We crossed the border into Laos after a 10 hour bus trip on the most uncomfortable bus ever. We caught a glorifed canoe with a hairdryer for an engine to Don Det, one of the small islands on the Mekong at the very bottom of Laos. The island was literally a mud track that had about 10 guest houses, restaurants, a couple of shops and electricity was only on for 3 hours a day. We had heard that beer lao was the local delicacy so we tucked into a few bottles with our dinner on the first night. The next morning we booked a boat trip to see the rare Irrawaddy Dolphins (or Showaddywaddy dolphins as we call them). We sat on a rock for about half an hour in the blazing sun losing all hope of seeing them! Then Caroline Attenborough and Nic Oddie spotted a pod in the distance. We got back on our boat and got closer to the group and watched them surfacing around our boat. It was a bit special as these babies are very rare! We then went to the 'big waterfall' on 4000 islands.

That night we were joined by massive crickets/cockroaches in our bedroom and we woke up to the noise of them scurrying around our bedroom. After a crazy night, we braved the bag packing knowing that they were somewhere in the room! We found one under Caroline's bag and thought we had got away with it.......until she put her bag on and found the 2 inch long creepy tucked into her waist strap! Needless to say there was a lot of screaming and running around waving our arms in the air (the universal defense against insects!!). Anyway, we sold it to some locals for breakfast for 100 kip!!