On the way to 40 000 Islands, I stopped in the capital city of Vientiane for a few hours. There wasn't much to do here so I just wandered the streets to see a few of the sights.

Transit: Yet again, the bus in Laos was interesting and this was the most surprising & uncomforable of all. I had decided to take an overnight bus for this trip to save a bit of time but expected to be in normal seats until I was told by someone else that we would have beds like the train which would've been fantastic. The bus was a sleeper bus but unlike the train it was 2 people per sleeping berth. I however, was in the lower portion of the back of the bus where there were 5 of us crammed in a coffin-like compartment on top of the engine. It was disgustingly hot/humid, the air-con didn't work well & there were no lights. We couldn't even roll or over or we would be on top of the person next to us. Let alone to say that we got to know each other quite well. Typical of Asia travel on night transit, they wake you up at 1AM (but we coudn't really sleep anyways) to make a stop, turn all the lights on & then play karaoke music. We were quite excited to get off the bus but at least it was a good group of people that I was with!

40 000 Islands: Very nice landscapes & even nicer local people on Don Det island where we stayed. Everyone here is always smiling & saying hello to you as you walk/cycle by and they are genuinely very welcoming & helpful. People in laos are the nicest that I've come across up to now.

Angela & I began travelling together (met on sleeper bus) as we would be following the same route. We rented bicycles & went to Den Kong island which has more to see. We visited a few waterfalls & then found a local boatman who took us out to see the Irawaddy dolphins. We went to an area on land where we could watch them from far out in the water & stopped off in the boat on the way back. It was amazing as we could see the dolphins come to the surface around the boat. The closest ones were probably ~ 20 feet from us. When we got back the fisherman invited us to have beer & lao lao shots with them and fed us some of the fish they had caught that day. Despite the language barrier, we had a great time & could've stayed all night except we had a long bike ride back to town.