Four Thousand Islands
ByFour thousand islands, that’s what this part of the Mekong River was called. Just where the mighty river flows from Laos into Cambodia it flows through gorges, over rapids and cascades. In fact the largest cascade in South East Asia, the Khon Phapheng Falls is there. More than a hundred years ago the French hoped to be able to send steamers from the Mekong Delta, in what is now Vietnam, all the way up the Mekong River, through Cambodia and into northern Laos and eventually China. However these waterfalls and rapids were a natural and insurmountable barrier to navigation.
The backed up water spreads out to be 14 kilometres wide there leaving over four thousand islands in the river. Some are small, only supporting thick lush tropical vegetation whilst others are large enough for small settlements and farms. We stayed a couple of nights in Muang Khong the village on the largest island Don Khong. Our guesthouse over looked the river.
At this time of year, in the dry season, the water level is low and there are many more thousands of sandbanks, dangerous shoals and sharp rocky outcrops, and between them the current is swift. The river is so dangerous here that French engineers put in channel markers to show boatmen the safer routes through the rapids.
On a wonderfully sunny day we pushed off in a small, long thin boat, with a local boatman, to experience the river, see the islands, visit the falls and hopefully spot some of the elusive Mekong freshwater dolphins. As we progressed down stream navigating narrow channels between towering walls of greenery our boat was caught by the current and then pushed out into a wide area of white turbulent rapids. We couldn’t help but steal a quick glance at our boatman to detect any sign of his alarm, but he was calm as we swished around the outer edges of whirlpools. Over shoals we went, seeing jagged brown rocks just below the surface, glad that we were in a very shallow draft boat.
We passed close to the old French channel markers towering out of the boiling, churning water and then we were in a wide calm stretch of beautiful turquoise river. Our destination was one of the larger islands where the colonial French had built a railway to bring goods past the falls and the rapids. There was still an old rusting locomotive there. It felt good to leave our flimsy craft to trek across the island to see one of the minor falls where water thunders through a gorge. Impressive though it was in the dry season it must be awe inspiring when the Mekong is ten metres deeper.
In a wider calmer stretch, just up river of the main falls, there are wide deep pools where the dolphins live. With the outboard engine cut the silence crowded in. Then an unmistakeable dorsal fin broke the surface near the boat, swiftly followed by a tail fluke. Almost immediately we had spotted the famous Mekong dolphins. There are not so many here as in Cambodia and they are very much an endangered species in terminal decline. This pod of dolphins will disappear in a few years despite the best efforts of the conservationists to reverse the trend.
On our homeward trip we kept close to banks of islands to avoid the current, sliding carefully over the shallows, constantly watching the rocks inches below the hull.
