Pakse to Don Det or the 4,000 Islands
A fast day and a half of cycling got me to the chilled out island of Don Det, in the 4,000 Islands, pretty much on the Laos-Cambodia border. I’m hanging out here for a week or so, it’s so nice!
So there’s only guesthouses at one town on the 160km road between Pakse and the ferry to Don Det. It’s 50km out of Pakse, so it was a short ride that morning. I spent the afternoon escaping the heat and eating in my room at the dusty crossroad of Thang Baeng.
Here are the photos from that ride..
A fast and flat 108km got me to the town on the side of the river that the boats leave from to go to Don Det. It cost me all of $NZ5 to get a boat to take me and my bike the 2km across to the beach at the northern tip of the island.
After getting off the boat, I rode a couple of kilometres south, on the Sunrise (eastern) side of the island and found a nice guesthouse. It had a great view out over the Mekong.
The Water Buffalo like sunbathing on the beach in the morning, before the tourists take over in the afternoon.
One day I went for a ride around Don Det and it’s neighbour to the south Don Khon. Back in the day the French built a railway across and between the islands so that they could get some gunboats above the rapids that surround the lower parts of the island. The railroad has been turned into a normal road and the bridge is used by everyone. I took some nice small tracks around the islands, as you can see on the map at the bottom of the post.
An old schoolhouse:
House building, Lao style (I saw it go up over the 5 days I’ve been on the island):
The downside of the guesthouse I was at was that it was a bit far from the action in town, so I stayed there 3 nights then moved on. I’d bumped into 3 young cycle tourists who were heading north. I managed to get a bungalow beside theirs, and we hung out for a couple of days, sharing info about the road. They’ve left now, heading north through the 4,000 Islands and up through Laos. I had a lot of respect for them. Maeva had planned her journey as a cycle touring trip, but Amberly and Steffi only bought cheap bikes in Siem Reap and strapped their backpacks onto racks strengthened with sticks.
I went down to see them get the ferry to the next island..
So I’m hanging out here for another few days, until after the weekend. Then I’m going to ride south to Phnom Phen, the capital of Cambodia. I was hoping to take a remote road across to Siem Reap, but my chain recently broke riding around the island, and I’d like to at least pick up some spare links in PP before heading anywhere else.
I’ve got just over 5 weeks left till I fly out from Bangkok now. That means I’m 90% of the way through the riding, which is a weird feeling! No doubt I’m kind of winding down, hanging out on the island, and thinking about what the future holds beyond the trip!