Day 70! I know solo traveling has its ups and downs… but wow, food poisoning was a huge down (notice how I said was 😉). Today was a much needed recovery day and what a better place to do it than on a river island!

After two terrible nights of sleep, I finally had a full nights rest. I fell asleep at 8:30pm and woke up at 6:30am, a nice 10 hours, which was fine by me!

I woke up feeling like a whole new person and it appeared that my food poisoning was very much going away! This was such a relief after the 48 hours of misery I endured… However, I decided to take today slow still and not get too over zealous.

I started my morning with some journaling as I waited for the restaurant to open up so I could finally fill my stomach with healthy calories!

This homestay is such a great place to relax! It’s very calming being right on the river with beautiful scenery around. I really can’t complain about waking up to this and chilling out!

About an hour later, the homestay’s restaurant opened up and I started my morning off slow with a fruit plate and a dairy free banana smoothie.

I really wanted to go overboard with the bananas to get my fiber intake in. Google told me mango and watermelon were good as well… but citrus fruits like clementines were not, so I let my friend Charolette eat them when she joined me!

Charolette and Justine met on Don Det and hit it off so well they’re traveling some of Laos together! Unfortunately that means they’re leaving the island today to head to Pakse, Laos. The nice thing is we are all traveling north, so I’m sure I’ll run into them again!

But our adventures together weren’t over yet as Charolette needed a ride to the opposite side of the island and I offered to chauffeur her on my motorbike! So around 9:30am we headed on over.

Her ticket told her to be at the pier by 10am… but turns out it wasn’t until 11am. So we went to a nearby restaurant where I got a dairy free coconut shake to wait with her. Eventually Justine joined as well and we hung out for a little longer until it was time for them to go!

So far, the day of eating and drinking was staying down which was such a great feeling! I very much was ready to be back on the mend.

After saying my “see you laters,” I rode back to the homestay where I finally decided to take a couple pictures of the view I have coming and going over the bridge that connects Don Det and Don Khon.

I guess this is a good time to mention. I’m actually not staying on Don Det! I’m on its twin island Don Khon which is connected by a bridge!

I got back onto Don Khon and stopped off at one of the only mechanics on the island for an oil change! With my time in Hoi An, driving back to Hué, and crossing the border into Laos to head to Don Det, I had already racked up over another 1,000 kilometers on my motorbike!

My first service in Laos was quick and cheap! The oil change was only 70,000 Kip ($3.5) so I gave the mechanic the extra 30,000 ($1.5) as a tip because he serviced me on the spot! Just to compare I got oil changed in Vietnam for around 120,000 Dong, which is just about $5.

Also at the oil change I made a cute little friend who was very excited to meet me… probably more excited than me because I had no intentions on licking them back!

I then went back to the homestay where I started my afternoon off with reading my new book that I bought in Hué. It’s the 4th book in the Ballantyne series by Wilbur Smith, called The Leopard Hunts in Darkness. So far I don’t think I’m missing much by skipping this far into the series and it’s been very captivating!

Interestingly enough, there are no chapters in it and the text is rather small, so it doesn’t feel like I’m making a ton of progress. BUT, even so, I still almost knocked out 100 pages today and it was hard to put down, so I’d say I’m enjoying it thus far!

I then actually felt hungry for the first time in two days, so I decided it was time for some lunch!

After a successful breakfast, I went a little ballsier with my food choice and chanced eating a bit of protein with my meal.

I still stuck with plain rice, but they would only fry the chicken… so I went with that as well.

The flavors of real food going into my body was heavenly and I savored every bite! I took my time eating but felt a little bloated afterwards. So I went to my room for a nap to digest.

I woke up 30 minutes later to no new bowel movements which I deemed a major success! So I went back to my chair by the river and enjoyed even more reading time.

I looked up from my reading and noticed a beautiful sunset happening, but it was just out of my vision. So I put my book down and moved over a bit to enjoy the last 30 minutes of the sun setting before it went behind the trees!

Sitting in front of the sunset made me very sweaty (who knew?!), so I went back to my room for a quick shower before dinner.

I chilled out in my room after my shower until 7pm catching up on messages from friends I’ve made while traveling and texting with friends waking up from back home! I forgot about daylight savings so now my central time friends are only 12 hours behind!

I then went back across the road for dinner and went even bolder with my food choice to really test out my stomach! But before dinner was served, I started chatting with one of the homestay owners.

I’m not 100% sure on his name, but I want to say it was Dasay. We chatted about where my friends went and why I was alone. This seems to be a common question for locals when chatting with solo travelers, they think that it would be lonely… which it is at times! We also chatted about sports and it turned out he was an avid rugby fan and player. He whipped out a rugby ball and we played catch for a bit while I waited for my food!

We also chatted about my motorbiking and he was surprised I got the motorbike into the country without any problems with the police! Unfortunately he had no suggestions for getting my motorbike into Thailand, so I’ll continue to work on figuring that out.

My food arrived and I slowly ate a plate of fried vermicelli noodles with vegetables and chicken. This was definitely a little “harder to eat.” My guess is my stomachs a bit smaller because of the lack of food, but I was still able to eat 90% of it in the end.

And it appeared to not make any dents on my bowels so it ended up being a full day of eating once again! Seems like we’ll be back to the regular scheduled programming in no time!

With wanting to stick to my day of relaxation, I headed back to my room after dinner to call it an early night. It’s definitely rare for me to go to bed so early and sleep the entire night, so I definitely want to take advantage of it when I can!

Having food poisoning gave me another opportunity to really slow down and enjoy time relaxing. Just like my motorbike accident, it was another reminder to take life slow! There won’t be many points in my life where I really get to sit and do nothing and I should definitely take advantage of them when I can! Along with that, I thoroughly enjoyed taking a day to just read, especially without an upset stomach!

As long as everything goes to plan (health wise), tomorrow I’ll motorbike around the two islands and explore the multiple waterfalls and scenery that they have to share! Maybe I’ll even get lucky and see one of the famous river dolphins!

I’ve been on the island for 3 days now… I want to finally see what it has to offer!

– Elie