Reaching Four Thousand Islands: Well, one of them

January 17, 2015

I was woken in the morning by the very loud dinging of a bell. I peered through the blinds at my window and saw a young monk was smacking that bell just as hard as he could, he was really going for it. Soon after that the praying started and I listened to the beautiful, almost therapeutic sound of the monks chanting in unison. It lasted for approximately twenty seconds. I guess Son Pot didn't want to overdo it. Maybe he was praying for a cigarette, I don't know. Then I think the monks all went out and collected alms and returned to eat their breakfast in the dining hall. But I'm not sure, I wasn't invited.

I got up a little later and found Son Pot. Seeing that I was preparing to leave he did the traditional monk thing and asked me if I could add him on Facebook. Then he wanted a photo with me, and so we posed together. The monk that took this photo for us was younger than Son Pot but older than all the other monks that I'd seen, maybe in his twenties, and I took him to be Son Pot's protege. This assumption was largely based on the fact that he himself had a cigarette dangling from his lips and he made an odd sight indeed with his orange robes hanging loosely off one shoulder, as he held the camera up with one hand, I-phone in the other. I wondered if he had the meditation app.

With the man himself - behind us is the building that I slept in

On the left is the dining area, the right the temple for praying. You can see where their priorities lie

On I went, continuing my journey along the blissful Mekong track. It was a Saturday and so there were no kids cycling about in school uniform, instead everyone rested in the shade of the wooden stilt houses and shouted to me. Oh, and how they shouted! The endless smiles and waves and sabadees had my spirits soaring once more. It was unbelievable. It was sometimes hard to see exactly where the sabadees were coming from, with me in the sunlight and them in the shade, or leaning out of upstairs windows, or sometimes even sitting in trees. I was just shouting sabadee at bushes.

"Sabadee, sabadee!" - But where was it coming from?

Finally I reached the area known as 'Si Phan Don' or 'Four Thousand Islands' and the point at which I could take a ferry over to the biggest of the islands, Don Khong. At first the ferry man asked for 20,000 kip, which I thought too much, so I waited and once some other people came the price dropped to 10,000. Knowing the popularity of Four Thousand Islands I was expecting to encounter lots of tourists as soon as I set foot on Don Khong, but it wasn't like that at all. In fact it was a most wonderful place, somehow even more laid back than the mainland and with fewer people. Those that were there still shouted sabadee to me like I was the first falang they had ever seen.

The boat to Don Khong came with an engine and no need for foot paddles

Don Khong is a really big island, something like eight kilometres across at its widest point, and twenty kilometres from north to south, and it turned out most of the tourists didn't seem to venture far from the imaginatively-named main town of Khong. That meant that I had the run of the place on the almost traffic-free roads, and it was just lovely. But the road was not right next to the river and so I decided to do some exploring, and followed a little sandy trail off the road, that took me off into a rocky area and finally out to an area of bamboo. On a big rock up above I could see something large and golden and so I left the bike and ran up to find a huge reclining Buddha, the relaxed pose of which perfectly summed up the pace of life on this island.

From the vantage point of the rock I could see the river, and so I headed back down and through the bamboo until I came out to a beautiful sandy beach. It was a perfect, secluded little spot for a private swim in the river. I had found another little piece of paradise.

Well you look very relaxed today Buddha...

... I think I might join you in that reclined pose!

I would have quite liked to stay and camp on that beach, but it was only two in the afternoon, so I carried on. I cut across the island on smaller tracks, adventuring and exploring. There were some big wooded hills on this island, as well as paddy fields and other areas of agriculture dotted with wooden homes. Eventually I arrived in Khong, the tourist capital. But actually it wasn't so bad, and, before cycling out to set up camp, I sat in a restaurant here and did some writing, sipped on a delicious pineapple shake and looked out over the river, and thought 'I reckon I could get used to this.'

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 35,935 km (22,316 miles)

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