random pix: 4,000 Islands animals

I kind of fell in love with all of the water buffalo... I'm a dork. We don't have wildlife (or anything alive besides people) in Songyuan, so I'm easily excited!

 

This guy lived up in the roof of our first bungalow. He was really bright green with red spots and like ten inches long. I only saw his out once, but he liked to poke his head out and spy on us.

Something about the cow next to the motorbike = awesome.

4,000 Islands (days 9-12)

The next morning, the remaining three of us hopped on a bus to 4,000 Islands, Laos. 4,000 Islands is right on the border of Cambodia and Laos, on the Mekong River. The bus was something ridiculously long, like 12 hours. It took all day. That was where I learned that somewhere in there, people stopped calling it "Laos" and started calling it "Lao". Not sure where the "s" went...

We got to the mainland area pretty late. We took a small boat over to Don Det, the main island, where we wanted to stay. We checked out a few of the bungalows (this was the first place we weren't able to find anything on Hostelworld.com for ahead of time), checked in to one, grabbed some dinner and then partied a bit in the bar of our bungalow with everyone else that had arrived on our bus.

This was our first bungalow.

This was laying in the hammock of our second bungalow in the same complex.

The next day my friend from the States and I awoke to find a goodbye note on our doorstep from the girl we'd been traveling with that had been teaching in Korea. She was meeting a friend from the States later in the week and had some other places she wanted to check out so she had woken up early and left. And then there were two.

The first day on the island, we didn't do too much. We hung out and relaxed in cafes, read our books, etc. We found a game of Jenga in one of them and met a couple (he was Scottish, she was English) to play with. We ended up hanging out with them quite a bit over the next few days.

That night we went out with them and picked up a stray 19 year old American that was traveling alone as well. All over the island, the menus had "happy" food listed (pot food). The American wanted to try a brownie, so my friend and I ordered one to split as well. After almost an hour, we agreed we were all feeling nothing so we parted ways. My friend and I hit up the bar at out bungalow for a nightcap. And then the brownie kicked in; it was a serious brownie, and I only had half. I didn't want to be indoors for like three hours after that.

The next day, we got up and decided to have a walk around the perimeter of the island. We had talked about going kayaking, but it was raining when we got up, so we figured it was going to rain all day. Then it didn't. The walk was beautiful though, and took just about all day.

I never did find out hat the deal was with these.

Having not planned anything for the whole trip, my one requirement was that my friend take me to a beach or water I could swim in. No one seemed to go IN the Mekong, which was really disappointing. Luckily, toward the end of the walk, we found some children in the river, so I got in and played with them.

We ended up doing our kayaking trip the following day. It was amazing. Really made me with I had an Otter Box for my iPhone so I could have gotten some pictures. We hiked and kayaked all day. We saw the largest waterfalls in southeast Asia, we saw freshwater dolphins about 50 feet from our kayak, we swam in the Mekong, we were on both Laotian and Cambodian soil at some point... it was great. When we got back, we got back in the river and floated in tubes and had beers with some Frenchmen we had met.

Even though Don Det was really chill, it was the off season and there weren't a lot of people, there wasn't a whole lot going on, it was really beautiful and relaxing, a nice place to just hang out for a while. We saw a lot of people during the days and most of them seemed to be about our age, but they didn't get super crazy, which was actually kind of nice.

boo to the Kindle Fire/Blogger (ps, I'm in Laos)

Naturally, right after I get back into the groove of blogging regularly, I leave for a two week holiday and don't post ANYTHING for a really long time. This is my first holiday here that I haven't brought my laptop on, and while I feel a bit naked, it's been really liberating (and good for my shoulder to boot). I was planning on blogging a bit from my Kindle Fire, but the interface with Blogger doesn't let me add content into a new post for some reason. So boo to that.


In other news, my holiday so far has been phenomenal and completely reinforcing the fact that I cannot go back to live in the States (sorry mom). I met a friend from Songyuan on June 25th, and my plan was to travel with her for about six days, and then meet up with a friend of mine from the States that's on holiday here as well and bounce around with him for another week or so. I started in Siem Reap, Cambodia where my friend from Songyuan and I actually met up with my friend from the States there too.


We spent three days in Siem Reap, two days in Battambang, three days in Phnom Pehn where my Songyuan friend departed and yesterday we crossed into Laos to head to 4,000 Islands. In Battambang we picked up a lone, stray traveler who was actually teaching English in South Korea, and she just left us this morning as well. And then there were two.


I came on this trip with absolutely zero plans or even vague ideas of things I wanted to see. My friend from Songyuan was meeting me coming off a month of traveling southeast Asia with her boyfriend and his mother, so I had no idea what she was going to be up for. My friend from the States is actually an ex and is traveling here for about two months with a pretty specific itinerary and set list of things he wants to do, so I figured I was set. I didn't even have a ticket back to China until a few days ago.


It feels like I've been traveling for so much longer than I actually have, and I've had so many amazing experiences in the past 10 days. When I get home and back to my laptop I'll have tons to post and some ridiculous pictures to share as well.


Even just  living in China, at some point almost every day I look around me and think, "This is my life," and am constantly struck by how happy I am and how coming over here was the best decision I have ever made. On this trip, that feeling is almost constant.