Chance encounters

30.09.2011 - 02.10.2011 28 °C
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Surely one of attractions of traveling must be the people you meet. Young, old, students, working people, hippies and plain weirdos: fascinating and always entertaining. The randomness of the people is something you are prepared for. But I was still completely dumbstruck when I met some of the people here on the laid-back island of Don Det in the Mekong on the border with Cambodia.

Don Det is a very sleepy relaxed place, where you get dirtcheap bungalows (I'm paying 20,000 kip or about 1.6 gbp / 2 eur a night) with a hammock and all there is to do is lying around, reading, drinking and watching the sunset (and watching movies at Adam's Bar).

I arrived here two days ago in the morning, and pretty quickly were gathering people for a sunset boat trip. So together with a bunch of people from the bar and a couple of beers we took off to a nearby island to walk around a bit before heading back to see the sun set from the river. Truly an excellent way to relax (when the loud engine was switched off at least).

Anyway, when we on this unknown island the group got to talking and I found out that the Dutch girl was from Utrecht as well. Suddenly a guy turns around and says in Dutch that he vaguely recognises me. Then it emerged quickly that all three of us went to the same high school! We didn't know each other then, as the guy was one year after me and the girl two years before me, but it's still uncanny. Our high school wasn't a very big school, and even in the Netherlands I very rarely meet random people who went there. But you go across the world and suddenly on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere you do. Just plain weird