I got a minibus to the town nearest Don Det and then boarded yet another small rickety boat, that felt pretty unstable and was absolutely loaded with tourist - but as always all was ok! I went wandering in search of cheap accommodation - unfortunately things weren't quite as cheap as the guidebooks made out but eventually I found a bungalow, overlooking the river, on the sunset side with a hammock and a fan for 50,000kip (about $6) a night! One of the first things that struck me when I got to 4000 island was how hot it was, so, so hot! The north of Laos had been pleasantly warm and my day in Pakse was spent at a little altitude on the Bolaven Plateau so I had noticed how hot it was down south! It's really hot! I spent my first day just chilling and lying in my hammock. I'd also bumped into Lawry and James and made plans to have dinner with them. So we met in the evening and had dinner and a few beers.

The second day I decided to go tubing around the island (unlike Vang Vieng this is an much more civilised and relaxed affair). On my way to go tubing I bumped into Christina and Lauren and we spend the afternoon relaxing on the river and enjoying the beautiful scenery of 4000 islands. One of my main reasons for wanting to see 4000 islands was because I'd read about the turquoise water of the Mekong and found this hard to believe. Having seen the Mekong in northern Laos and in Vietnam I found it hard to believe that in between these 2 dirty brown sections of river the river was blue. To be honest - it's not really blue or turquoise, more of a greeny colour but infinitely more appealing to swim in than any other place I've seen the Mekong! After a tough afternoon of floating on the river we went to a bar/restaurant that offers free sunset boat trip. So We got on a boat and headed for a small island further upstream and watched the beautiful red sun dip into the Mekong then returned and met up with James and Lawry again and had dinner.

The following day I needed to relax after all my exertion the previous day so my activity stretched to a short walk and lying in my hammock - have I mentioned how hot it is there, because it really is (at that time of year at least). Again I met up with the boys for dinner and drinks, and we went on the sunset cruise once more.

Because of all my inactivity on my 4th day on Don Det I opted for some activity. I decided to do a one day kayak trip which takes in most of the sites of the islands, more waterfalls, some river dolphins and lots of islands! Obviously because of my non-existent upper body strength and really bad balance I was nominated to go in the single kayak alone! Awesome! So we headed off down stream. Our first stop was a quick look at a temple and then we got to see the first of the 2 waterfalls we would see. It was yet another beautiful waterfall, it's hard to keep thinking of adjectives to describe all the beautiful waterfalls in Laos but this was a good one! After that we were back in the kayaks and heading further downstream, I was managing to keep up in my little single kayak, but I was tired and really feeling the head. We then had to face the "rapids", much like the ones on my previous kayak trip these were barely rapids but if you remember I did flip twice on that trip and that was in a more stable double kayak. As we went through the first set of rapids one of the pairs in our group flipped and then in the second set another pair flipped (this kayak even had a guide on it) and then the third set; unbelievably I escaped unflipped. We carried on to a small (very small) beachy island in the Mekong where we went for a long awaited swim, although the water is fairly warm and doesn't provide nearly enough relief from the heat! From here it was just a short kayak to Cambodia (yes I crossed an international boundary in a kayak) where we had the best chance of spotting the rare irrawady river dolphins! It didn't take too long for them to appear, not the most energetic dolphins (no jumping of flipping or anything) it was still really cool to see such a rare animal in it's natural habitat and while we didn't get within touching distance (not that I would have tried to touch them - just giving a description of distance) we did get fairly close and probably closer than you get by any other means of seeing them!

We then stopped at another beach (I think this was still in Cambodia because they were selling Cambodian beer instead of Beerlao) for lunch and another swim! Then We had a gruelling last kayak, tired, full and hot we had to kayak for another 30 or 40 minutes to get to the end of the trip, as we paddled we all took turns of abandoning our kayaks to get in the water and cool off. We then got a tuktuk to go and visit the second waterfall. It is the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia (by water volume I think) so yet another fantastic waterfall, while it wasn't massive it's the power of this waterfall that really impresses. We were then driven back to the town where we got back in our kayaks for one final push back to the island. It was an really enjoyable kayak trip, I got to see a lot and actually enjoyed the bit of activity after all the relaxing. That was my last night in on Don Det and in Laos, the following day I was Cambodia bound!