Khong Island is divided between two main settlements. Muang Saen occupies the western shore, closer to Thailand. Muang Khong holds the eastern shore, facing the deeper channel of the Mekong, and serves as the island's de facto capital and the regional seat of government. Between the two villages, 19 smaller settlements are scattered across the island's interior and waterfront. The economy runs on fishing. The Mekong at this latitude is broad and generous, and the island's communities have worked its waters for generations, using longtail boats — the narrow, engine-powered craft characteristic of mainland Southeast Asian rivers — to move between shore and channel and island to island.

Khong Island has paved roads and reliable electricity — amenities that stand out in a part of Laos where rural infrastructure is often limited. The explanation locals offer is straightforward: Khamtai Siphandon, who served as President of Laos from 1998 to 2006 and as General Secretary of the ruling party for two decades, has a residence on the island. The second half of his surname, Siphandon, is the Lao word for the archipelago itself — a family connection to this place that predates his political career. The quality of roads and power on Don Khong is widely attributed to the attention this connection brought.

What makes Khong Island distinctive is less any single landmark than the totality of its river setting. The Mekong here is not just a boundary or a resource; it is the organizing fact of daily life. The fishermen who set out before dawn, the monks who receive alms along the village paths, the children who swim in the channels — all of them operate in relation to the river and its rhythms. Buddhist temples are scattered across the island, their whitewashed stupas visible through the trees at regular intervals. The pace on Don Khong is deliberate. The island has no urgency about it, which is part of what draws travelers who arrive expecting to stay a day and find themselves staying several.

Don Khong is the largest and most settled of the Si Phan Don islands, but it functions as an entry point to the wider archipelago rather than a destination in itself. Smaller islands downstream — including Don Det and Don Khon — attract visitors looking for a slower pace still, where the main activities are watching the Mekong move and waiting for the Irrawaddy dolphins that occasionally surface in the deeper channels. Khong District, of which Don Khong is the center, sits in Champasak Province in southern Laos, close to the Cambodian border. The Mekong here is approaching the falls at Khon Phapheng, the widest waterfall in Southeast Asia by volume, just downstream. The island knows it is not the edge of anything — it sits at the center of a river system that runs from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea.