Met two girls yesterday who stayed at the same guesthouse and ended up spending our sightseeing day with them. Rented some bikes and headed out to see some dolphins. There is a very rare breed of freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins that hang out between the Laos/Cambodia boarder. I did a little research and read that they are mostly seen in the earlier morning or late afternoon. South East Asia's largest waterfall (by volume) is also on this island and we heard you could swim near it.
We hopped on the bikes and headed out only to turn around because the breaks on Michael's didn't work, ok round two, nope the chain on our friends bike breaks so we walk it back and get another bike. Ok now we're on our way but we are white so therefore we will pay a "bridge toll" even though we are only going under the bridge! We are not happy and our new friends seem to have all the same complaints we do about Laos and these are some well traveled woman so I don't feel so bad. Just past the toll the chain comes off our friends bike again, by the end of the day she's her own bike mechanic as it happens 9 times. We ride through the midday sun, sweat dripping from our entire bodies passing a herd of poor water buffalo that are in a field. Seriously it's an island don't you have a place near the water you can keep these guys? We arrive at the waterfall and are told we have to pay to park our bikes! Agh what fun, we walk through a makeshift shopping area where everyone is yelling at us the buy a drink and finally arrive at this huge waterfall. It looks move like an amusement park ride than a waterfall,. It's short and wide and the water is rushing down creating huge rapids. We walk a little further and find an area where we can get to the water which is much needed at this point. From there we ride to the end of the island to try and see some dolphins. For the first time in Laos we get a deal instead of getting ripped off! The signs say you can only have 3 people per boat including the driver but since we were 4 they let us go together in a slightly larger boat so we all got to split the cost. We saw about 5 of them and one even breeched pretty close to the boat. After a quick beer we head back and realize we took the long way to get there, oops.
Our friends had spring rolls the night before that they think we should try so we stop on our way back and decided we'll order dinner while we're at it. Good thing we did because it takes over an hour and half the food is wrong. We try to talk to the waitress about the inconstancy between what we ordered and what we got but its not working so we pay and go to another place for a snack.
We switched guest houses today because we only booked the first place for one night and they only had expensive rooms left and since there's no ATMs on the island we have limited cash. I noticed some animal droppings on the floor when we were there in the morning but figured its just the way things are. We didn't return to our room until after 2000 tonight and when I turned on the lights I saw a rather large cockroach scurrying under the gap in the wall and floor, oh great! We got settled and opened the bathroom door to find two bird size cockroaches ! This was going to be a long night. Michael is just as terrified of cockroaches as I am and he's also a bit of a baby about it. After some screaming from both the roaches and me he uses the sprayer to get them in a place where he can kill them. Michael is emotional distraught over the horrific episode and pouts for a while before going to sleep. He's fuming at me for my not killing them myself. We sleep with the lights on and when I got into the bathroom at 0230 there's another large friend. I decide not to wake Michael since he's already in a mood and I kill it myself. Michael wakes up during the killing and suddenly I've been redeemed. No more cold shoulder. It ended up being a long sleepless night. Michael actually had cockroaches nightmares. We're going to see about staying somewhere else tonight.
Michael in the corner pouting/ preparing his next move
Cambodia from the boat to see the dolphins
Most voluminous waterfall
No comments:
Post a Comment