Laos

I travel to Laos with Mariella, a Dutch friend I met on Koh Chang. After a night in Bangkok, we take a sleeper train north east to the capital of Laos, Vientiene. I lurve sleeper trains (the seats that convert to beds by 8pm, the crisp clean white sheets and the way you draw your cubicle curtain and you suddenly have your own room). We are on the train 10 minutes when we meet Christy from America who is doing a visa run. Very shortly after the initial introductions, we find some resemblance to Charlie's Angels in our trio. We find ourselves extremely funny getting poor bemused passengers to take photos of us posing with our imaginary pistols. This continues for hours - past the noise curfew of 10pm, which makes us worse. The more you know you shouldn't laugh...

I wake at 6am to vast views of flat green land with a haze of white hovering above. Christy tells me this is Issan. At 9 a.m we arrive at the border and Christy has offered to be our guide which is fortunate as neither I nor Mariella can be bothered to read the guidebook. Our border crossing town is Nong Kai and after immigration on the Thai side, we get a Tuk Tuk to a place called the Friendship Bridge, where we're stamped into Laos and from here we take a Tuk Tuk into Vientiene. Christy has been in Thailand three years and has been to Laos many times, so we let her do the talking and for a change its great just to follow. In Vientiene, first thing we do is breakfast at the Swedish bakery (part of Christy's tour). We devour enormous croissants and scrambled eggs with swiss cheese, a fruit platter (it's a set menu) and strong coffee. We are sat out on the Cafe balcony, overlooking a huge fountain and it's all so calm and fresh and pretty. I am confused. I expected pollution, baking heat, litter and poverty. I assumed it being a capital it would be full of poor people. But it's all quite posh and if you don't want a Tuk Tuk no one's going to ask you twice.

After breakfast we amble down the main street which is quiet, tree lined, has a coupla little shops, a temple, some internet cafes and a posh Deli supermarket. At the end of the street we find a guesthouse which has a room with three beds (on the fourth floor) and it costs a pound each (very good for the budget). Late morning we continue Christy's tour with a walk out to Vientiane’s Arc de Triumph, Patuxai Monument. Vientiene is so quiet and the people seem gentle and genuine and it's sooooo lovely here. We end the day in a very nice little restuarant (I have my first piece of organic steak - with the obligatory baguette (ex French colony), and now that its so cheap, 2 glasses of wine!) Day two in Vientiene, we hire bikes and cycle out of town to a place the guidebook recommends for a traditional herbal sauna and massage. We get there with a slip of paper our guest house has the written the address on and Christy shows this to each of the roadside vendors and they all point, that way and an hour later we are heading into the woods. We mime being in a sauna (being hot) and the kneading action of a massage up to a some women on the first floor of the first wooden house we see and they mime where to park the bikes. We wander up to the house to ask for further directions and are handed a sarong. After a couple of hours sweating in a wooden room steaming with herbs, showering down, drinking tea, repeating the process, we finish with a rather gentle yet thorough massage.

After a couple of days, Mariella and I head north to Vang Vieng and Christy goes back to Bangkok. In Vang Vieng we get a bungalow with a view of the river and the mountains and again we hire bikes and cycle out towards the lush countryside. As Vang Vieng is famed for it's Tubing, we decide we ought to experience this but, not quite sure how one goes about Tubing, we book a Tubing day trip. (For people who are not familiar with Tubing, it entails sitting/lying in the inner tube of a truck tire and paddling into caves or down river with your hands.) Our Tubing tour starts with us paddling ourselves through the tiniest hole and into an enormous cave. I thought we'd get lessons in tubing but you just put on a headtorch, try out a range of paddling techniques and try to stay with the group. After an hour in the freezing cave, we come back through the hole (blinded by the daylight) and upon hitting dry land we are handed a BBQ lunch to have by the water's adge. We are then driven out to the river and told we are to tube back to Vang Vieng's centre stopping off along the way at the riverside bars which will throw us a rope to haul us in. The first place to throw a rope with a plastic bottle attached, clouts me on the head, pulls me in and then leaves me to scramble up the rocks which we have been warned not to stand on because they are sharp. Luckily, our tour guides (who canoe ahead and behind us on the water) haul us up off the rocks before we break our necks trying to get from lying in a tube to standing - without standing on sharp rocks! Is it not possible to build some steps or a ramp into the bar??? Arriving into these bars is like stepping into a party once it's really got going. The music is so loud you can't talk. People are dancing on the wooden platforms of the riverside or they are sunburning hard. There's a big queue for the bar and a big queue for the rope swing (more like the Ariel Runway bit of the Krypton Factor). We visit three bars and I only trust myself to have one beer and one mohjito in these waters. Back in the water we find that the line up of bars takes up maybe a third of the river journey and then fields of scenery take over and it is beautiful. Mountains, palm trees, fields, reeds, and a sunset at the end. And when the sun goes in we start to get really cold and we really don't want to paddle anymore and after five hours on the water, shivering and weak , our group loses the will to paddle. And just when we think we are going die of exhaustion or hyperthermia our tour guides throw us some rope, and pull us to the finish racing their canoes against each other with our entire group tailing behind.

After two days in Vang Vieng we take a mini bus north to Luang Prabang. It is so cold I venture into the very depths of my back pack to drag out those items I have been lugging around for months and have not yet seen the light of day. Thermal underwear, the thickest T'shirts, the jeans, 2 hats, a scarf, one fleece, one waterproof jacket, army socks, gloves and we're ready to find somewhere for dinner. We stumble on the night market which sells beautiful Laotian bedding, silk scarfs, sarongs, handmade notebooks, lanterns and I want it all but settle for a scarf. Gin and tonics, garlic bread, a fine salad and a few glasses of red (wine) later and I contemplate working in Luang Prabang. Then I dismiss this idea because it's too cold.

In truth, in four days I barely ventured further than the street of the night market and it's immacuate restuarants and cafes. I read, I people watch, I wander and in between I meet Mariella for coffee, lunch or drinks in the evening, and I think I should be getting a job soon. At this point in my big plan I am supposed to be heading to Nepal, but I am feeling very tired. My funds are dwindling; I haven’t secured any work for the future and somebody said it is raining in Nepal.

So, as Mariella heads back to Koh Chang, I venture off the plan to visit Issan (north east Thailand) where half the people I met on Koh Chang are heading to harvest the rice. In Koh Chang, both Thais and tourists talked about wanting to visit Issan at some point in the future soon. As it is neither a city nor an island (my two favourites) I am not convinced it is my thing but, not quite ready for the job hunt, I reckon I can manage a few days off.

Luang Prabang, Laos