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Si Phan Don, otherwise known as 4000 islands is a series of small islands within the Mekong at the very southern tip of Laos. Although many islands are not inhabited some have a real backpacker vibe with bamboo huts on the waters edge and hammocks to while away the hours in. I decided this was exactly the sort of place I fancied seeing in my 32^nd year so off we headed for some R&R. It was possibly the most chilled out place I have ever been. After visiting several cafés and perusing their menus it became clear why it was just so chilled out.

We checked into a very cheap hut and in the night realised why when I woke to the sound of rats in the roof and 2 giant cockroaches on my face. From then on we assumed the position buried deep within our sleeping sack and covering as much of the face as possible. As a birthday treat Mark moved us into a lovely concrete rat free room for our final few nights.

Caz and Asa joined us for my birthday and we hired bikes and rode to an impressive waterfall on a neighbouring island. On the way back we did a bar crawl all the way back to town where we opened my lovely gifts and carried on drinking. A local shopkeeper had given me a free bottle of Whiskey so we necked shots from that which were pretty horrid but did the job. The following day we took a tour to another impressive waterfall (South-east Asia’s largest in volume apparently) and then onto view the fresh water Irawaddy dolphins. Very shy creatures but they were great to see when they did make an appearance. Slightly more entertaining was a group of young monks who were far more fascinated watching us, particularly when Mark and I shared a Beerlao directly from the bottle.