J: The journey to the 4000 islands was a long one, after a bus journey we had to take a tuk-tuk motorbike with a side-kart with 4 of us which put me in an interesting position sitting at the front foot section, it made for some scary moments on the bumpy road, good job I didn't need the toilet and thankfully Ryan was holding onto me tight.

S: Today was our anniversary so you know I thought we'd have a nice meal, couple of beers. No I had a crisp sandwich and a bottle of water in the back of the tuk-tuk lol.

So after an exhausting 15 hours on the road we reach the jetty at 8pm to get to Don Det. This was going to be interesting, as the locals wanted a lot of money to take us over. In the end we negotiated a reasonable rate of 100,000 kip (£7) for the four of us. We found a bungalow right on the river Mekong with two hammocks looking out.

J: We had a nice chilled day for the first time in a while. But then went kayaking the next day, we went down the Mekong again which felt funny as we had started our Laos adventure on it. We saw some waterfalls which have some ingenious fish catching devises that look a little like a water-ski jump. Our guide went out and got a couple of small fish and cooked them on a locals fire beside the river and we ate these lovely fresh fish.

We then headed further rowing UP the river then over to the Cambodia side to see the wild & rare pink dolphins there, they were swimming all around us but weren't friendly enough for a stoke unfortunately.

S: We then continued to row over to Cambodia and whilst we enjoyed our lunch watching the dolphins we were technically illegal immigrants. It was a brilliant BBQ lunch, the first jacket potato in 2 months lol. We then kayaked a bit more down the river and went to the Khon Phapheng Fall, the largest falls by volume in South East Asia. It was a brilliant day.

J: The next day we took a bike ride around the island which at one point there was no biking just trying to keep up right in the muddy paddy fields when after reviewing the tight money situation, due to there being no ATMs on the island we got a bottle of 'Lion' whisky (for 74p) which cost the same as a beer and played cards for the afternoon.

While playing cards looking over the river a local in his boat rocked up to us and waved, we waved him up and he brought a bottle of moonshine, he was a special kind of person and clearly had burnt a few brain cells with the moon shine which was explosive stuff! He offered us to have an island next to his on the condition we were to have a family there….. I considered the offer longer than Sam. Later we had a lovely Indian meal, which was a delayed anniversary dinner.