Escape to the Four Thousand Islands

We were squeezed in between the tanned and tattooed shoulders of Lynx-scented Europeans. One of them had a half-drunk bottle of Johnnie Walker in his lap and was slurring his words. 'Nice breakfast' sniggered his mate who was sporting a particularly offensive pair of luminous pink shorts. It was 8am and we had made the foolish and lazy mistake of taking the tourist minibus instead of the usual local bus. As we pulled away, Nic looked like she was chewing on something rotten 'there was a girl outside our hostel' she said, mouth twisted in disgust 'smoking with one hand and shaving her legs with the other.''
As the minibus continued its southern trajectory, the drunk lad was muttering something about dolphins in one ear while Nic was busy recounting her shock in the other.

When we finally came to a stop, Nic and I leapt out and practically ran to escape the others, scampering through a small market thick with the smell of fermenting fish and down to the swirling waters of the Mekong. Turning to check the progress of our drunken pursuers, we fled toward a small wooden jetty. From here, boats left for the islands that lay a kilometre from the shore. We bought our tickets but the others were fast approaching, the drunk one was burping notes into a didgeridoo, the one with the offensive shorts had doffed an equally offensive headband. Run. They were nearly on us when a man waved us onto a boat and we were slipping away, the mud brown waters sealing us off from the shore. I looked back to see the jetty receding into a landscape of greens and browns, the only other colour was provided by a shrinking pair of luminous pink shorts.

We were approaching Four Thousand Islands, a place where the Mekong spreads its limbs wide, encircling a cluster of palm-fringed islands. Wooden canoes drifted past on the current and a thousand butterflies flickered in the undergrowth that seemed to sprout from the river's surface. The boat hit the muddy bank near a monsoon-faded old bridge. We disembarked and walked past stilted wooden huts and a rotting French school, the last evidence of a colonial past that was being slowly digested by the jungle. We found a cabin by the river and swung in our hammocks, watching scooters putter over the bridge and boats putter beneath it. Amongst these various putterings and flutterings we were lulled into a pleasant stupor and the days, like the great river itself, rolled languidly by.

We had enjoyed Laos but were pleased to be leaving for Cambodia. We crossed the border and followed the Mekong on its journey south. We stopped at the town of Kratie where we took a boat out to see the endangered Irrawaddy River dolphins. We sat watching the water, drifting between islets of half-submerged grass and were soon rewarded. Dolphins broke the surface all around. Even Nic, who has a deep resentment for dolphins because of their 'smug attitude', claimed it to a beautiful experience.

I'm actually way behind with this blog as we're now staring at lovely blue sea and swimming has become a more pressing matter than blogging. I shall endeavour to catch up in the next few days, selflessly sacrificing my beach time for your entertainment. It seems I have become the dolphin of Nic's hatred, a smug face grinning inanely from the waves.