Both of us woke up Christmas morning, sun streaming onto our balcony, feeling exactly the way you should feel- with a monstrous hangover (and appetite!). I was hoping Santa might bestow us with clear heads whilst he was on his nightly rounds, but it seems he wasn’t able to find our bungalow…
Back in the Western world, Christmas Eve is probably THE most exciting, energy-packed day of the year, sorting everything out for the big day to follow. Christmas Eve in Don Det: probably the quietest day on the island. Aside for a few banners and Christmas trees standing here and there in ‘fa-rang’ (foreigner) run bars, you’d never think it was the holidays. You know the film ’28 Days Later’?…OK, it wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it still felt pretty deserted!
When we returned to our bungalow, we soon saw where a few backpackers were lingering…A few hundred metres from our balcony, we spied people sitting on a sandbank in big rubber tubes, drinking a few beers…This image looked too inviting to ignore, so we went and got our own tubes (no deposit, only advice to not fall down the waterfall, conveyed by mime), and headed down to the river. In hindsight, if we’d know we would stay on the sandbank for a few hours, we probably would have just swam across; the Mekong river current made tubing more than a little tricky! Still, we made it (just), and soon made friends with those people who had made us so jealous! We ended up floating back in our tubes (very, very slowly) at sunset, following the flaming path that the sun’s orange streaks created on the river.
Pretty nice way to end Christmas Eve, right? Oh, but the night was just beginning…Whilst on the sandbank, we’d heard about a private party happening in our bungalows that we didn’t even know about; we’re obviously not in with the cool kids. This turned out to be a campfire that we ended up joining later on…and being the last ones to leave, along with some sound French guys and a lovely Brit named Naomi. Good times that night…bad times the next morning.
Anyway, for obvious reasons, not a lot occurred on Christmas Day…but the plan for Boxing Day was to try a spot of fishing Lao style- maybe even with those huge nets they throw into the river. We thought we’d found the perfect place with the perfect price in Mr. Hoy…the only problem was his disappearing act. Three times we returned to Mr. Hoy’s hut, but he was just nowhere to be seen. No matter, we thought, retreating to our hammocks…we’ll try again the next day, after a spot of dolphin spotting in the morning. See the next blog entry for more!
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