Laos’ Four Thousand Islands – a remote backpacker idyll that is as unspoilt as 1960s Thailand, for now
- The Mekong river archipelago is all about kicking back in a hammock and finding your inner hippie
- Often, people visit on their way somewhere else, only to find Si Phan Don was what they were looking for all along
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,” proclaims a gaily painted sign to arriving guests treading barefoot across creaking wooden floorboards at the popular and exceptionally chilled-out Mama Tanon Guesthouse. “It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
No sooner has that slightly disturbing imagery sunk in than you are bombarded with more life lessons. “The earth has music for those who listen,” reads one sign. “Travelling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller,” declares another. “Let your smile change the world. Don’t let the world change your smile,” advises the next.
It’s a beguiling, bewitching backwater with a sleepy charm guaranteed to bring out your inner hippie; its very name leaves you a little spaced out. Islands in a landlocked country?
In fact, the Four Thousand Islands are an archipelago of mostly tiny, uninhabited river islets in southern Laos, where the Mekong broadens out to 14km, the widest stretch on its 4,350km journey from the Tibetan plateau to the South China Sea.
