Day 28 - Hot hot hot! no electricity on this island apart from 630pm to 11pm and sometime super early in the morning, when I could never early enough to enjoy. The guesthouse, Mama's we stayed has 4 rooms. The room isn't too big, very basic and rural. They are bungalows linked up together with a shared terrance. On the terrance, there are hammocks overseeing the Mekong. The sky was so blue, the island opposite to our guesthouse has a very big dark green chunky tree.
Had our breakfast, fried eggs and baguette of course. Everyone seemed pretty lazy in the morning chilling out at the hammock. Time is slow in Si Pha Don because you seriously have no better things to do on this island apart from lying on the hammock. After an hour of trying to kick everyone out from the hammock, 4 of us decided to take a walk around the island before lunch. I thought the island was small but i was wrong...
There are many guesthouses some are bungalows and some are made from concrete. Some really Lao and exotic, some are tacky as hell. Lonely planet says the Si Pha Don is turning into another Vang Vieng, where is becoming a hippy touristy place. Some bars do serve happy shakes. I had no serious opposition against tourism, as I believe to certain extent improve the local's life. The bottom line is, these places in Lao are very beautiful, simple and pure. It would be a shame that the environment and the people's culture got abused. Like I have no idea why we need those concrete hotels n tacky architecture here, which created huge contrast to the local hood.
We walked past the tourist area, we entered the local villages. There were so many children; swimming in the river, helping the grannies, walking the buffalos, playing along the road, they were everywhere. Brought a smile on my face. After the villages, we there were rice fields, and more rice fields for another 2 hours. I was exhausted walking under the heat. We couldn't walk back as kristina walked really fast n disappeared in the front. We couldn't leave her alone so we had to keep walking and tried to finish the round island walk. I wasn't a huge hiking under the strong sun fans. I was secretly a bit grumpy :P
We saw a bridge crossing the Mekong to another island, Don Khon. Don Khon looks more delux with appealing restaurants. Grass always greener in the opposite side. I gotta take back what i said about the touristy comment. I did very much want to have a nice meal and a cool pineapple shake there... BUT NO! we have to pay an entrance fee to this island. Capitalism!!! We walked back to where we came from the other side of the bridge feeling defeated. Went to the only restaurant near the bridge instead. Doesn't matter, the pineapple shake was just as delicious in this island :)
After hours and hours of walking, it was almost sunset when we finally finished the walk. We had dinner and went to a snooker bar for a drink. I once again got myself pretty drunk. But I had very good fun; trying to do spanish dancing with Ari and had our most amazing "where the banana gone?" banana pancake.
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