Loafing in Laos

15/5/2007 - 20/6/2007

Miraculously I made the bus to Vientiene with all my luggage, and with various breaded products to eat on the journey purchased by Dave as I threw things in bags, shrieking intermittently.

I said my goodbyes to Dave, got in the taxi to the bus station, got on the bus at the station and looked around in horror. The rusty, rattling deathtrap that would be my transport to Vientiene for the next 24 hours was filled with people, sacks of potatoes and onions, and random crap piled up at the back. Our bags were piled up on the roof under a tarp, in the driving rain, but the fact that water kept dripping from the roof onto the passengers in the aisle seats did nothing to reassure us that our bags would be dry tomorrow. The only seats available had no leg room at all, as it was taken up with various root vegetables, so I realised I would be spending the next 24 hours with my knees up to my chest with the window open and letting in rain, in order to disperse the smell of potatoes, onions and, bizarrely, cabbages (I've lived in Boston for 18 years - I should know. Although, saying that, it could have been traveller feet).

After a couple of hours my legs and bum were so stiff I could barely move them, so my neighbour (a lovely girl from Holland who fascinatingly studied at a Steiner school, but sadly didn't watch many films so was unable to play my current favourite bus game - 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon) convinced me to part with my valuables bag and put it in the overhead racks so that I could move my feet about a bit. At one point the bus turned a corner so sharply that luggage actually fell off the rack, thankfully landing on the floor, not a person (also, thankfully it was from the other side of the bus to my bag with my beautiful camera in it). At about midnight we stopped at a restaurant and took 8 more people onto the bus (seven of them sat in the aisle), and then half an hour later we stopped and picked up 20 sacks of ammonium sulphate, so the aisle people had to get off while the sacks were piled up in the aisles, and then lie on the sacks for the rest of the journey. I think I speak for all of the backpackers when I say that we were not overly impressed. It wasn't so bad for me as I knew it was going to be a rough journey, but some of the people had been offered a nice sleeper bus instead, had paid twice the normal price for a pleasant journey, and were still put on the same bus. Never, ever trust a travel agent in Hanoi. They chat shit more than my students.

The following morning (after about 3 1/2 winks) we crossed the border into Laos after a lengthy drive up into the dramatic, mist-shrouded mountains that divide the two countries. I had been organised enough to get my visa in advance (put another way, you could argue that I'd been duped by a Hanoi travel agent who convinced me that you couldn't get 30 day visas on the border, only 15 day ones, and I should buy a visa from her for a very good price, honestly), so I sat around taking photos of the enormous moths in the mountains while everyone else dealt with red tape. The only eventful moment came when a girl that I was chatting to threw loads of litter on the ground saying to her boyfriend that she was doing as the natives do. I pointed out as politely and gently as I could that that didn't make it ok, and she snapped back at me "Yes it does". I started picking up her rubbish, at which point she demanded to know what I was doing. I pointed out the bin less than 10m away from her, and demonstrated just how easy it is to walk over to a bin and put rubbish in it. She snapped "You don't have to throw my rubbish away for me", picked up the rest of her rubbish and put it in the bin. I held back from replying as I'd clearly made my point. I just don't understand why people want to come to one of the most pristine environments on earth, just to muck it up. It's one thing to drop litter in a city (not that I condone this), where the streets are already scummy and someone is employed to clean the streets, but it's another to do so in the middle of some of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen.

Annoyingly, just as we were getting back on the bus I noticed a bus saying Hanoi-Pakse, the place I had been intending to travel to the following day, not realising I could do the journey in one go without detouring to Hanoi. Bloody Hanoi travel agents could have told me.

At some point in the early afternoon, by which time the temperature difference between Laos and Vietnam was making itself obvious and we were sweating like pigs, the bus from hell tackled an incline, slowed until it was inching its way up, stopped, and then started rolling backwards. The engine couldn't cope with the combined weight on board, and the incline, so the passengers were herded off the bus and told to walk up the hill, while the bus just carried the potatoes, onions, ammonium sulphate, luggage and random crap. Even without the passengers, it still took rolling backwards down the hill in order to have a running start when the bus hit the hill, and several passengers pushing the bus before it made it past the steep bit.

Eventually, after we had been stuck on the cattle transporter for 24 hours, the bus finally rolled into Vientiane. My fellow travellers and I united against the tuk-tuk drivers trying to scam us for steep fares, and left the bus station en masse (from the look on the face of the tuk-tuk driver, that may have been the first time that not one person who'd just arrived in Laos was foolish enough to pay 5 times the normal price for a lift into town), as after the journey we'd had, none of us were mad-keen on the idea of bending over in order to be shafted again.

We found a reasonably priced tuk-tuk in seconds and headed into Vientiane - capital of Laos and affectionately known as Asia's biggest village.

The contrast between the hassle, hustle and bustle of Hanoi and the serenity of Vientiane was immediately striking. In the middle of the most touristy area, motos and tuk-tuks would amble past in no apparent hurry. Vendors and passers-by would shout out "Sabadee" (hello), I'd look over with an expression of deep mistrust (after the horrors of Hanoi), wondering what their ulterior motive was, only to realise that they were saying hello for hello's sake. They were just being friendly.

I found myself a hotel, discovered that the tarp had leaked on my bag, and all of my photos of my family and the picture I had been drawing of Steve were drenched. I fought to stay calm, found space to dry everything and then went out for dinner and treated myself to a rather delicious (but extremely expensive) bowl of pasta before collapsing in bed.

I had been intending to spend the day travelling to Pakse, and then on to Si Phan Don an island archipelago in the middle of the Mekong river in the far south of Laos, near the Cambodian border. However, I couldn't be arsed, so I spent the best part of the day procrastinating on facebook and printing off the manuscript of a book that Antony (Maz's boyfriend) had recently written.

Eventually I managed to get packed and get myself to the bus station, where I paid an exorbitant 13 dollars for a VIP bus (the King of buses apparently), the main perks of which turned out to be a meal (that I couldn't eat) and a TV (in Thai). I did, however, have enough room to stretch my legs out (a huge relief after my last bus journey), and the ride was smooth enough that I decided to have an experimental read, to see if it made me feel sick.

Three hours and a few hundred pages later I had finished the book and found that I had been so engrossed that I hadn't even noticed the ride getting bumpier, let alone felt queasy because of it. I'd highly recommend "Educated Guess" by Antony Bennison to anyone. Particularly if they like crime novels or want to cure themselves of motion sickness

I spent the rest of the evening watching the forests of Laos roll past, offering me glimpses of the milky way between trees until Karine Polwart lulled me to sleep.

I awoke to find that the bus had arrived in Pakse and that I had dribbled on my shoulder. I wiped my shoulder, grabbed my bags and hauled them off the bus to be greeted by several different people trying to convince me that their bus/tuk-tuk was the only one that wasn't trying to rip me off. I followed the cheapest offer, got on a bus, paid the guy for my ticket, waited while he went off to get change and then shouted out of the window as the bus conveniently drove off before I got my change. Bastard.

What was supposed to be a 3 hour journey turned out to be a 5 hour one as the local bus stopped at every hamlet, shack or barn along the way to let people on and off. At one point we waited for over 50 minutes for a couple to reach the bus route on their tuk-tuk, unfortunately without the bus driver letting us in on the fact that we'd be there for a while. Eventually I got fed up of waiting, got off the bus, found a loo, found some food (banana fritters for only 5p each!!!), and then returned, relieved to find the bus still there.

As it turned out I couldn't eat 7 banana fritters on my own (I did try), so I went up and down the bus giving them away and making new friends. When we arrived at the port to take us across to the islands, we discovered that the price for the short boat trip had tripled in the 2 years since the last lonely planet had come out. We spent 20 minutes wandering around to all the boat captains, only to discover that they had formed some sort of price-fixing cartel. I don't mind paying a bit more to ensure that producers and traders have a profit margin that they can live on, but this just takes the piss.

Eventually we caved, as we weren't willing to swim to the islands. When we arrived on sunrise boulevard (a street lined with restaurants, bungalows and tour agencies) I went looking for a bungalow for Jennifer, Flik (two girls that I had bonded with over banana fritters and extortionate boat fares) and myself. It took a bit of searching in order to find the path to the much quieter sunset strip (lets face it - we were far more likely to be awake to appreciate the sunset than the sunrise) where I located a double and a single room in bamboo huts with huge verandas stretching out over the Mekong river, which you could appreciate the stunning views of from the hammocks. And, because sunset strip is harder to find, the bungalows were much cheaper (we paid less than a pound a night each). We dumped our bags in our rooms, arranged the hammocks so that we could chat and play cards, and spent the evening engaging in girly gossip and giggling, playing cards by candlelight (there's only electricity for about 3 hours in the early evening), watching lightning flashing in the distance and acquainting ourselves with the enormous gecko that seems to think the bungalow belongs to him, regardless of who pays for it.

The following day, we had intended to be organised and book ourselves on a kayaking trip for the day. Unfortunately, when I went to research the prices, it turned out that, once again, the cost of tourist facilities had risen dramatically in recent years, so we decided not to blow our budget on a kayaking trip, but to laze around and play cards instead. We spent most of the day in our hammocks, continuing our activities from the night before. In the evening we watched a rather dramatic lightning storm in the distance from the comfort of our hammocks. I spent a frustrating half hour trying (and failing) to get a picture of the lightning reflected in the Mekong. I taught Flik and Jennifer how to play San Juan, and Flik taught us a game that she'd picked up on her travels, while Jennifer mocked me, doing impressions of me talking about Dave, which apparently I'd been doing quite a lot (I was missing him, alright?) in a Matt-Damon-in-Team-America voice. Hmmmph

The following day we went forbreakfast at a bakery that we had heard about on the previous evening, when the owner had done his daily munchie delivery run around the island. I had an absolutely delicious pumpkin burger and tried not to watch obviously when Flik flirted with an Israeli guy she'd met on the bus. When we went to pay, I only had US dollars, but the owner quoted me a rubbish exchange rate, and then tried to convince me that it was the value of the dollar in kip. When I told him the exchange rates we'd received so far on the island, he told me I was a liar, and became quite rude. What a shame that the best food on the island is made by a cunt with no customer service skills.

Jennifer and I went for the cheap alternative to exploring by kayak and hired bikes instead, cycling along the rocky paths covering Don Det, until we reached the bridge crossing over to Don Khon, where we made our way to Tat Somphamit - the biggest waterfall (by volume) in SE Asia. It was absolutely magnificent, the thundering sound of water filled our ears, and made us need the toilet. We went for a quick, refreshing swim in a pool near the bottom, bought ourselves fantas and made our way back to our bungalows through the midday heat. I collapsed into my hammock and vowed to leave it as little as possible for my remaining time on the island.

The following day I packed at the crack of dawn and headed back north to Pakse, hoping that I would make it to Pakse on the money I had, before I had to resort to changing a travellers cheque (outside of the big cities, and particularly on islands in the middle of the mekong, exchange rates can be pretty poor). I found somewhere to dump my bags for the day, e-mailed Dave to tell him I'd be in Vientiane the following day, and then found myself somewhere for lunch. I decided I had better change money now before I did a trip out to the Bolaven Plateau to see waterfalls and coffee plantations. Unfortunately the bank was closed - I stood there for quite some time with my face screwed up in concentration before I managed to work out that it was Sunday, and all banks in town would be closed. I then went round all the posh hotels, hoping that one of them would change travellers cheques. It turned out that the only one who had the facilities to change travellers cheques only did so for guests. I panicked for a while (I'd already told Dave I'd be in Vientiane the following day, he was unlikely to check his e-mail again before he left Hanooi on the 24 hour bus, and would be expecting me), then decided that stressing out wasn't going to change the situation, and since there was nothing I could do, I'd be much better off enjoying the remains of the day sitting by a waterfall.

I took a songthaew east from Pakse and walked to the top of the enormous Tad Fan falls. Sadly it was too wet and slippery to chance the climb to the bottom, so I had to content myself with taking lots of photos from the top instead. I didn't have time to see coffee plantations, so I went back to the road, took some photos of some

gorgeous kids who really got into it and kept running and jumping around, then running over to see my photos. Eventually I got tired and found a shop to sit in front of and wait for the songthaew. The lady who owned the shop came and sat next to me for the next hour, periodically looking down the road. Eventually a man came along who spoke some English, and he tols me that the last songthaew went 2 hours beforehand. Thankfully he managed to find a friend of a friend for me to get a lift into town with. He dropped me off at a restaurant, I had my dinner, and then went to the nearest backpacker hotel in order to find some mug to take pity on me and lend me money.

Luckily I actually managed it - a muscular, tattoed, loud German lesbian called Smartie happened to be heading to Vientiane that night too, and she agreed to lend me the 14 dollars for the bus ticket if she could hold onto my passport until the banks opened. I gave a great big sigh of relief and went to the bus station with Smartie and two other women.

The bus that Smartie had bought her ticket for was a sleeper bus with beds on it. This sounded marvellous until we realised that it was two to a bed (except for my bed, I was on the orgy bed for five at the back). Thankfully the bus wasn't full, so we managed to avoid squeezing up in a bed with a stranger, just three of us on a bed for five -myself, Smartie's American friend (whose name I've predictably forgotten), and a Laotian guy.

I slept like a baby all the way to Vientiane, and woke to find myself at the bus station. We organised a tuk-tuk into town, went our seperate ways to get accomodation, met up for breakfast, money changing and debt repayments, and then went our seperate ways.

I spent most of my day in the internet cafe, ostensibly doing some research into a school that were interviewing me the following week, but in reality procrastinating on facebook and killing time until Dave arrived in the evening.

Dave arrived to find me unfortunately suffering from a bit of a dodgy tummy, so he spent the evening looking after me and getting me take-away. He did manage to find the best baguette in the world - gouda cheese inside the most wonderful bread - despite its purple colour.

The following day neither of us were feeling particularly active, so our main tasks for the day were to come up with some sort of a vague plan for what to do in Laos, and to locate somewhere to have a massage and laos herbal sauna. In the end we opted for the facilities at Wat Sok Pa Luang - the massage was just blissful - my first massage in over a month (my neglect of my once-a-week massage routine is shocking and I will endeavour to never ignore it again), but the sauna was just wonderful - in fact it's more like a steam room in a wooden shack, but instead of the room stinking of stale sweat, as most saunas and steam rooms do, this one smelt of the herbs they put in the steaming water. It was just wonderful.

On Tuesday we actually managed to get off our arses and head north to Vang Vieng - the backpacker centre of Laos and home to the ubiquitous Friends TV bar. We got off the bus, decided that we (read Dave) didn't need a tuktuk and could walk into town, we (read me) found a gorgeous hotel and a spotless room with a balcony overlooking the river and the crazy karst formations beyond - the most wonderful view I'd ever had from a hotel room (it has been beaten since). We wandered around town checking out the TV bars and banana pancake vendors. When we found an empty TV bar we convinced the staff to let us watch some of the pirate DVDs that we'd bought in Vietnam, but so far been unable to post due to silly regulations about posting illegal items. By the end of the night the staff were sitting on the cushions behind us, trying to persuade us that we had time to watch one more episode before they shut the bar, twitching while they said it. We promised them that we would return the next day (with Prison Break).

The following day we completely failed to get out of bed early in order to allow ourselves time to float along the Nam Song river in tractor tyres at a leisurely pace. Instead we greeted the world outside in the early afternoon, arranged our tubes, were dropped off a few miles out of town, got into our swimming gear and made it about 100m before we stopped (by calling out to a guy who pulled us in with the help of a pole) at a makeshift bar (some planks of wood and a crate of Beer Lao) with a zip-line next to it that went into the river. We bought a bottle and then made full use of the zip-line, before we eventually managed to drag ourselves far away to the rope swing about 30m further downriver. We dutifully bought another Beer Lao in order to use the rope swinging facilities free of charge. I went first, stood on the platform, then made the mistake of looking down. I kept reminding myself that if it was Steve, he'd have jumped without hesitation (and probably would have turned himself upside down and dangled from the handlebars by his feet). It still took another 3 minutes for me to actually jump, and when I did I wimped out and let go at the bottom of the swing, dropping an enormous height of, ooooh, one metre into the water. Dave was not overly impressed with my efforts, so he showed me how it should be done (I'm not sure whether to refer to him as precocious, arrogant, or just fucking irritating at this point) and then told me to do it again and again in an increasingly patronising tone of voice, each time telling me how far from the highest point I was. Eventually I got fed up and we ran out of free swings, got back in our tubes and floated downriver. This should have been a relaxing activity, but Dave and I were too busy snapping at each other to notice.

Eventually we came to "The Big One" - a trapeze swing that starts on a platform about 10m (about the height of a house) up and drops over a particularly deep bit of the river. Dave had a couple of goes (and I tried and failed to get a decent photo). Eventually I decided to go up and have a look (Dave said he didn't think I'd be able to do it - I'm still not sure if he was continuing to be a wanker or if he was trying to use reverse psychology on me - a tactic that would normally work if it wasn't so fucking terrifyingly high). I stood at the top, looking down, holding on to the trapeze, making unintelligible squeaky noises of panic, while the guy who ran the trapeze repeatedly told me to go in an increasingly irritated voice. I tried thinking of Steve throwing himself off the platform and I tried closing my eyes and jumping, but my legs just would not do it. When the world was spinning so fast that I could no longer separate solid ground from river, and my legs had turned to jelly I gave up and SLOWLY climbed back down the ladder to an unimpressed looking Dave. It's funny how someone else's disapproval is ten times more irritating when it mirrors your own disappointment in yourself.

We carried on our lazy journey down the Nam Song, stopping again when a drunk girl convinced us to take pity on the owners of a bar that didn't have a rope swing, and therefore didn't get much business. After more Beer Lao and some papaya we coasted down the river, discovering along the way the delights of river-waltzing - holding hands and swinging each other round while floating in tubes.

We eventually made it to the pick-up spot, decided against floating into town as it was getting dark and I had no burning desire to be eaten alive by insects. We caught an overpriced tuktuk back into town after failing to haggle the guy down, showered and changed, and then went back to the TV bar for our daily Prison Break fix, with the staff sitting on the edge of their seats behind us, wide-eyed as junkies behind the locked door in a pharmacy.

The following day was less exciting as my diligence at filling in job application forms in Vietnam had finally paid off and I had a phone interview with Westwood language college. Sadly my throat felt like it had been sandpapered in my sleep and I sounded like a cross between Barry White and Chroistopher Walken (in squeaky moments), probably due to screaming on various rope swings and zip-lines the day before. I spent an extremely exciting day preparing for my interview and making Dave ask me practice questions and then snapping at him if they weren't the ones I wanted him to ask (has he no psychic abilities? Honestly...). Just before the interview I rang home on the best line I had found in Vang Vieng the previous day, and discovered that it had gone all crackly overnight. I did a lightning speed run around Vang Vieng and located a half-decent line and phoned the school, accutely aware of the episode of Friends playing next door (the one where Mr Heckles dies). Amazingly I got the job and I accepted within seconds, relieved to not have to fill in any more application forms.

Dave and I headed back to our TV bar (running into Smartie on the way - the loud, tattoed, German lesbian), to discover someone else had had the nerve to start watching something other than Prison Break. We located another empty bar, put Prison Break on and celebrated my acquisition of a job with Beer Lao and Malibu cocktails.

The next day we had booked ourselves onto a day long kayaking trip on Smartie's recommendation, so we actually managed to get out of bed at a reasonable hour (i.e. before our friends and family back in England). We grabbed a couple of sandwiches for breakfast and boarded a pick-up van. The first stop was the 500m long Tham Nam cave. We donned head torches sat our asses in tubes and pulled ourselves through the cave with a rope. The guide decided that our trip needed a musical accompaniement and he started singing what sounded almost like Gregorian chants. Whatever it was it sounded eery in this enormous cave. When the rope ran out, we hooked our feet into the next person along's tube and paddled in a long caterpillar through the depths of the caves, staring at the enormous abysses that opened above us and to the sides. At the end of the caves the guide smeared mud from the cave walls over our faces, and then we turned around and paddled back, to be greeted by sunlight that was far too bright, and gorgeous butterflies and dragonflies flitting across the surface of the water.

We headed back to the van, stopping at a cave filled with Buddha images along the way, and then were dropped off at the river with our kayaks. Dave and I shared a tandem and set off downriver, splashing the guides at every possible opportunity (they started it! They kept speeding up to us, overtaking, sending gallons of water into the air with every stroke, all perfectly aimed at us while speeding away from us shouting "Sorry" in unconvincing voices). After an hour or two the sky began to darken and soon the first lightning was visible on the horizon. We weren't worried at first as we were too far away to hear the thunder. A few minutes later (by which time we were completely drenched) a particularly dramatic bolt of lightning that went across the sky almost horizontally was quickly followed by an enormous clap of thunder, and we suddenly became very aware that we were sitting on water paddling with metal poles. We made our way to the bar next to the big one again, bought beers and hid under one of the thatched huts, watching other people braving the trapeze. Dave had a couple of goes and I got chatting to one of the girls on our kayaking trip. She persuaded me to have another go, so we climbed to the top and she stood behind me while I held onto the trapeze, tried to get the world to stop spinning, kissed Steve's bracelet and...

...suddenly bugger me, sweet Jesus christ I was flying through the air at a speed no human being should ever reach. I'm told I set both the scream volume and pitch record for the day. I waited until a second after the lowest point (but that wasn't very far through the up-swing as it was such a big one), let go and hit the water. I was soooo proud of myself for actually doing it. Once I'd swum to the side of the river I dragged myself out and watched my new found friend (let's call her Zelda for the sake of not calling her Thingummyjig) Zelda do a spectacular swing, while cheering her on. When she emerged from the water, we rushed back to the ladder, went up once again and jumped once again. The way your stomach just disappears for the first few seconds as you freefall towards the water is just exhilarating. Brilliant.

I jumped a total of 4 times, each time getting a bit higher on the up-swing before letting go and dropping into the water below (although apparently at no point did I let go "at the right moment"). Eventually I'd had enough and Dave and I got into our kayak and paddled furiously to catch up with the others (we completely failed). We arrived back in Vang Vieng, went back to our hotel, showered, dried, warmed up, and then found a TV bar for our nightly hit.

The following morning we got up early and dragged our luggage back to the bus stop next to the market, intending to catch a non-touristy (therefore cheaper) bus to Luang Prabang, but ended up paying through the nose for a bus packed with tourists as it looked like the only buses between the two most touristy towns in Laos were tourist buses. Sadly the bus didn't have a toilet, and the driver didn't really seem terribly concerned about stopping in places where the females on the bus could find a quiet spot to piss, the bus kept stopping and the men would pile off and do their business on the roadside. After a bus journey that was far longer than we were expecting, we arrived in Luang Prabang and Dave found us a sweet little double room with attached bathroom for one pound each per night. We dumped our stuff, showered and headed out to wander the streets of Luang Prabang, stopping to admire temples and the goods on sale (Lao textiles, opium pipes, mulberry bark paper lanterns, paintings etc) at the market stall lining the streets as far as the eye could see. We stopped and had a bite to eat at a restaurant on the banks of the Mekong before wandering some more and then retiring.

The following morning Dave and I decided to do a walking tour of the temples of Luang Prabang. We made it as far as the second temple before Dave got fed up of paying the entrance fees, so I explored the spectacular Wat Xieng Thong on my own

for a while, then left to find Dave lying asleep on the pavement by the entrance. We walked another few hundred metres, stopped for rest and refreshment and a streetside stall selling fanta under the blessed shade of a parasol. We realised that we were melting rather than flagging and gave up on the walking tour having seen about a fifth of the temples we had intended to see, and located "Le Cinema" - a building filled with TV and DVD (and most importantly - fan) equipped rooms with cushions of varying shapes and sizes scattered everywhere. We're such culture vultures. Dave and I decided to give Prison Break a miss and detox for a bit, and watched the Inside Man instead, largely because it had the most ridiculous, nonsensical automatically translated description on the back.

After a thoroughly enjoyable bit of ridiculous escapism, Dave and I went off to do various jobs for the evening - mainly centred around browsing the markets, the internet and phoning family, and then we succumbed and watched Prison Break (again). Going cold turkey rarely works.

The following day, Dave (in a moment of madness) decided that he wanted to cycle to see the Kuang Si waterfall, so he set off early to cycle the 32km there, while I killed the time before the bus by going for a hot stone massage and herbal sauna (for three pounds fifty - bargain). The hot stone massage was one of those things that I couldn't decide if I thought sounded wonderful or sounded like a big load of bollocks, but at that price, now was the time to find out.

As it turned out, it was one of the most wonderfully relaxing massages I've ever had. I spent most of it in a blissful state between sleep and waking, and they practically had to roll me out of there.

I caught the bus to the songthaew to the waterfall and went off to look for Dave, trying to not be distracted by the orphaned bear cubs and tigers kept in enclosures on the way. Eventually (after describing him to various people) I found him lounging by the side of one of the pools at the bottom of the falls having been for a swim. We took some pictures of the rather stunning falls, ran into Smartie yet again, and then I decided to climb the path to see the second tier of the falls and the top. Dave couldn't be arsed after the bike ride, so I left him at the bottom.

The climb to the top became progressively more steep and slippery, with fewer steps and handrails as I climbed higher and higher, and as I began to realise that this may take a bit longer than the ten minutes I had told Dave. I got to the top, realised I couldn't see much, and then turned back to go to the middle tier. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn early on, but by the time I was sure that this wasn't the way I had come, and wasn't even a path, I'd decended 50m or so, and I couldn't be bothered to turn back, so I just continued steeply downhill, holding onto tree roots as I slithered on my arse, frequently turning back and finding another route when I came to a sheer drop. I have to say the fact that it was now pissing it down with rain didn't make my off-piste adventure any easier. Eventually I managed to find my way back to the path (with huge relief) at the middle tier, but the rain was so heavy that I didn't dare get my camera out. The views were spectacular though - take my word for it.

I reached the bottom to find a relieved looking Dave, explained why I'd taken so long, and then went for a swim in the lovely cool pools in the rain.

Dave decided not to bother cycling back and he loaded his bike onto the back of the songthaew and we headed back to Luang Prabang for an evening of Prison Break and shopping in the markets.

The following morning we headed to the last cashtill we were going to see for some time, took out a vast quantity of money, which was then summarily shoved into my camera bag. We caught a songthaew to the bus station, and I opened my bag to get my camera out without thinking. Suddenly I became aware that the pieces of paper rapidly peeling away in quick succession and flying out of the back of the speeding songthaew , were in fact our money. I scramed "Oh no" and banged on the roof of the songthaew for it to stop, was Dave gradually realised what I'd done this time. He jumped out of the songthaew to round up the notes that were lying on the road, before the locals did, while I collected them from the floor of the van. Amazingly, we actually managed to get them all back. Dave still hasn't let it drop though, and still refers to me throwing money around with a smirk on his face.

I realise that this is most unlike me, but in the interest of actually posting my next blog entry before I come home, I'm going to skimp over the next few days. Basically from Luang Prabang we went to Luang Nam Tha intending to go trekking, but discovered that the prices had gone up exponentially since the last LP, and I was none too impressed with the place after I discovered that the craft market had closed down now that it was low season, and on top of that I had an extremely bad massage from someone who was clearly making it up as she went along (she didn't seem to be aware of the maxim: around the spine - good, ON the spine - bad), so we decided to go a bit further into the NP, to Vieng Phukka, to see if we could find a cheaper trek there. We couldn't. In fact, they tried to charge us more for the same trek, and when we pointed this out, they suddenly managed to locate the official price list printed out, rather than the hastily, handwritten, rip-off price list they'd been showing us up until then. Between not trusting the guy, not being sure we had enough time to get to Huay Xai for the Gibbon Experience trek that we'd booked, and me developing a dodgy tummy, we decided to give it a miss and spent one evening in Vieng Phukka sitting on the veranda, drawing, watching the fireflies dancing around in an ever changing constellation, and going to the squat toilet by candlelight. Oh, and at some point I pulled a face at Dave, crossed my eyes and felt something go funny in my right eye (the one that I smacked with my pois in December) - unfortunately this meant I couldn't see very well for the next few days and I kept seeing floaters (I apologise for ruining any ophthalmological suspense here, but for the sake of my parents I'll skip ahead a bit and say that my vision is back to normal now, I had my eye checked out properly in Bangkok and I definitely don't have a detached retina, or anything else to worry about occularly).

The next day we waited around for ages for a songthaew to Huay Xai on the Thai border. After an hour and a half of eating rice cakes, one finally turned up, and we made our way along the surprisingly reasonably surfaced road (except in one place where some rocks were blocking the path of the road, and everyone who tried to move them died, so the authorities decided to change the path of the road, and they're still working on it. Damn those cursed rocks). When we eventually arrived, Dave found us a room and we hung around Huay Xai, killing time until we could go for our pre-departure briefing.

The Gibbon experience is kind of an ecotourism trek crossed with 3 days in an adventure playground. It's a project run by the villagers that live in Bokeo NP, the tourists trek into the jungle and then spend three days and two nights sleeping in treehouses and zip-lining around the park - through the forest canopy and across valleys, sometimes over 100m above the ground. To say I was getting excited about the next few days is somewhat of an understatement.

Dave and I went back to our hotel room and promptly had another one of our daft arguaments, so daft in fact that I can't even remember what it was about. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to get some space from each other, so Dave gave me vague directions to a restaurant he had been told about by a fellow traveller, and we arranged to meet there later. Unfortunately it turned out that three restaurants matched his directions, so Dave and I spent the rest of the evening trying to find each other at different times and running between restaurants and our hotel room, constantly missing each other. Eventually we located each other in our hotel room and apologised to each other.

The following morning we got up early in order to set off on the trek, with me hoping that the roads were dry enough to drive on, but with Dave hoping that the roads would be flooded so that we'd have to trek for 7 hours (nutcase that he is). I spent most of the journey chatting animatedly with Natalie - a loud, excitable DJ who jabbered so much that my head span and I wondered whether to offer her suncream for her tongue. I took an instant liking to her, and did my best to match her whittering rate. Everyone else on the minibus just sat there looking exhausted as we drained all the energy on the bus. Eventually we ran out of juice and listened to some of Natalie's favourite electronica tracks on her mp3 player, and I'm sure intensely irritated half of the people on the bus as we reached for the lazers. Thankfully the minibus made it all the way to a village at the edge of the NP, at which point we unloaded ourselves and our bags and walked into the jungle for the next hour or two.

We eventually stopped at a bamboo hut and collapsed in exhausted heaps, guzzling water. As I gradually became rehydrated, and my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I realised that what I had initially mistaken for a dog was in fact a baby bear - Paula, and it was ripping apart someone's hat. My camera came out and stayed out for a while. When I sat down, the bear trundled over to me, put it's paws on my lap, and promptly went straight for my nipple. I shrieked and shoved her off me, at which point the poor confused thing went for Dave's. When it turned out that Dave wasn't lactating, and wasn't very happy about the bear trying to make him, Paula came back to me, went for my arm, and just sat there suckling for the next few minutes. I was too busy laughing to push her off (apparently Paula has been doing

this for comfort since she was orphaned by poachers). Eventually I extracted my arm from Paula's paws and we were all shown how to get into our zip-lining harnesses by "other Dave" the Australian volunteer instructor and general-all-round-nice-guy of the project, and then taken up to our first line into treehouse one, where half of the group would be staying that night. We took it in turns to attach our rollers and our safeties to the line, did our checks and then ran off the platform shrieking as we zipped along the line at great speed, high above the forest floor. Sadly I didn't have enough momentum and had to turn around and pull myself hand over hand the last 20m to the treehouse. I wasn't scared when I ran off the platform or when I was zipping, but I found the slow progress of me pulling myself along high up in the canopy terrifying, and was suddenly aware of how high up I was.

We sat down in the treehouse as the staff boiled up some water so that everyone could have a cuppa. After an hour or so we divided ourselves up between the treehouses (Dave and I got the honeymoon suite - the only double - bonus!) and were taken on a series of increasingly high, long and exhilarating zip-lines to our rooms for the next 2 nights.

The treehouse huts are wonderful little open sided wooden rooms about 30m above the ground equipped with mattresses, mosquito nets, showers, sinks, long drop toilets, camping stoves, big sealed boxes filled with fruit and nuts for when you got peckish, coffee making facilities, candles and lanterns, amazing sunrise views out over the jungle (and frequently cloud) covered hills of the NP, and venetian blinds for when it got dark. We got to and from the treehouse via a zip-line on a nearby hill.

Once we we had investigated the treehouse at length, we put our harnesses back on, attached them to the line and jumped out of our treehouse. Most people said that they found looking down when they were on a line high above the forest floor scary. I never did, I just found it exciting. What scared the crap out of me was the moment when I had obsessive compulsively checked my harness five times over, intensely annoyed Dave by asking him three times whether it all looked right to him, and there was nothing left to do but run off the platform 50m above the ground, hoping that I'd got it right and I wasn't about to plummet screaming to my death. Thankfully I never did that, but the moment between stepping off the platform, and feeling the line take your weight always made my stomach turn.

We did the circuit of the fastest, highest lines a couple of times and then headed off to treehouse three to say hi to Natalie, her girlfriend Sam, Woody - an unassuming Australian guy who I liked more and more as time went on, Abby and Scott, the other people in our minibus who seemed lovely, but sadly I didn't spend much time with. Thankfully they didn't seem to have taken an intense dislike to me after the noise Natalie and I had made on the journey, and Dave had a quick cuppa before we had to rush back before sunset, when we weren't allowed on the lines. Dave and I spent the evening playing cards, trying new fruit and listening to the sounds of the jungle.

The following morning I woke up at the crack of dawn after a fitful nights' sleep due to the numerous (and very itchy) bites I had sustained the previous day. I really didn't care though, because in the distance towards treehouse 3 I could hear gibbons singing to one another. I got up and threw some clothes and my harness on and then zipped off to join the guided nature walk to look for gibbons. Unfortunately (and this is the only bad thing I have to say about the entire Gibbon Experience) when I told our guide that we had heard gibbons that morning he still took us in the opposite direction away from the gibbons, on the standard route that they do most days, as that's where gibbons are often seen. Later in the day when we heard that Natalie and the others in treehouse 3 had seen the family of gibbons that we had heard from their treehouse, I tried not to be insanely jealous.

Dave and I spent a chunk of the morning zipping around the park while I tried to take photos while zipping (it's quite tricky to get decent photos when travelling at high speeds in misty conditions as it turns out). We came back to the treehouse with me in a considerably better mood, and were just in the middle of a game of 9-card brag when I saw a swinging movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned just in time to see a huge branch swinging back into place, and squeaked "Gibbon" at Dave. We rushed to the edge of the treehouse and peered until Dave spotted one. Sadly, because my right eye, and therefore my distance vision, was a bit screwed, I was having difficulty finding the gibbon, despite Dave's pointing. At one point I saw an arm reaching, grabbing and swinging, and I heard their screeches loud and clear as they were so close, but I didn't spot them properly.

After a few more hands of cards, we joined a group embarking on a trek across the park for a couple of hours, well that was the plan anyway. Unfortunately after about 20 minutes, the heavens opened and we felt the full might of the Laotian monsoon. We ended up taking shelter at treehouse 3 for a while and turning back as the path was too slippery in wet conditions. We went back to treehouse one for lunch, played cards, zip-lined round the park some more, and then went back to treehouse 2 for dinner - left for us in several pots tied to a rope that we hauled up into the treehouse and reheated on the camping stove. Later on I tried cooking an unusual recipe for chocolate fondue that other-Dave had told me about: You pour condensed milk into a pan, spoon in copious quantities of chocolate ovaltine and heat it over a candle, stirring it constantly. I realise that it sounds pretty disgusting, but we chopped up a fresh pineapple from our snack box and dipped it into the fondue, and it was bloody marvellous.

Just before bed, Dave pointed out a large spider on the roof, and was just commenting that he was surprised he hadn't seen any bigger ones and shining the torch round when he suddenly swore in a loud and high pitched manner, and dived under the mosquito net. I said "What, what?" in a bit of a panicked voice, and Dave told me that he wasn't sure he wanted to show me as he didn't want to be responsible for freaking me out too. Eventually he peered out from the mosquito net and pointed out the most enormous, big bodied, hairy, malevolent looking spider I've ever seen outside of a cage. I got my camera out and quickly realised that I'd have to get much closer in the low light conditions, and that the only thing I could use to balance my camera on was right underneath the spider. For the next 5 minutes while I attempted a decent photo, Dave squeaked unintelligible things at me from the safety of the mosquito net, and when I had finished, he insisted on pulling the net down, tucking it in thoroughly, and declared that we weren't lifting it until morning. After half an hour I managed to persuade him that it would be ok for me to go and get the water, and that the spider wouldn't be waiting just outside the mosquito net, to pounce.

I slept even less than the night before as the hardy jungle mosquitos hadn't been remotely put off by the vast quantities of DEET I had smeared all over myself, and I itched all over. Dave didn't sleep much either, but I think that was because of the spider (that he still seemed to think was waiting to pounce) rather than his bites or my incessant scratching. I woke up (I use this phrase in the loosest possible sense) at the crack of dawn and discovered that I had lost about 20% of the skin on my feet to my nails and vowed to locate some nail clippers as soon as possible. I got dressed quickly, threw my harness on and zipped to the most scary platform in the park - about 50m up in a tree between the two longest and highest zip-lines. Being on the platform isn't so scary as you're constantly clipped to the safety, what turned my legs to jelly and made me fill my pants was stepping off it. Anyway, I stayed on the platform for 15 minutes before 6am watching the ebb and flow of the mist clinging to the trees, listening to the gibbons sing and trying (and failing) to spot one. It didn't help that the mist was so thick that I could only see about 20m at times. It was a shame that I didn't see gibbons, but it was so peaceful sitting in that spot, listening to the sounds of the jungle waking up, nearly a kilometer from anyone else, with no other man made noises to be heard, other than my own breathing.

Eventually I went back to treehouse 2 and Ting, our guide, turned up to take us on another gibbon walk, along the same path. Needless to say we didn't see or hear any gibbons. After a bit of last minute zipping around the park and taking some last minute photos and video footage with Dave's camera (it's on my profile page on facebook - it's worth the effort of joining facebook just to see it), we headed back to treehouse 2 in order to shower and pack up, but were delayed by a couple of the guides stopping by to be sociable and drink our coffee, and ended up waiting for half an hour so that I could have a shower in the open-air bathroom that was visible from half of the treehouse, and the zip-lines in and out. Eventually I gave up waiting and Dave vowed to confine the guys to the bit of the treehouse where they couldn't see me. When we were clean and packed, we went back to treehouse 1 where we had lunch and zipped out for the last time (sob). We walked out of the park, stopping briefly to drop off our harnesses, and to arm-feed Paula again (I had claw marks on my left arm for the next few days).

Eventually we made it back to the village with the midday sun blazing down on us, and collapsed. Mathijs and Roy disappeared for a while and then reappeared carrying several bottles of warm beer Lao, and saying "Great success" in hybrid Dutch/Kazakhstani accents.

Thankfully the vans could still make it back to the road, as the four wheel-drives could still make it through the floods from the previous day's rain. Just.

We made it back to Huay Xai in the afternoon and spent the evening e-mailing and drinking with the group, but sadly I had to have an early night due to dermatologically-linked sleep-deprivation.

In the morning we packed up and got on the boat heading down the Mekong river for Pak Beng. Thankfully most of our Gibbon Experience group were heading in the same direction, and we divided our time on the journey between reading, lazing and watching the gorgeous scenery roll past (I haven't really emphasized how stunning the scenery has been throughout Laos, but it really has been) and playing cards. My beginners luck at poker seems to have run out.

We spent the evening in Pak Beng with the group, but I was quite upset as I'd found myself thinking about Steve again, and Dave and I had had an arguament, so I didn't really enjoy it as much as usual. That night, when we headed back to the hotel, Dave and I split up. I'll spare you (or myself) the details and I don't really want to talk about it right now, so we'll just skip ahead to...

The next morning we got on the boat that was heading on to Luang Prabang, but Dave and I got off with 3 others in a tiny little hamlet of about 15 people, all of whom seemed dead set on extorting unreasonable amounts of money from us for a songthaew to Hongsa. The scheduled service left in 5 hours, but if we didn't want to wait around in the sun with nothing to do for that long, we'd have to pay twice the price for a songthaew. Eventually we haggled them down and boarded the songthaew. I'd just dumped my bags when I spotted a huge locust sitting on the roof of the van. I got my camera out, and was just taking pictures, when it flew at me and landed on my camera. I managed to fight my instinct to throw my beautiful, expensive camera and lens far, far away from me, and calmy put it down and tried not to think about it until it had flown off. We then embarked on one of the bumpiest mountain roads I've ever seen.

We arrived in Hongsa, to my (and my arse's) great relief, located a guest house, dumped our stuff and spent half an hour wandering round town trying to locate a restaurant that served vegetarian food other than vegetable fried rice, which was getting just a tad samey. We failed, and settled for a place that had ovaltine at least. We wandered around town again in the baking heat (I thought that once rainy season started in SE Asia it got cooler - it doesn't, it just gets stickier) doing a bit of research into prices of elephant treks. Having found out prices, and not yet booked anything, we went back to the hotel and spent the evening lazing and playing cards. The following morning we met Patrice, Saskia and Guillome (the guys we shared a songthaew with the previous day) and had a pleasant breakfast of baguette with jam (we each had different flavours) for about 15p. Or so we thought. It turns out that the baguette was 15p, but the owner of our guesthouse neglected to mention that the pot of jam (which we were expected to pay for all of was about a pound. I managed to haggle them down to 20p for the bit of the pot that I had had, and then we decided to hire bikes and find the elephant camp ourselves, to see if we could get better prices than ten pounds per elephant. We spent the next two hours cycling around, taking wrong turns and backtracking, asking for directions, eventually finding the correct village, but discovering through a series of mimes that the elephant centre there had closed down, buying a scarf from a nice lady in the village so that the trip wasn't a complete loss, and cycling back to town having not seen an elephant.

We went back to our guesthouse and spoke to the owner's son, who said that the elephants that the tourists ride are working elephants, and they have to be called out of the mountains and brought down to town. There was only one elephant near town available, so Dave and I let the others go for a ride, booked the elephant for the following morning, commandeered the hotel TV and DVD player and spent the afternoon watching Prison Break.

After several episodes we were called outside by the owner's son, Chanchee, to join him with his friends and Patrice, Saskia and Guillome for a glass of laolao (rice wine - a fierce firewater with a kick as bad as tequila to it). The single glass became several as the shot glass was refilled and passed round and round in circles until we were all cackling like witches and trying to remember each others' names, but failing. We ended up going on to one of his friends houses at the other side of town, where we were introduced to even stronger rice wine. At this point I had to stop as the stuff was making me gag. As Saskia and I both badly needed the toilet and had forgotten to bring toilet paper with us, we wimped out first and staggered back to the hotel with Patrice. Dave and Guillome eventually followed.

The following morning we dragged ourselves out of bed, despite our pounding headaches, threw clothes on, greeted the elephant (who snotted all over my hand with her trunk), and clambered on with as much enthusiasm as we could muster (very very close to none). I gradually woke up and soon I was clamouring to swap places with the handler, who was straddling the elephants neck. Dave looked at me like I was mad, and I realised that he was a funny shade of green. When we found a suitable spot, the handler and I swapped places very carefully, and then set off again. The rocking motion while sitting in the seat is nothing compared to the precarious bumping you get sitting on the elephant's head. Amazingly I didn't fall off, and after a while I swapped places with Dave, when his hangover subsided and he was left only suffering from motion sickness. When Dave got fed up again, we swapped back and I eventually managed to find a comfortable position and worked out how to move with the elephant's motion. It's much more fun when you don't feel like you're going to plummet beneath the elephants feet at any moment.

We went back to the guesthouse, said our goodbyes to the elephant, and then spent the rest of the day playing cards, having naps and watching prison break. We had some more laolao in the evening, but thankfully everyone else seemed to be feeling a bit worse for wear, so we were allowed to escape and have an early night.

We caught the overpriced songthaew to Sainyabuli the next morning, made it about an hour and a half into the journey and then had to wait for a JCB to clear a pile of rubble from a landslide from the road. After half an hour we set off again, only to be stopped 300m down the road by another pile of rubble. Dave and I located a large flat bit of rubble to use as a table and two smaller ones for chairs and played cards, until it started raining and we retreated back into the songthaew. An hour and a half later, we finally set off again.

When we made it to Sainyabuli bus station I headed straight into town in order to find an internet cafe to e-mail my parents, but discovered that all lines out of town weren't working for some reason, so I went back to the bus station and played with the daughter of a restaurant owner until our overnight bus to Vientiane was ready to leave.

We arrived in Vientiane the next day feeling scummy as hell, got a songthaew to our usual guesthouse, found a room, and spent a day e-mailing and sorting things out in order to leave Laos the next day.

After spending the morning sorting out photos and swapping books we found a bus to the border and took it in turns to guard our bags as we rushed around the market next to the bus station doing last minute shopping.

At the border I located a duty free shop and surprised Dave with a 6 pack of beer Lao for the overnight train journey to Bangkok, to which Dave grumbled that it wasn't chilled. When we got to the train station I bought a bag of ice from a food vendor to chill the beer with, and Dave grumbled that it would make a mess. To be fair the grumpy sod was right, the ice melted, and the bag leaved everywhere, but at least the beer was now cold.

By the time we got on the sleeper train to Bangkok there was only one beer left, which we consumed over cards, and then had an early night.

I woke Dave at 5:30am the next morning when people started walking up and down the train selling breakfast and announcements came over the tannoy in Thai, assuming that we must be nearly there. Three hours later we arrived in Bangkok, exhausted. I grabbed breakfast at my favourite stall in Hualamphong station, and we caught the bus to Banglamphu (for 10p), located Bangkok House (the lovely place Ruth and I stayed in last time I was here) after a few wrong turns and dumped our bags. I headed off to the nearest hospital to have my eye checked out for my piece of mind, and was relieved to find out that I'm unlikely to be going blind anytime soon, but was substantially less relieved when I had to pay the bill for a variety of painful and rather gross tests.

For the last three days I have been in Bangkok with Dave - shopping, updating my blog, e-mailing and phoning people, having massages and facials, having cornrows put in my hair (Dave says that I look less like a butch dyke than he'd imagined I would - that's quite about as close to a compliment as I get these days), eating at my favourite restaurants (food that isn't vegetable fried rice - yumyumyumyumyumyumyumyumyum) and sorting out onward travel, money and visas. Tomorrow I leave for Malaysia and Indonesia - the last leg of my travels before I arrive home on August 1st.