Day 111 I will walk 500 miles

23/06/13
Ok so it wasn't 500 miles but I did feel like the Proclaimers today. I had to totally repack my bag to fit my shoes in and that alone with getting ready took over an hour. The process of breakfast, including the journeying, took another hour so by the time I got back I was ready to leave. I walked 15 minutes to the bus station where I only had to wait for a few minutes for the bus to Danang to turn up. The bus itself was painfully slow, after 10 minutes we had gone less that 1km and the bus station was still in sight. From where I was dropped off it was just a short walk to the train station. The girl behind the counter delivered the bad news that there were no more spaces on any trains heading to Hanoi today. I booked a ticket for the next day at 15.00 and began the hotel hunt. It wasn't easy, after 3km in the midday heat my search was prooving fruitless. A motorbike rider offered to take me 6km up the road to a $5 a night hotel, I soon realised that he was just agreeing to everything I said so I walked on, and not long after I found a place to stay, $12.50, not cheap by SE Asia standards but it was a room none the less. I changed and then went on a search for the beach. The road I stayed on was off my map so I walked 3.5km before changing direction. 2km down a perpendicular road I reach a long sandy stretch of coastline, the only other people on it I could see were 3 young, local lads. After I short swim I retraced my steps. Back in my room I had a shower (very much needed by this point) and then read until I got hungry. I just got some street food and starting wandering the roads. I walked the streets for 2 hours, just soaking up the city's energy and just enjoying the place, no time restraints, no agenda, no worries.

Fishing boats by the water

Full moon across the river

Day 110 Wet

22/06/13
After a shower I walked in the rain to the town centre where I bought a baguette for breakfast and sheltered under a tarpaulin to eat it. My next stop was a cafe, not only did I want a coffee I also wanted to dry out. The place I chose was staffed by deaf/mute people so you had to write your order down, it was a very quite place to chill, I stayed reading there for ages. As it was still raining I went back to my room for a bit in the hopes that the weather would clear up as I had intended to go to the beach. After a late lunch it was still raining so I braved my way to the shoe shop but I was told that my shoes weren't ready to collect until 17.00. With time to kill I found another cafe to waste time in. At 17.00 I returned and found my shoes fitted perfectly and they also looked splendid (in my opinion anyway). My evening was much the same as yesterday, I ate at a different restaurant and then headed down to the river where the stalls were the same. I also walked to the edge of town where I had read there was a large theatre with the official opening ceremony. Again it was only for VIPs and unfortunately I didn't quite make the cut. Surprisingly.

A parade of all the ASEAN countries in national dress.

£40 well spent

Day 109 Woops

21/06/13
I went for breakfast and returned to the hotel for 08.00 and I only had to wait a short time before a minivan pulled up outside. It took us 500m round the corner where we had to wait an hour for a coach to turn up. When it did it turned out to be a sleeper bus even though we were only going a couple of hours down the road. An hour into the journey our driver overtook a car (one of hundreds) and appeared not to see the oncoming lorry until it was too late. We swapped wing mirrors and a little paint but no major damage. This was because our driver had swerved away from the lorry, into the car, the car was slightly worse off. Both the bus and the car had massive scratches down the whole length of their bodies and the car had also lost a mirror and all the panels down one side were dented. Hopefully this will be my first and last bus incident and thankfully nobody was injured, although it did add an hour onto the journey. We stopped for lunch shortly afterwards and I spent an hour chatting to a retired prison officer from Essex and like many conversations you have whilst travelling you never find out the other persons name. When we arrived there was the normal scrum for the motorbike drivers to get your custom, one guy latched himself onto me and after halving his first price and offering to take me to a $5 a night hostel I got on. After driving round for well over half an hour the cheapest place he had taken me was $15 a night, I was less than impressed that he had lied to me, it was evident that if there were cheaper places then he didn't know about them and if he did he certainly wasn't going to take me to them. I think all the rooms were slightly more expensive anyway as there is a 6 day cultural festival in Hoi An so I ended up going for one of the $15 a night places and I will admit it was a good choice because the room was worth much more than $15, even in Vietnam. There is wifi, AC, double bed, en suite with bath and shower and a plasma TV (which I almost certainly won't use) but in all honestly I would much rather a dorm room or a single room with fan for a couple of dollars and to spend the money elsewhere. Such as on 2 pairs of tailor made shoes, not 100% sure how they're going to fit in my bag... In the evening it was the start of the festivities and it was truly incredible. There was thousands of people spread right along the river front, on both sides. The main attraction was on the far bank where there were dozens of stalls, each one representing a different ethnic group in Vietnam. There were also stalls for each ASEAN country (Asian version of the EU, comprising of Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam). There was also a huge stage where different ethnic groups performed traditional dances in tradition dress, watched by dignities and other VIPs. My favourite part was simply watching the hundreds of paper lanterns floating down the river, I wish my camera gave justice to the moment. My least favourite part was when I went for a drink in one of the many restaurants that line the river. The waiter hugged me all the way to my seat then when he came to take my order he stroked my arm and kept giving me weird looks. I think it is the first time a gay man has hit on me and I sincerely hope it is the last!!

Hoi An by day.

Lanterns on the river

Hoi An by night

Day 108 Farang

20/06/13
Farang means foreigner in Lao and I was the only one on the bus. The journey until the boarder was uneventful apart from the smouldering wreckage of an oil tanker we past. We also stopped for lunch but seeing as I had no money I couldn't purchase any food. At the boarder you had to bribe the Laos boarder officials with $3 (on top of the outrageously priced visa, $65 for one month). You also had to bribe the Vietnamese officials (slightly less money this time). I don't know if I paid too much or too little or whether it was because I was last in the que but the officer who was checking my passport took an age. I think he thought it was a fake or maybe he just has something against the British but he honestly took 10 times longer than he had for anyone else, I thought I was going to get turned away. Around half 6 I was dropped at the Northern end of Hue, leaving me with a very long walk to the tourist district, where all the hotels are. I got a room at the same place as I stayed with Rob and George and surprisingly the receptionist recognised me. By this time I was starving, having not eaten for 24 hours. After a shower I went for a pizza and as that wasn't enough I went to another restaurant for some fried rice.

Day 107 Secret Millionaire

19/06/13
I woke around half 8 then I had breakfast and only left the restaurant to catch my oat back to the mainland at 11.00. During the crossing it started to rain, added to the fact that the bus was a good 5 minutes walk away most people were rather damp by the time we got on the bus around half past. The bus was meant to take 3 hours but it ended up being 4 because we stopped for some unfounded reason for half an hour. When we arrived back in Pakse I tried booking a bus ticket to Vietnam for that evening but the tourist office said he bus was a local one and it wasn't very good. Unfazed I booked it anyway and then spent the next 2 hours waiting. I wandered around for half an hour, spending the last 1000 Kip (less than 10p) on a packet of instant noodles I ate uncooked, then returned to the booking office to wait out the remainder of the time. At 17.00 I was driven to the bus station along with a Malay-Aussi who comes to Laos a lot. At the bus station it became apparent that there wasn't going to be a bus leaving that evening. This turned out not to be an issue as the Aussi, named Tony, said he had a spare bed in his room I could use and he also took me out for dinner which was really generous. It turned out that Tony, who was only 39, was a property tycoon (earning $2000 a day) and most of our conversations were centred around the stuff he has done for the Laos people. He has come to Laos 6 times now and has paid for toilets to be built, bought hundreds of dollars worth of food for poor families, bought a $3000 tractor for a family whose father couldn't work, bought 3 plots of land on a coffee plantation for a couple he brought back from Bangkok who had been working in the sex industry. There were many more that he didn't have time to tell although I wish there had been because he showed me some pictures and the faces of the people he had made smile. He has not only fallen in love with the country but also with a local woman, even though he is married with 2 kids in Australia. Proof nobody is perfect or has it all.

Day 106 Couch Potato

18/06/13
I had another lie in (only until 09.00) then I went for breakfast which certainly wasn't hurried. I then got chatting to a couple of guys staying at the same place as me. I went to another restaurant for lunch, again I was in no hurry to leave. I met the lads at the same cafe again and we ventured to another cafe where we stayed for the rest of the day, chatting and playing a dice game. There were a few other people there and a couple of us jumped off the veranda into the Mekong, 7m below. And that was the exciting story of life on Don Det. For most people that is how each day goes for them, I have met lots of people who have stayed for a week, doing that every single day!!

Day 105 Dolphins

17/06/13
My day started very leisurely at 10.00 and after breakfast I changed bungalows for something almost identical but cheaper than I had been paying. I then hired a bike and cycled down the east coast of the island, all 4km of it, until I reached the south where an old French, arched bridge spans part of the river and joins Don Det to Don Khon, another, even sleepier, island. The 'roads' aren't paved and signing is at a bare minimum so it took me a while to find Li Phi Falls, a very impressive waterfall. I then made an indirect way down to the southern tip, where you can see Cambodia. Whilst eating lunch there I talked to Chantelle and Stephen, 2 travellers I met yesterday. We agreed to meet back at the point at 16.00 so we could hire a boat together and go look for some dolphins. I cycled along a terrible track to the east side, then round to the north, where I had a riverside drink, then back down south for just before 16.00. We paid $8 between us for the boat and driver, a young local lad. He captained the longtail boat a couple of hundred metres out to a deep area where the dolphins live. The Irrawaddy Dolphin is an endangered species, there are fewer than 100 left, but it didn't stop us seeing loads (at least a couple, lots of times). On the way back to land our engine ran out of fuel so the lad had to paddle back, I don't think he will make the same mistake again. We rode back together then went our separate ways to shower and change but we met up again for dinner, which was really tasty. Afterwards we went to a bar where we met a couple of their friends who we spent the remainder of the evening with.