Don Det, 4000 Islands

What a lovely (but also relatively expensive for SE Asia) little cluster of islands in southern Laos. My days on the Mekong were slow and spent biking, kayaking, and hanging out with dogs 💜

We took a kayak tour on International Women’s Day with Jack (England), Christina and Leah (mom and daughter from US/Denmark), and Mr. lek, the tour guide.
The tour itself was great and had down to earth authentic Laos vibes. We started off at a pretty fast pace traversing the Mekong with our tandem kayaks, and I was lucky enough to have one of the puppies on mine 😍 She chose me!!! We docked and walked around 40 minutes through fields, protecting Mekong and River (puppies) from a few locals who apparently kidnap and eat dogs 😳.

We made a stop at a smaller waterfall to swim and cross a rapid to try our luck at catching fish on the other side with our bare hands (well, at least Mr. lek got some 😅)…

We walked to a shady spot and made a fire to cook our lunch over it as a team, including making eggs in a bamboo shoot that Mr. lek quickly carved to shape. Mumpi made us chopsticks out of bamboo.

After we took our time to float along the sunset, and finally ended by cooking dinner together at Mr. Leks shop.

The tour was great, but the guide was highly problematic. Mr. Lek talked poorly about other people basically the entire tour- the Laos people, Chinese people, Jack’s girlfriend(once he’d left), and his ex wife. He spoke frequently about how his tour is superior to others and bad mouthed all the other companies in town. At best this man is deeply insecure and looks for validation from tourists who awkwardly listen, at worst he is a liability and I suspect may even be violent and unstable.

My first reaction was to have empathy because maybe today he is not himself or he is going through something really difficult… but the more space you allow for him and listen, the more fucked up it got.

To put it simply: after dinner he told us that his wife miscarried their baby and blamed her saying „she killed it“… and closed the segment about his ex by bragging about threatening to murder her because she hurt his feelings. This was on international women’s day by the way in front of a group that included 3 women. I was clearly not having it, held a short but mic dropping speech that made his genitalia recoil back into his body as he stared at his shoes in well deserved shame, and then left.
Wouldn’t be a full experience of Women’s Day without one act of indignance to put a man in his place.Read more