Vientiane and 4000 islands

We continued our journey from Vang Vieng to Vientiane by mini-van. Vientiane is the capital of Laos, but it doesn't have much to offer in terms of tourism, as we had already heard before. Therefore, we planned to stay here only briefly. The plan was to take a tour to the nearby national park. However, it turned out to be too expensive, so we decided to skip it and instead booked a cooking class for the next day.

Cooking Class with Madame Phasouk

At half past 9 the next morning, Madame Phasouk picked us up and took us to the market to buy all the ingredients. On the menu were tom yum soup, the Laotian national dish laab, and summer rolls. Lao laab is like a cold chicken salad with lots of mint. After buying everything, we went to Madame Phasouk's house and started cooking. Under the guidance of Madame Phasouk, we prepared all the dishes and enjoyed them immediately. Unfortunately, the soup and laab were not to our liking, but the summer rolls were really good. Overall, the cooking class was a lot of fun and highly recommended.

Don Det 

After a day in Vientiane, we embarked on a 15-hour journey to the 4000 Islands. First, we took a sleeper bus, which had small cabins with double beds on two levels, to Pakse. However, the double bed was quite small, about 120cmx180cm. The bus ride was really comfortable and tolerable.

In Pakse, we had to change vehicles. We had to take a mini-van for the next 2 hours, which was a bit tiring due to several unnecessary long stops. When we arrived in Nakasong, we took a boat to Don Det. Since it's difficult to book accommodations online, we decided to do it on-site. Unfortunately, our preferred Mama Leuah Guesthouse was already fully booked, so we had to stay in a neighboring accommodation for the first night. It wasn't very nice, and the toilet didn't even have a seat. So we were glad that the next day we could move to our bungalow at Mama Leuah. The accommodation was really outstanding. The German owner, Lutz, was very friendly and helpful, and the bungalows were beautiful and clean. Each bungalow also had two hammocks in front of it, where we spent a lot of time. In addition, the accommodation had a restaurant with the best food we had up to that point. They served both Asian and German cuisine, such as schnitzel and potato salad. We tried everything, and it was delicious.

On Don Det, we took it easy. One day, we went on a bike tour and explored some places on the neighboring island of Don Khon. We visited two small waterfalls and the old harbor, from where we could see all the way to Cambodia over the Mekong River.

On our last day, we went on a kayaking tour. We visited various destinations along the Mekong River. The first stop was a small waterfall, which we had already seen the day before. Next, we wanted to see the remaining three Irrawaddy dolphins, but we were unlucky. We had lunch on an island that already belonged to Cambodia before heading to our final stop. So, we also visited Cambodia. The last stop was Khon Phapheng, the widest waterfall in the world, over 10 kilometers wide. After that, we kayaked back to Don Det, where we fell into bed early, completely exhausted.

The next day, we took the mini-van back to Pakse, as our flight to Vietnam was scheduled from there.

All in all, we really enjoyed Laos. We also created a short video about our time there. Enjoy watching!