We should have known when our mini bus was 45 minutes late that the journey from Kratie to Laos would not be a good one. We have never seen 1) so many people crammed into one minibus (about 24) and 2) so much luggage strapped onto the back including a moped and a cage full of puppies!

We were squashed onto the back seat, I had room for one foot and the other was on the wheel arch, Casson had a local guy practically asleep on his shoulder drooling and there was a 4th guy squashed onto the back seat as well. It was hot, sweaty and really bumpy and took about 4 hours to get to near the border. Then we had to sit around in a cafe for over 3 hours, another hour on the bus to cross the border then another hour to get to the port where we had to get on a longtail boat to cross to Don Det island. If this journey wasn't bad enough the longtail boat dropped us off about 2km from the centre (probably at his mum's guesthouse) so we had to walk with our bags to get to where we needed to go as there are no taxis on the island!

Don Det is a small island and is really laid back, you can cycle round it in about an hour so on our first day we hired a couple of bikes. We knew it wouldn't take us long so Casson thought it would be a good idea to do a bicycle bar crawl. By the time we got to our 4th bar it started pouring down so we sat it out, unfortunately the rain made the paths really muddy and slippy so as we were heading back my bike slipped, I put my foot down but my foot and flip flop got stuck in the mud and I ended up on the floor (much to Casson's amusement). I didn't really hurt myself other than my pride and a grazed knee.

We had a bungalow right on the river so we spent a lot of time lazing around in hammocks just chilling out. We hired bikes again a few days later and cycled to the waterfall. These bikes had brakes that hardly worked at all so I was delighted when we went down a really gravelly hill only to find out we'd gone the wrong way and had to turn round. The waterfall was nice but on the way back it started raining again so we nipped in somewhere for a drink. When it looked like it was stopping we set off again as I was convinced we weren't far and we'd be back in 10 minutes, Casson thought we should just go as far as the next bar as he didn't think we'd make it before it started chucking it down again as he thought we were much further away than I did. It turns out we were about 25 minutes away and for 20 of those 25 minutes it was torrential rain and treacherous, muddy paths. We were like drowned rats, I blame Casson as he should never have listened to me in the first place!

We really liked Don Det and ended up staying for longer than planned.

General points
1) I'm a liability when it comes to riding a bike

2) Casson is generally always right when it comes to directions and/or timings. He should never listen to me