

They can't all be wonderful days, can they? From Pakse, I signed up for a tour to kayak in Si Phan Don which means Four Thousand Islands. It's a part of the Mekong river littered with little islands and broken up with waterfalls and one of the few habitats of the beluga-looking irrawaddy dolphins. The tour did not start off well, starting with a rude mini-van driver followed by a less than confident guide telling me it was his first time to do this. At some point, the scenery took care of my mood. We saw some lovely waterfalls.


My inexperienced guide had us join up with a group with a guide who actually knew where he was going. We paddled out to Cambodia, to a lookout of the irrawaddy dolphins' stomping ground. We hung out and looked and looked and nothing. Disappointed, we climbed back into our kayaks and rowed away. But in our rowing, we saw them. Small little rounded dolphin backs rolling up and out of the water. Dozens of them. We took turns pointing them out, then set off, paddling into the sunset. What started on low notes definitely ended in a high note.




Back on land, I found amazingly cheap accomodations. Amazingly cheap. So cheap, I didn't have much desire to spend much time in the room. So I didn't. I went of for dinner and some well-deserved beer after a rather emotional rollercoaster of a day. I met more lovely people to pass the night drinking and conversing with and one little kitten who routed into my nap. It's impossible to have a bad time with a kitten in your lap and a Beer Lao in your hand. Traveling is always good. Even when it's not.

Halong Bay I

I woke up in the morning and got ushered on to a minivan that drove us to where a good majority of the tourists in North Vietnam were also waiting to get onto their junk boat. There were to be 10 of us on our boat. A pair of Canadian friends, 2 lone Englishmen, A Spanish/Japanese couple, 2 Danish sisters, a lone Swede, and myself. Prices were compared. A substantial difference was noted. For anyone going to Vietnam, do shop around before signing up for a tour. Our Swede paid more than double what we paid for the same tour.

Our first stop were to some glorious cave called "Suprise Cave". Guides were happy to point out images once could see in the rocks with a bit of imagination, including a very phallic stalagmite - the "suprise", perhaps? The caverns were huge and were it not for the hoards of people, gaudy colored lights, and the feeling of being herded like sheep, it would have had a very Lord of the Rings. From there we jumped on some kayaks where me and my kayak partner jammed ourselves into little nooks and crannies in the karst islands.

From there we retired to the boat were my fellow passengers jumped into the water from the boat. The wind was a bit too crisp for my tastes. Bowed out and took pictures instead. The prices on the boat were exorbitant and me and my kayak partner snuck on a bottle of vodka. He made better work of it than I did which he suffered greatly for the next day.