4000 Islands by Megan and Emma

We went to 4000 Islands yesterday...literally 4000 islands it seemed! These are islands in a part of the Mekong river. The river was murky but huge. We took a boat for a few hours to the main island where we had lunch. After lunch, we got on two motorbikes and rode to some amazing, powerful and fierce rapids.

After that, we walked to the beach where we both paddled in the Mekong river.

We felt like we were sinking, as under the water, the sand and mud suddenly dropped. After that we did some sandboarding.Sandboarding is sliding down a slope of sand with your shoes on, and being unable to stop so you run into the water! After we had finished at the beach, we went to wash our feet in the water. Six little fish came and started to bob up at the surface and kept on darting in and out of my (megans)feeti!! when we came away from the beach, we got back on the motorbikes and rode back to the boat on the other side of the island.

We then set off to look for some Irrawaddy dolphins. They are an endangered species and here is a link if you want to learn more about them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrawaddy_dolphin There are only 8 dolphins left in the Mekong, and one has recently died. We were lucky enough to have four sightings of them, although we didn't manage to get any photographs; they were up and down too quickly, and kept popping up at different spots. We found out that the dolphins can stay under the water for up to two to three minutes at a time, and stay together as a pack. We saw some people at the side of the river washing their clothes in the murky water.(Not very nice for them) The kids and babies were washing THEMSELVES in the water too! Even though we thought this wasnt very nice for them, they still looked very happy.

Something we found out about the houses in Laos is that, because it is very hot here, the houses are on stilts so the people can cook and work in shade. They practically live under the house,and only go in for sleeping.They put their vehicles under so they dont get too hot(that is if they have any!!)