Who Said Vientiane is Boring?

We arrived in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, half dead in the early hours of the morning and headed straight for a backpackers hostel; unfortunately, because it was an eighteen bed dorm, we couldn't get much rest because our roommates (and I'm using the term 'mates' loosely) were chatting and stamping around like excited elephants so we asked to be moved into a smaller room the next night. We'd heard there wasn't much to do in the city as it's probably the smallest (and quietest, cleanest and calmest) capital city in the world however we needed to visit the Vietnamese embassy and wait for our Vietnam visa to be processed (most visas you can get on arrival to a country but some like Vietnam, India and Myanmar have to be arranged beforehand). The Mekong River runs down the side of the tiny city and every evening at sunset the promenade alongside the water comes alive with a night market, large groups of open-air aerobics, men on bicycles selling ice creams and mobile pedicure ladies gesturing towards our gnarly travellers' feet in the hope of embarrassing us enough to make a sale.

We danced alongside the evening aerobics. 

Sunset.

We sampled street food such as pork dumplings and little doughnut balls, all a whopping 1000 Kip each (about 8 pence).

We were often approached by students asking us to complete a survey about tourism and take photos with them

For a capital city the night life is surprisingly timid. All bars close at 12am and there is only one questionable club which we tried out.

We found a singing cash machine and some fun ladyboy street-walkers to entertain ourselves one night after the bars had closed.

The city can easily be cycled around and, despite being freaked out whilst cycling along the major roads, we visited the COPE centre; this free visitor centre was set up to educate people about unexploded landmines left scattered around Laos after the Vietnam war. Sometimes these 'bombies' can be walked over by accident and also sometimes Lao children and adults collect scrap metal to sell for the equivalent of pennies, perhaps to support their families, and some of these bits of 'metal' are dormant cluster bombs that explode killing thousands a year and leaving many others with missing limbs. The COPE charity supports the victims and helps rehabilitate the injured with prosthetic limbs and the stories of the victims who have been helped to recover were fascinating.

There was a display of makeshift prosthetics including some made by villagers using metal from the very landmines that had injured them.

Loas was colonised by the French until 1953 and this is reflected in the architecture for example this Arc Du Triomphe replica

Another sunset (eyeroll...).

Vientiane had Indian food that was very similar to what I had in India so I was in heaven! This was a chicken murpatha - yummers!

Money saving tip no. 527: make crisp sandwiches at the Laos national swimming pool.

Writing my blog for all my fans on Vientiane promenade. 

My (Accidental) Visit to a Brothel

Our bus arrived in Thukhek four hours later than we were told (this is Asia!) so it was midnight and freezing when we arrived and, like I often do on my travels, we hadn't booked anywhere to stay. The only other tourists on the bus (and in the town at that time it seemed) were a French couple so we searched with them for ages in the chilly night air for somewhere to sleep. We couldn't find a hostel or a three person room (Rachel had left at this point as her time was more limited) so we decided to squeeze into a double 'bed' that felt more like sleeping on a creaky, collapsed plank of wood. We'd mainly stopped off in Thukhek to break up the twenty hour bus journey to the capital of Laos (actually, twenty hours seems like nothing to me now!) and there wasn't much to do in the town so we spent our time there walking around and having breakfast by the river.

It's a very common sight in Laos to see young monks in the street with their pristine, bright-orange robes.

I ate Laos noodles as it was in the breakfast menu, many Asians eat noodles in the morning which can feel strange sometimes, especially if they're spicy.

After our night of sleeping like sardines we decided a massage was in order. We walked into a massage parlour, were given a 'menu' and then immediately told that everything on it was unavailable to us except for one option - traditional Laos massage. We thought this was strange but the weirdness didn't stop there. We were led to the back of the building, up some stairs and past a row of dimly lit private rooms to a bigger room at the back where three women dressed in tiny, revealing outfits were waiting for us. Yep, it was a brothel. We felt awkward for the next hour as they gave us a normal, albeit rather unenthusiastic, traditional massage whilst babbling amongst themselves in Lao. On our way out we saw a sheepish looking man being led into a private room...at least we can tick 'massage from a prostitute' off of our bucket lists?!

An 'advert' for communism - they were everywhere in Laos. 

We made our way to the bus station to get an overnight bus to Vientiane however we weren't sure what time the bus was so we had several hours to kill once we were there. After travelling for so long I'm able to kill time like an absolute ninja! We rocked up to a bus station cafe and the women there didn't speak any English plus there weren't any menus so we gestured with our hands that we wanted to eat and waited for the mystery meal to arrive: sticky rice, marinated chicken, veg and omelette was delivered to our table - I like this food lottery game (minus the rat incident, but let's not talk about that....). Once again the cold night time was rearing its ugly head and with all the denim shorts and sarongs in my backpack I was ill prepared for chilly weather; funnily enough we seemed to be in a bus station that doubled as the world's biggest sweater emporium so we went on the hunt for jumpers. Eventually it was time to board our 'sleeper bus' which had bunk beds instead of seats and we made our way to the capital.

Entertaining ourselves at the bus station for four hours.

After a misunderstanding about the price of the food the lady in the cafe burst into fits of laughter and then demanded a photo.

p.s. check out the new jumpers.

The hotel on wheels was surprisingly comfortable despite the arctic air-con and the initial worry that a local man was going to share the bed

with us.

Been There, Don Det

Another day on Don Det brought yet another water activity and this time it was kayaking - who needs beaches?! The four of us set off early that morning in two-man kayaks, paddled to a nearby beach and stopped off to walk through a village to get to a small waterfall. What we thought would be a fairly relaxing day was rife with hazards (slight exaggeration); Vic and I were determined to be the quickest kayaking team and because of our furious rowing we almost ended up with a gnarly tree in our faces - also, we paddled very close to some huge water buffalo that looked like they were going to charge at us! The highlight of the day was kayaking with the Irrawaddy dolphins - a strange looking creature with a humped head, closely related to the killer whale - we spotted about five of them. After stopping for lunch in another tiny village we boarded the back of a truck where we crammed fourteen people in with a pile of kayaks and visited South East Asia's largest waterfall.

Kayaking.

Just after the 'near-death' tree incident.

We walked through tiny Lao villages - past chickens, pigs, dogs, cows and waving children.

Humongous waterfall!

We also went for a swim in the river to cool off after being in the sun all day.

That night we decided to go for a 'night out'. I say 'night out' like this because there really is no nightlife to speak of on Don Det island however we found a few bars and spent the night at a small party around a bonfire on the river bank 'beach' after the bars closed at 11pm.

Our room was for three people but there were four of us so we pushed the beds together - this meant we were paying less than £2.50 each a night.

We bought local hats - I've been wanting one for ages and I don't care if I look like an idiot tourist so there!

River-beach bonfire.

After five days on Don Det we decided to start moving towards the north of Laos. A ten hour bus journey took us to a town called Thukhek and the driver said we weren't allowed to sit at the front of the bus where there was more leg room because those seats were reserved for men! I'm not going to even mention the sexism but what I will say is that Lao men are half the size of western women! I get the impression that not all the buses in Laos are official and some schedules are casually assigned to whoever happens to own a bus; this bus was missing a door which was great during the day (hello natural air-con) but ridiculously freezing when it got dark because Laos gets very cold during the night. The journey was long and we were starving; no Laos bus journey is complete without the 'meat-on-sticks' ladies who board at every opportunity so we decided to try some to save us from our deathly starvation (again, slight exaggeration). We had a tiny inkling about what the brown meat morsels might be, especially after I saw the outstretched carcasses on sticks during my last bus journey, but our suspicions were confirmed when we tasted it. It was rat meat.

Rat meat and cold sticky rice anyone? No?!

Louden in Laos

After my mammoth journey myself and Rachel, the girl I'd met on one of the buses, sat by the river to enjoy a well deserved BeerLao and waited for my friends to arrive. Don Det is one of the '4000 islands' in the south of Laos and whilst the country doesn't have any coastlines it certainly makes up for it with the sprawling Mekong River that runs through it. After reuniting with my friends, Vic and Evie, who I'd met in Thailand, we all found a room to share and had a catch up over dinner. We'd heard there was a Lao festival happening nearby so the following day we took a long-tail boat with a group of people and joined in the celebrations with the locals. Before we left we were briefed about local etiquette and behaviour; we weren't allowed to show our shoulders or knees, we HAD to accept any alcoholic drink offered to us as it's considered extremely rude to decline (I like this rule), any men caught sleeping with a Lao women would be fined $500 or put in prison and any female tourists caught 'cavorting' with Lao men would legally have to marry them! After the recent run of schizophrenic weather in Thailand it had been constantly sunny and clear in Laos and today was no different as we puttered up the river to a temple on the bank of a neighbouring island which was the setting for the festival. We watched dragon boat races, taught local children how to high-five, drank beer and danced in the temple grounds and sampled many of the local (ultra cheap) delicacies they had to offer on street stalls including Lao noodles, sweet lentil and sesame balls and colourful ice treats. After the festival we took the boat to a nearby river 'beach' where we listened to music, went for a swim and drank a few more bottles BeerLao as the sun set over the Mekong.

Boat races.

I was offered many drinks by the locals. Potential new husbands?

These are my favourite Laos street food snack.

Rachel stayed with me and the two girls, Evie and Vic, for a few days.

Yet another gorgeous sunset on my travels!

Let me give you a little background detail before I tell you about the following day; after almost six months of travelling I don't ever really feel homesick and there isn't much I miss about England apart from my family and my friends (A LOT!) however I am starting to have major cravings for certain foods that I just can't get out here, namely European cheese (I'm talking about the strong stuff, smellier the better - what I wouldn't do to have a plateful of cheese that smells like feet!) and also I'm having severe, debilitating, painful separation anxiety over roast dinners. Imagine my excitement when the owner of Happy Bar on Don Det, our go-to guy for all things fun related, said he was organising a trip tubing down the river to a roast dinner! So, we donned our tubes (actually the inner rubber of a tyre), and with beers in tow we cruised down the river for hours in a big group to the restaurant run by an English man; I know, I know, I should come travelling to immerse myself in local culture (which I have done to a great extent) but after this long there's only so much rice, spice and weird stuff I can handle!

The edges of the islands we passed.

Happy!

Tubing!

Don Det island is perfect for a morning run before it gets too hot - Vic and I ran through the village and had to compete for the path with chickens and dogs.

We were able to interact a little with the locals on Don Det and learn about their way of life. The island families join together in big groups and sit on their porches to eat dinner whilst the children are generally watched over by everyone and so have the freedom to run and play around the island. Their community seems to be a very happy and thriving one. The beautiful setting, tiny size of the island, absence of roads and cars and more importantly the absence of the lairy 'party' tourists - due to the 11pm closure of all bars - means that the island has a relaxed vibe unrivalled on any of the islands I have visited recently.

We spotted a tiny baby in a swinging basket being watched over by an almost-as-tiny toddler and their mother encouraged us to take a photo. 

The island is long and thin so every home/hotel/restaurant on one side gets treated to an incredible sunrise each morning and everyone on the other side gets sunsets like this every evening.

Massive Goodbyes and Mammoth Journeys

After all the antics on Koh Phangan we were looking for a different sort of holiday (i.e. drink-free!) when we got the ferry to neighbouring island Koh Samui. We found a hotel that had a dorm room for me as well as a private room for Jo and Tom and we spent the first night severely recharging our batteries. The next day we thought it would be good to get involved with a bit of Thai culture so we visited 'Big Buddha' - a large gold Buddha on top of a temple - where Joanna got shouted at by a very angry monk (far from the serene image you might have in your mind of an enlightened being!) because she had her shoulders on show, despite the fact that she was reaching in her bag at that moment for a cover-up.

Big Buddha.

Joanna and Tom got 'blessed' by a monk after donating a small amount of money.

Dinner by the beach.

We'd heard that there was a national park on the island with waterfalls worth visiting however the taxis can get quite expensive so we hired two mopeds (Joanna on the back of Tom's and me on my own) and explored the island. I've done this on my travels a few times now and it's my all time favourite way to see a country. We navigated our way to the national park and trekked through the sweltering jungle to the waterfall where we cooled off in the fresh water.

Helmet shot!

Joanna and Tom went on an elephant ride - I had great fun following them with their DSLR.

Swimming in the waterfall.

That afternoon we met up with my friend, Ash, who was on the island to do an English teacher training course. We'd purposefully made sure we were on the island at the same time but this didn't make it any less surreal meeting her here on a tropical island in Asia! The following day Joanna and Tom left to go to another island to have their own holiday - it has been brilliant having them here for Christmas and New year and we've had so much fun in the two weeks they've been in Thailand!

Reunited with Ash!

This protruding stone on Koh Samui is called 'Grandmother rock' although many say it looks like something else all together...

It was time for me to leave Thailand again because I wanted to do some more 'proper travelling' i.e. less partying and more integration with local culture. I'd made arrangements to meet up with Vic and Evie, two girls I'd made friends with a few months ago, in neighbouring country Laos but little did I know how horrendous the journey was going to be! I started off in a taxi with a maniac driver - little did I know this was because he was running late which I discovered when we arrived at the bus terminal and the bus was driving off without me! I had to sprint across the station with my backpacks and the driver was incredibly rude to me when he eventually stopped. After that the bus drove on a ferry and when we reached the mainland the bus started driving off with my big backpack in the cargo hold because they'd neglected to tell me that I had to change bus! Once I'd retrieved my bag I got on another bus and was taken to an unknown Thai town and told to wait for yet another bus; whilst I was waiting a motorbike crash happened right in front of me and the man involved was badly hurt, covered in blood and unconscious for half an hour. When I eventually reached Bangkok at 5.30am I was exhausted, drained and hoping nothing more would go wrong. I needed to wait for another overnight bus and had thirteen hours to kill so booked myself into a cheap hostel to get some shut-eye. When I woke up I opened my backpack to find that someone, possibly the bus driver, had been through all my things - including my underwear - and one of my spare credit cards had been stolen. This journey was becoming ridiculous. I was also very worried about crossing the border to Laos in time before my visa for Thailand ran out. Two mini bus taxis and an overnight bus later I finally crossed the Thai/Lao border but the journey wasn't over yet; luckily I met an English girl on the bus, the only other tourist, and she was going to the same place as me so we shared a taxi to the bus station and crammed in the back of a truck with forty other locals for four boiling hours. At one point the truck stopped and women selling meat on sticks surrounded the vehicle trying to sell their wares; some of them climbed in the back and were literally lying on top of us shoving the meat in our faces, it was then that we realised some of the sticks were massive, cooked rats! After the truck we walked under the fierce Laos sun to catch a longtail boat to Don Det island. After fifty one hours and many disasters I've never been so happy to arrive somewhere - I can't complain as, after all, I did say I wanted to do some 'proper travelling'....

Chicken and rat meat sticks.

The final leg of my mammoth journey.

Phangan Hang

Koh Phangan is infamous for its wild Full Moon Parties but what some people don't know is that there is a massive party like errr...every night! The variety of music and venues was crazy so Joanna, Tom and I started off the madness by going to a house music night at a 'floating bar' where we danced like maniacs all night and through to the morning and spent the entire next day in bed groaning in pain (it was worth it). This became a pattern for the next four days. The next night we went to a D&B event at a club that sprawled out on to the beach so we wore holes in the sand dancing away on the beach and in the sea. The next day - yes, you guessed it - was spent in bed in agony because by this point our calf muscles were on fire from all the shape-throwing (again, worth it).

We made our own bucket drinks using an actual bucket we found in a shop. This allows for maximum drinkage yet minimum spendage.

Raving in the sea!

We fit a little bit of hungover sunbathing in.

Our bungalow was right on the beach.

The third night out in a row was to The Jungle Experience: a techno rave nestled in the jungle on the side of a mountain. By this point we were all feeling half dead and so we didn't stay too late and instead stopped off at 7/11 to get a toastie on the way home (yes, I've managed to get Jo and Tom into my cheapo obsession with 7/11).

Following the lights, music, and piss-heads to find the party.

Lights, visuals and A LOT of UV paint.

Trevor the party dog.

The FOURTH night out was the biggie: New Year's Eve! Our hotel threw a compulsory NYE gala dinner with a multitude of Thai foods for us to try as well as a fire show, free drinks and Thai dancers; at the end they pulled audience members off their seats to dance and so I 'reluctantly' went to the stage to join in. We then made our way to the psy-trance themed debauchery on the beach, AKA The Full Moon Party, just in time for the midnight countdown and fireworks. How can I describe The Full Moon Party??!! Well, it's massive, loud and rammed with thousands of drunken, happy ravers - that look like a UV paint factory has thrown up on them - all dancing wildly on the beach under the glow of the moon, the blue haze of ultra violet lights and the glow of fire. Mental. We later moved on to a club and then watched the sun come up on the beach.

The Gala Buffet.

Thai dancers. 

The midnight fireworks.

The aftermath of our UV paint fight.

UV raving.

How dare that sneezing dog photobomb us!

Insanely beautiful sunrise after one of our many nights out.

New Years Day saw three comatose party people slumped in their beds only to emerge for dinner. We walked to a seafood restaurant on the beach and ate barbecued fish whilst the sun went down. The next day was our last on the island as we had booked a ferry to neighbouring Koh Samui the following morning; we wanted to explore the island and have a quiet night. Famous last words. We went to a bar called 'Mushroom Mountain' and met a man from Saudi Arabia who was telling us all about his country's traditions and culture - it was fascinating. He told us he had a lot of money and was happy to spend it on us; we protested and said we couldn't accept it but he insisted, saying in his culture if something is offered then you have to accept. We ended up all going to a waterfall party with him that night and were feeling awful the next day when we had to get our ferry to Koh Samui....

Sunset on New Year's Day.

The view from Mushroom Mountain.

The 'waterfall' was more like a trickle but we had a swim anyway.