Much like my sojourn in Serendipity Beach, it is inevitable after a period of harder travelling to want a complete break from the idea of ‘doing stuff’. Sometimes when you’re travelling, I think there is almost a compulsion to go and see things and climb things and take photographs…just because it’s there. Of course, if you do all these things because you genuinely enjoy them and want to do them, then obviously there is little harm. However, if you do fall into the trap of ‘doing stuff’ just because it’s there, then I fear that the experience is lessened…and that future activities may lose there appeal as you start to go through the motions. Throughout my trip (more by luck than by design), I’ve been lucky enough to have had natural breaks – or rather, periods of lesser activity following periods of ‘doing stuff’. When I arrived on Don Det, chilling out was certainly part of my agenda. Quite apart from anything else, I wanted to recharge my batteries and relax a little before my long-awaited teaching post in Kathmandu. However, I did not arrive there with the sole intent of doing absolutely jaff all for four days. I had every intention of going to see irrawaddy dolphins and taking long hikes around the island and to see waterfalls…but, just like Serendipity Beach, Don Det seemed to weave a spell of indolence and utter relaxation on me. The hot, balmy weather (reminiscent of the Philippines), the torpid, treacly waters of the Mekong oozing by without a murmur and the shady peace of a porch-hung hammock all lulled me into a state of virtual somnolence. During the day, it was all too easy to rise late and sit in the shade of a bar, whilst drinking cool (not cold!) beer and eating fried rice and coconut chicken curry. Every day seemed like a relaxed unhurried wait for the main event: sunset. Once the sun had disappeared, after painting the Mekong in rosy hues, it was obviously time to drink more cool(er) beer and chat and laugh with friends. On the last front there was certainly no shortage. Mad Irish Dave and the rest of his celtic warriors were there from Vang Vieng. Tom, Anya and Lucy also showed up after a day or two. And then of course there was Bill. And with Bill, there was ‘The Tree’.
Arriving on Don Det, Bill and I made our first (and only mistake). Ignoring the crowd of punters from our boat who started trudging up to the north end of the island, we decided to head down towards the southern end and the bridge over to Don Khon. We’d both read in our guidebooks that there was plenty of accommodation down here and were also conscious of the fact that planning daytrips from here would be far simpler. I hopped on the back of a moped with my bags and we were soon speeding along a dry, rutted, rocky track through the blazing heat of the midday sun. Having endured an ignominious fate whilst taking a similar track at speed in Serendipity, I repeatedly told the driver to slow down. Either he didn’t understand me or was oblivious to the dangers of having 130kg of me and my luggage on the back. After less than a mile and one particularly hard impact on a rock, I began to feel the telltale fishtailing of the back end of the bike. Before we came to an unpleasant end, I forced the driver to pull up and examine the dilapidated state of his, now flat, back tyre. Feeling a little sympathetic to the poor chap and realising that getting the tyre repaired would be an expensive hassle, I paid him more than the agreed fare and sent him on his way. In the centre of the island now, far from the shady banks of the river, I shouldered my two bags and began a long, sweaty walk through the heat. Not long after I’d gained the shade of the trees on the south side of the island, Bill came past on the back of another moped, grinning insanely and laughing at my profuse perspiration. He came to a stop just 100m up the road, where I could see the bridge over to Don Khon and stood there chortling as I lumbered up. Having recently read J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ (not impressed at all by the way), I had become enamoured of the expression ‘Lousy Bastard!’ It seemed fitting, at this time, to apply the moniker to Bill and would, only too soon, lead to an apt name for me. We were soon both appalled to discover that the accommodation at this end of the island seemed to be full and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves trudging back up the coast towards the end of the island we’d just vacated. Due, I’m sure, to my Englishness (sorry, Dad!), I would probably have carried on walking under the fierce glare of that sun until I’d found somewhere to stay or collapsed from exhaustion. Fortunately for me, mad as he may be, Bill is certainly no dog and he politely (!) suggested that we stop and take a load off at the first eatery we came to. The restorative powers of cold(ish) Beer Lao and fish coconut curry are impressive…particularly on the mind. While we were eating and drinking and drinking in the peaceful, idyllic view, we noticed that the proprietor of our ‘restaurant’ also owned a small boat. Loath to carry our packs any further than necessary, we offered him a good price to take us up to the other end of the island and soon found ourselves pootling upstream in our water taxi. As soon as we set foot on the landing beach at the northern end of the island, we knew we’d come to the right place. There were a couple of promising looking bars and a narrow track disappearing south, lined on either side by huge swaying palms and ramshackle huts for the lodgement of travellers. Another dead-sure sign that we were on the right track was the sight of Mad Irish Dave and the rest of the Munster Bunch languidly sipping at long-necks of Beer Lao in the shade of the bar overlooking the landing site. Although it was now a little late in the day, I was still fairly confident that we’d find somewhere to stay, minus the hassle of carrying our bags around with the Irish lads to watch over them. Bill, the more stylish traveller was intent on finding a hut somewhere on ‘Sunset Strip’. I wandered along with him for a while, becoming ever more disheartened by the total lack of vacancies. Eventually, I felt we were getting too far away from the action at ‘The Beach’ and decided to head back and over to ‘Sunrise’. Within minutes of scouring this slightly less desirable side of the island, I found the last vacant hut within 5 minutes stumble of the bar. At the outrageous price of $1 per night I had a double pallet with mosquito net, a window and door (both lockable with my own padlocks) and a porch overhanging the banks of the river with a hammock in which to park my arse. To add to this superb setting, on the near bank of the island facing me was the most enormous, beautiful, tree-like tree I think I’ve ever seen. I had found my spot. Later, it turned out, Bill had not. Owing to his generosity and kindness when I’d had no money (and also because we both found the idea hilarious!), I agreed to allow Bill to squat on my porch for the night. It would have been even more amusing to sublet my porch to him at an exorbitant mark-up (say, $1.50 a night), but that would have been just plain mean. And so the shenanigans started. There was plenty of Beer Lao quaffed that evening as we watched the sun go down and then a dark, red moon rise up over ‘The One Tree’.
As there is only a limited amount of electricity and little else in the way of entertainment on Don Det, the magic triumvirate of beer, food and sunset were the only dictates of our daily rhythms. In this sense, it was a little like being on Ibiza…but with two vital exceptions: there was no musical accompaniment to the hours from dusk til dawn…and there were no arsehole Brits Abroad in Union Jack boxers throwing up in the street. Even more so than Serendipity Beach there was this great atmosphere of relaxation and a shared feeling that we’d found one of the last, great, untouched corners of the world. Of course, Don Det is far from untouched…there were at least 300 huts just on our tip of the island; several eateries (you couldn’t call them restaurants) and bars were augmented by small shops or stalls selling essentials like candles and toilet paper; there’s a daily tourist bus-and-boat from Pakse and Don Det is already a compulsory stop-over on the overland journeys between Laos and Cambodia. With time 24hr electricity will be standard and, soon I’m sure, there will be internet cafes, widescreen TVs with DVD players and piped music. I don’t regret the inevitability of these changes…why shouldn’t the local populace have the creature comforts and standard of living afforded by opening themselves up to tourism? The great thing about Don Det, though, is that those arseholes in Union Jack boxers will never get chance to dominate the island. It’s too far in any direction to anywhere that this kind of person would conceivably go in great numbers…almost at the end of the world. And this, perhaps, is the crux of the matter…maybe the idyllic setting and warm weather are what makes Don Det so appealing…or maybe it’s just being surrounded by decent folk every day. Of course, there’s always some idiot who has to try and fix something when it ain’t broke… Some geeky Aussie bloke wandered unbidden onto my porch a little later that first evening (after the consumption of several Beer Lao’s on my part) ‘to let us know’ that ‘we’re going to have a bit of a Full Moon Party here tomorrow night’. Eager to know how this entertainment could possibly be any better than getting wrecked in hammocks and enjoying the peace and quiet, I asked him what this party would involve. His answer will forever be engraved on my mind. ‘Aw, you know…we’ll get a bit of fire goin…and we’ll have a few locals and tourists around and a bit of music…and there should be some girls about.’ This last was added in a sort of conspiratorial tone…like an added incentive to come to this ‘wicked, party, Man’. He sounded like a schoolboy trying to persuade people to come to an illicit bash while his parents were away for the weekend.
I gave him a non-committal ‘Sounds great…might see you there’ and waited for him to saunter off around the corner. The minute he was out of sight, Bill and I caught each others’ eye and promptly burst into a prolonged bout of hysterics. After 5 minutes of almost wetting my pants, I still couldn’t dry my eyes. Bill was giving me a cool, appraising stare and I asked him ‘What’s up with you, you Lousy Bastard?’ He fixed me with one mad glaring eye and said, ‘You Dumb…Drunk…Bastard!’ And that was my new name for the remainder of the week. The reason for Bill’s admonition was, of course, that I was laughing hysterically at the Aussie guy whose party was going to disturb my peace and quiet the following evening. Once Bill had explained this to me, I began to call myself Dumb Drunk Bastard and it was only another bottle of the mind tonic (Beer Lao, of course!) that enabled us to come up with the plan of an early rise the following morning to seek new lodgings. Of course the major flaw in this plan, from my point of view, was just how much ‘mind tonic’ I’d actually consumed…
I awoke groggily the next morning to discover that Bill had already vacated the hammock and that the sun was already reasonably high in the sky. I stumbled out to get some breakfast and soon bumped into Bill with a satisfied grin on his chops. He’d been up for 2 hours laying claim to all of the vacated rooms in the vicinity. So far he had options on two ‘Sunset’ huts, a swanky timber bungalow on the point and another hut on ‘Sunrise’ with even better views of ‘The One Tree’. At a grand total of $8.50 a night he now had ideal bases for each of the day’s main activities: namely, staring at ‘The One Tree’ and watching moonrise (on ‘Sunrise’), sitting lazily to watch the world and the day go by (on the point) and watching the sun sink into the Mekong (on ‘Sunset’). I went halves with him on the swanky point pad, seeing this as an ideal location to escape from the geek-party…and also having noted the cleanliness and proximity of the bathrooms. With 5 pieces of property between us, we must have been the most influential customers in Don Det’s burgeoning property market. In light of Bill’s meteoric rise from squatter to property magnate, went for celebratory lunch and beer. After lunch, Bill took me to his ‘Tree-view’ pad and I had to admit that the aspect was considerably better than mine…although marred somewhat by some poorly placed branches of a tree growing in front of Bill’s porch. Without further ado, he set to removing the offending branches…and didn’t even charge the owners for his topiary services. ;-)
When evening came, we studiously avoided going back to my original digs (still on the books, of course!) and, instead, had an excellent time with Bill and the Irish lads - all of whom, apart from Dave were due to depart for Cambodia the following morning. A man after my own heart, Dave had decided that he liked Don Det so much that he was going to stay for an extra couple of days. Having given him and the rest of the boys the lowdown on Serendipity Beach when we’d been in Vang Vieng, it was gratifying to see him getting into the spirit so soon.
We heard reports from passers-by that the Full Moon ‘Party’ consisted of a few drunk schoolboys standing around a fire with some Bob Dylan hissing feebly from a speaker...and certainly felt no compulsion to go and liven things up. Many years from now, some morose, Aussie, new-age hippie will be proudly telling the rest of the commune how he organised ‘the first ever Full Moon Party on Don Det’…and the rest of us will proudly say that we didn’t go…
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