It’s 3:30 in the afternoon having arrived at 4000 Islands. The six of us all got off the bus and onto the ferry to the island named Don Det a couple of hours ago. We got rooms and then met for lunch. Lunch was in a restaurant called Happy Day. It is a direct throwback to a hippy bar that you could possibly imagine maybe from Jamaica. The restaurant is filled with mostly young backpackers laying on pillows. Most are drinking beer and chatting. Some are rolling joints or smoking weed. It was so relaxed and I really liked what I consider to be the true backpacker vibe. There is a huge painting of Bob Marley on the ceiling and words of wisdom are scrawled all over the walls. Most of these little tidbits are about drugs and the experience of taking drugs. It was kind of funny. I feel like I need to state that this is a restaurant, not anything else. It’s not some den of delinquents or anything close to something like that, it’s a working restaurant that had great food. At one point the owner came over to our table and we started to chat, about ten minutes of talking with all of us, someone comes up to him and hands him a lit joint. He takes a couple of hits and passes it to some of us in our group. I don’t smoke, but it was just so laid back.
After lunch we went back to our hotels. The others rented a more traditional room in a guest house on the main road. I, always wanting to be different, rented a bungalow that is situated on bank of the Mekong River. It was the first place that we looked at as we got off the ferry, but the others didn’t like it. I don’t blame them, it’s kind of nasty… kind of if you let yourself think that way. I on the other hand saw this bungalow as paradise. It is as close to living in a village as a tourist can get. Everywhere you go along the Mekong you see bungalows like the one I’m staying at. It’s kind of ratty, but there is a charm to it. The bungalow has a small porch complete with a hammock. There are boats going down the river like cars going down the street and every once in a while there is a boat that pulls up to the bank to drop off passengers. It seems that every half hour a nearby rooster calls out, there are small kids playing on the hammocks of the bungalow right next to mine. And much of the time there is nothing but quiet.
Right now I’m laying on the hammock, the chugging of a boat engine in the near distance fading as it gets further away and thinking how great my life is. J
Don Det is an island in the tourist destination of 4000 Islands. I don’t know very much about it except that I think it’s fairly new on the backpacking circuit, at least I had never heard about it until a few weeks ago. Unlike Luang Prabang, Don Det is very rough around the edges. What I mean is that the main street is pretty much a sidewalk that is mostly just dirt. There are small shops that line the street that sell everything you can think of, from toothpaste to flip-flops. There are no cars on the island and just a few scooters. I think it would be nice if they got rid of the scooters too, they can be kind of dangerous on the narrow street.
