Well paved and very quiet roads link the southern most towns of Laos. We were travelling through dry season dusty countryside from Muang Khong in the deep south to the town of Pakxe in a venerable local bus left over from the serious communist era. Parting the dirty and worn tasselled curtains we peered through cracked windows to watch wooden houses, two wheeled tractors pulling wooden trailers and water buffalos in dried out rice fields gliding by.  Our friendly fellow passengers greeted us with nods and smiles.

Adjacent a man was dealing with two small boys with good humour and endless patience. Whilst the four year old sat quietly staring out of the window the two year old delivered a writhing, twisting, screaming temper tantrum. Tolerant passengers tried to pacify the fractious two year old with roasted bananas and other tit bits and these rejected offerings found their way to his older brother. In front a young canoodling couple were only interested in each other. She resting her head on his shoulders, feet curled up on her seat. Her lovely high heeled slippers lay in the isle beside her seat. Opposite them a walnut skinned matron in her best lace edged white pagoda blouse sat crossed legged on her seat, her back leaning gently on the man with the moleskin waistcoat.  Behind the screaming youngster two young men had laid their trussed up chickens under their seats.  Their attention was drawn to a young girl who had just got on the bus.

The screaming two year old was held by his father who smiled indulgently and watched his older son consuming the offerings from the other passengers. Only at a stop in a village did the yelling stop. Vendors stormed the bus with roasted chicken and kebabs on sticks, boiled eggs, small bags of boiled rice, sliced mangos, drinks in plastic bags and roast bananas on sticks.  One of the lads with the chickens bought a small bag of sliced almonds and offered them coyly to the blushing girl.  The lovers uncurled long enough to buy a boiled egg each. This frenzy of activity distracted the exhausted two year old long enough to fall asleep in his fathers arms. As the bus started off again the boy was laid asleep on the seat, much to the relief of the passengers. 

Just when the father relaxed his older son looked up at him plaintively and threw up on his sleeping brother. Dad tried to catch handfuls of banana vomit but his hands couldn’t contain the volume. To the dismay of the courting girl opposite her lovely slippers disappeared in a mound of partly digested bananas. The ensuing attempts by the boy’s father to scrape off the offending sludge made her sick too. The matron twitched her nose only slightly before removing a small thick glass perfume vial from her blouse and inhaled deeply. The man in the moleskin waistcoat, which actually had a distinct odour of wet dog, accepted a whiff of perfume gratefully.  This prompted him to clear the contents his nostrils into a plastic bag which he then stowed in the seat pocket. The two young men with the chickens smiled with amusement to the girl crunching almonds.

Just before rolling in Pakxe the father had collected the contents of his older son’s stomach from the sleeping two year old, the girl’s shoes and the floor of the bus and washed his hands from a bottle. The clean up water washed down the isle as the bus stopped and made only small damp patches on the luggage stowed under the seats. We all nodded happily to each other drawn together by our shared experience now mercifully ended.      

Four 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.           

Photographs         

Our route from Cambodia was the 450km bus journey north from Phnom Penh to the dusty border town of Stung Treng. It’s a bit like a wild west frontier town with cigarettes, cheap whisky, gambling and wild wild women. We should have known better than believe the guy in our hotel who offered to arrange our river crossings and on going transport into Laos. It seemed a very reasonable offer but of course you always get what you paid for.

So instead of a mini bus our hotel pick up was two motorbikes with our big back packs balanced on the front.   The ferry crossing, which we supposed would take our minivan over the river was actually a dug out canoe. After back packing up the steep slopes on the opposite river bank we were greeted enthusiastically by the local bus driver. His dilapidated mini van – yes it was a minivan – was crammed full of local people with kids, chickens, baskets and bags of rice. So we set off up a good paved road to the international border.

Unfortunately progress was somewhat delayed by diversions along dusty jungle tracks to villages where cargo was deposited or collected. Then back to the main road, only to divert again in the other direction.  This time we climbed up to a logging camp and asked around until an old man appeared at the doorway of a shack. He said his farewells to his family and then joined us in the already full minivan. Every one was patient and took every delay and diversion in their stride. So did we.

As time was wearing on we seemed to be zig-zagging slowly and dustily toward the elusive border. We knew it was a small border post but when we arrived at a red and white stripped pole across a dirt road in a clearing we could hardly believe this was it.  Sure enough a man in a white vest and khaki trousers emerged from a hammock greeted us and happily stamped our passports. 

A few hundred metres further through the woods we reached another wooden hut with another pole across the road. Here we said our goodbyes and left our Cambodian fellow travellers and walked to the border. Behind a rough desk sat two Laos border officials in full uniform with magnificent yellow and green shoulder boards studded with gold stars.  They checked our visas and happily stamped us into Laos, levying a small administrative charge.  Then they chatted about where we were going and helped to arrange a nice minibus for the short trip to the Muang Khong ferry, another flimsy canoe which took us across the Mekong to our guest house perched high on the bank. The fantastic views of the River Mekong, now at its lowest dry season levels, were stunning.  

Photographs