The place we had to get to turned out to be a long way from the main strip. Andy and I tried to walk there, only to give up, thinking we must have gone the wrong way or missed it, and catch a tuk-tuk. This took us even further out of town, although we did eventually reach Snooky’s place. The dinner was indeed excellent, and we rounded it off with desserts at the cookie shop back in the main strip. Then it was off to Monkey Republic for drinks, where we played pool with a very pretty Cambodian girl (we spent some time trying to figure out if she was a hooker or not, she was a little cagey about her job) and a couple of Swedish guys. After Monkey Republic we went to Utopia, the nightclub in town, which surprisingly was starting to empty at midnight. I carried on to a beach bar with one of the swedish guys and partied all night, ending up in another 24 hour bar with Donna when that closed. We shared a moto to the 24 hour bar. The driver dropped it when we were driving across the sand, but we were going so slowly at that point we just ended up standing up with the bike between our legs. I decided to call it a night at 7am, and took a moto back to the hostel to arrive back at the room just as Andy was getting up….

A quick sleep later and we headed out to the beach. Unfortunately it seems much of the beach was washed away a couple of weeks before we got there. I’ve been trying to find out why, but so far no luck. Many of the beach bars therefore have no beach – the sea comes right up to them. After the first 10 or so bars there’s enough beach to put a deckchair out, so this is where we headed. On the way there we passed the bar I’d been in the previous night. Donna was still there, in the same chair, at 14:00 the next day, still drinking Red Bull. Impressive stamina! Andy and I carried on to the deckchairs and spent the day sunning ourselves, before meeting up with Anja further up the beach. By this time the sun was going down and we got some awesome sunset shots! Anja had met up with Lena, another German girl. Dinner was at Monkey Republic, followed by more pool and dancing and merriment at Utopia and the beach bar. We met some very funny and very camp gay Cambodian guys that night, and Anja decided to go paddling in the water, for some reason.

The next day I met up with Anja and Lena again as Andy wasn’t feeling well. Later on we found Andy on the beach. He’d bumped into Ellen again. We generally got pestered by people selling things all day. One woman wanted to cut my toenails, another guy wanted to fix my (unbroken) sandals. Various boys wanted to sell us bracelets. One offered me a free bracelet if I beat him at pool, otherwise I’d have to buy one. So I beat him but gave him a little bit of money for it anyway. I suspect he still made a profit. I also picked up a couple of free bracelets from boys who insisted on making them for me, despite my insistence there was no way I was going to buy one. I think the idea is to guilt you into buying one. Later on we ended up at Monkey Republic for dinner again. The Cambodian girl was there again, this time she had a variety of deep-fried insects. I recall her eating a big spider, later on she gave me a cricket, which I ate despite Andy and Anja’s aghast stares. I did spend a long time staring at it, until I asked her how to eat it and she broke off the legs and wings. It didn’t taste at all bad actually, although pretty dry. Generally that night was quite quiet though.

The following day was our last day in Sihanoukville. Anja, Lena and I went on a boat ride around some of the local beaches and islands, which finished up with watching the sunset out at sea. Andy wasn’t feeling too well again. The ride was organised by one of the bars, way up the beach, which I guess has trouble attracting people otherwise. I guess the idea is when the boat ride finishes you go to their bar for food and drinks. We saw lots of pretty beaches, did some swimming around, played frisbee in the water with a russian guy and a french guy and saw the promised sunset. After sunset it did start to get pretty cold though, and the party became a little miserable. Anja and I then headed for dinner, at Monkey Republic once again (it was easy…) and discovered Andy was in the cinema. So we joined him to watch some football at a bar across the road.

The next day Andy and I were getting a bus to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and Anja was heading to Phnom Penh.

The sister’s hostel was very new, and more like a hotel than a hostel. Andy was feeling ill again, so I ventured out for dinner to a place recommended for its fish and chips in the Lonely Planet. The restaurant turned out to be on the roof in one of the bar areas of town. The restaurant was nice, but the area itself seemed a little seedy, and the fish was more like Birds Eye fish bites. Being on the roof, it took me some time to find, so knowing I was in the general area, I asked a guy wearing a uniform and looking official. He immediately hailed me a tuk-tuk, so I left. The place was actually just around the corner.

On the next day, we checked out of the hotel and into the Sunday guesthouse. They didn’t have any twin rooms left, so we got a triple, but talked them into charging the same price. The only caveat was that we would then have to move into a twin room the following day.

We decided to walk around the town that day, and visited the Independence monument (independence from the French, I guess), the Liberation monument (liberation from the Khmer Rouge), the royal palace, most of which you can’t visit but you can see its big golden throne room and silver pagoda, the national museum, which contains many treasures from Angkor Wat which were hidden from the Khmer Rouge, where I gave a legless man too much money for a photocopy of “Lucky Child”, the sequel to “First they Killed my Father”, and Wat Phnom. We found a french cafe on the way around, and an excellent restaurant overlooking the river on the way back. After the meal we decided to head straight out for a drink, so, looking for a pool table, we were directed to the Uptown bar. This did, it’s true, turn out to have an excellent pool table, however it turned out to be called the Updown bar, not Uptown, and I spent the 3rd and 4th games being chased around the pool table by a particularly scary ladyboy. He/She insisted on playing a game, then we left, swiftly. The next place we were directed to was Candy bar, which unsurprisingly turned out to be a similar establishment, although at least the women appeared to be women here. After a few games of pool we gave up on finding a place that wasn’t full of hookers, and headed back to the guesthouse.

Our second full day in Phnom Penh was the real gut-wrencher. We started off with a tuk-tuk to Choeng Ek – the killing fields. This is the place where many people from Phnom Penh were taken for execution during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. You can see a brand new stupa they’ve built to house the bones and skulls excavated from the mass graves around it. It’s a glass column and to see shelves and shelves full of skulls is quite chilling. The exhibition hall tells you the story of many of the heads of the Khmer Rouge, many of whom were well-educated – Polpot went to university in France. Behind this you can see the places where the mass graves were, the tree they hung a loudspeaker from playing loud patriotic music to cover the screams of the victims, and the tree they smashed children’s heads against. Beyond this is tranquil fields and lakes. The story of what happened so short a time ago really beggars belief.

From Choeng Ek the tuk-tuk took us to the Tuol Sleng S21 prison, where people were imprisoned before being taken to Choeng Ek. Once a school, a gibbet had been erected in the playground and various exhibitions of torture and photos of people that were kept there are on display. The question that goes around and around your head – “Why didn’t any other countries help?” is answered in a way in one of the exhibitions. It’s by a Belgian ex-communist supporter, and what he saw at the time was an interesting experiment – a possible utopia by communist standards. Noone knew about the horrors that were actually happening.

From S21 we walked back to the guesthouse. I spent a little time on the internet – the hostel was showing “The Killing Fields” film on TV, I didn’t fancy watching it by then.

Tonight Andy and I resolved to hit the town again, different places this time, and avoid the previous night’s street completely. We headed back to the riverside, where the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide say there are bars. It looks like they’ve all been knocked down though. Luckily we had a plan B. We had some drinks and headed in to the Heart of Darkness, a night club. We got there though and it was full of western guys and Cambodian girls. Luckily we had a plan C – head next door to Howie’s bar, so we did and had a great night! We spent the time playing Connect 4 with the bargirls, playing pool with pretty much everyone in the bar and chatting to a Belgian girl who apparently writes the sex column for FHM… , her huge Austrian boyfriend, and a mute Cambodian girl. The bar was owned by Howie, who’s a great bloke and pool extraordinaire, who found our choice of bars the previous night to be hilarious.

While it’s annoying that we found the one decent place in Phnom Penh on our last night there, the next day we’d be heading to Sihanoukville for some beachy relaxation.

So we arrived at the Ivy guesthouse. This is another really nice place with a big bar area, friendly staff and the 2nd worst pool table we’ve come across so far. It also has a really nice balcony on the first floor with sofas, a TV and hammocks. First order of the day was to have a beer, of course, then a quick exploration of the town, which resulted in finding an ATM and an internet cafe.

The Ivy guesthouse also rented out bicycles for $2/day. This is the strange thing about Cambodia. They do have their own currency – Cambodian Riel – which generally exchanges for 4000 riel to the US dollar, but all prices and transactions are in US dollars. Riel are only really used for parts of dollars. Anyway, back to the point. Siem Reap is the base for all visits to the Angkor region – often described as the 8th wonder of the world, largely because Cambodia’s tourist industry didn’t mobilise enough people to vote for it when the the 7 wonders people made the new 7 wonders of the world list. I’ll check out some of the other wonders later and let you know if they deserved to get on ahead of Angkor .

I’ve gone off-topic again. We decided to hire the bikes for the following day and resolved to make it to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Angkor Wat is unusual for temples in this part of the world in that it runs from west to east instead of east to west. This makes it a great place to watch the sunrise as the sun comes up directly over the temple. To make it for sunrise we were going to have to leave the guesthouse at 4:45am, so it was a short visit to the Angkor What? bar that evening for a quick drink, then an early night.

The following day, we actually did it! Out of bed at 4:30, quick dress and hop on the bikes at 4:45 to get to Angkor Wat and beat the crowds! The bikes didn’t have lights, but we were assured that it would be fine – there are streetlights all the way. This is a lie. The streetlights stop on the edge of Siem Reap and it’s pretty dark the rest of the way. This wasn’t a problem though, due to the constant stream of tuk-tuks passing us and lighting up the road. So much for beating the crowds! We had to stop on the way to buy a ticket at a ticket booth on the way too. It was lucky we saw all the tuk-tuks heading in there – security guys check them at many of the temples and the booth is quite a distance from the temple. Would have been really gutting to cycle all the way there, only to have to cycle back to the ticket booth and back to Angkor Wat again.

So we arrived at Angkor Wat with plenty of time before the sunrise. A nice man directed us to the bike parking area with bars to chain it to. It turned out he wanted to sell us coffees, of course. A coffee wasn’t unwelcome at that time, although it did cost the princely sum of $1.

Angkor Wat itself is awe-inspiring. I believe it’s an ex-hindu temple, rededicated to Buddhism, but it looks like something between a palace and a mausoleum. It’s surrounded by a square moat, which is split into two to allow access from the front or back. We got some photos from outside the main gatehouse, then wandered into the inner courtyard to watch the sunrise over the temple itself, along with crowds of other people. Inside, the place looks like something out of a Tomb Raider game – it’s easy to see where a lot of the inspiration came from. I had a look for the puzzle you have to solve in order to open the gate to the underworld, but sadly I guess it must have worn away already.

After the sunrise we decided to start off exploring the outside wall. There’s a passage along the outside of the wall you can follow, so Andy and I started along the left hand side one. Something bizarre happened as we got close to the corner; Andy suddenly went a bit mental, threw his bottle of water to the ground and started thrashing around, before turning around and running in the opposite direction. At that point I felt a pain on my shoulder, so turned around and followed. After 20m or so Andy stopped, ripped off his t-shirt and started slapping at his body – he had a massive bite on his back. It seems we’d been attacked by a few very large biting insects – the size of dragons they were. Seriously I’m surprised they didn’t bite our heads off. The bites were quite big though, but they healed up after a few hours. At that point we decided to give up on this and go back inside the temple. Andy even debated paying someone a dollar or two to go back for his water.

Inside the temple is amazing, but words can’t do it justice. Which is why I took lots of photos!

After Angkor Wat we went up Phnom Bakheng hill to another temple, which was meant to have great views of Angkor Wat. The climb up the hill wasn’t too bad, but the steps up to the top of the temple were… testing! Each step is about 18 inches high and 5 inches wide, and most of them are crumbling. The view from the top was nice, but there were only a couple of spots you could actually see Angkor Wat from, and it’s pretty distant. The climb down from the temple was, if anything, even harder than the climb up.

We then headed into Angkor Thom, which contains a collection of temples. First up was Bayan, which is almost as impressive as Angkor Wat, although not on the same scale. The big thing here is all the pillars with a face carved into them. I guess it’s the face of Buddha. In the book “First they killed my father” by Loung Ung (it’s not a happy book, but essential reading if you’re going to Cambodia and you’re not already depressed) these are the faces she thought looked like her father. From Bayan along the Terrace of Elephants to Baphuon, which is also known as the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle. In the middle of the restoration effort, after much of the temple had been dismantled, the Khmer Rouge disaster hit and the plans for where all the pieces were meant to go were destroyed. After that came Phimeanakas, which is another interesting climb, then on to the Terrace of the Leper King, which has some interesting hindu carvings along the sides. Getting back on the bikes, we prepared to cycle out of the north gate to Preah Khan. Along the road we were passed by Ellen, who we’d met in Laos before, in a tuk-tuk. So we chased the tuk-tuk down the road and caught up with them at the temple. She’d met up with another dutch girl – Merell, so we explored the temple with them. Most of the temple is fairly unspectacular, although there are various artifacts, both hindu and buddhist along the way. The best is at the back though, where trees are literally growing on the walls. It’s a classic example of nature taking back over, as the roots grow around the walls and thicken, the temple is slowly being destroyed. Restoration work is underway to remove the trees and save the temple, however.

At this point it was time for lunch. We’d promised a woman earlier we’d be back to eat at her restaurant, so headed to her place. While waiting for our food we were surrounded by three kids trying to sell us things we didn’t want. After telling them to go away for 10 minutes or so, eventually we had to ignore them. The food was good, however.

We left Ellen and Merell behind at this point – they’d already been to our next stop, and headed back to Angkor Thom, then out of the east gate to Ta Phrom. On the way we stopped to take photos of Ta Keo, but felt too tired to climb it, so on to Wat Phrom. Nature is really taking hold here, and there are loads of trees growing out of the walls. Part of the first Tomb Raider film was filmed here.

By now it was 15:00 and we’d been on the road for 10 hours, so we started making our way back. The route took us around the back of Angkor Wat – time to drink water and eat chocolate before cycling back to the guesthouse. We met three English hippy girls on the balcony, who had apparently planned to spend 6 months travelling with just 1000 pounds each. Somehow they’d found room in this budget to buy a guitar with a custom-made case, and get tattoos. Nice girls but maybe a little misguided….

That evening Anja was due to arrive at 21:00 from the 4000 islands, so we reserved her a room and headed out to food and to the Angkor What? bar again. We were joined at our table by an Irish couple and an English couple, the English girl turned out to be a friend of Andy’s sister. Who’d've thunk it? Anja did arrive eventually, but not till about 1 in the morning. Apparently her minibuses battery died, so they had to push it, and then it ran out of petrol. Sounds like a bit of a nightmare journey – this is why we were glad we took the plane.

The next day we met up and took a tuk-tuk to Banteay Srei, followed by Angkor Wat again for sunset. A much easier day!

The day after that Andy and I were booked on a bus to Phnom Penh. Anja was going to stay another night in Siem Reap, before heading to Battambang, and it seemed likely we’d probably meet up in Sihanoukville after those.

We arrived in Pakse at 6ish in the morning. We wandered around with Michelle, a South African girl we’d met on the tuk-tuk to the bus, looking for some accommodation. We tried a few hostels, but none of them had a single and a twin rooom, so Michelle ended up in the riverside hostel. Andy and I dashed off to meet Anja and Anna for breakfast at the Indian restaurant next door to their guesthouse before their 7:45 bus to the 4000 islands. Sadly it had no pancakes left. Andy and I ended up checking into the guesthouse the girls had just left – the Saigon Champasak. This was a really nice place with a balcony, television and air conditioning, but was a little more expensive than the riverside hostel Michelle was staying at.

Pakse is not really a happening town. As far as backpackers go, it’s more of a travelling hub – you can get buses or planes from here to just about anywhere in south Laos and beyond. We did find a really nice place to eat though – the local minimart put out some barbeques on the street and made some excellent meals. I only noticed it when walking back from the internet cafe because of the mass of people that were eating there – always a good sign.

After spending most of the first day sleeping, eating and surfing the net, we resolved to go to Wat Phu the following day. Having already made some enquiries about tours and travelling ourselves, and having failed to make any decision about booking a tour, we ended up making our own way there. This involved a tuk-tuk ride to the bus station first of all. The ‘buses’ actually turned out to be sawngthaew – basically extra large tuk-tuks. Andy refused to get on the almost-full sawngthaew we were directed to, citing a bad shoulder, so we were directed to an almost-empty one. The other one left and our’s waited for an hour….

The ride to Champasak on the sawngthaew was a long one and ended with a ferry ride across the Mekong river. Luckily this turned out to be included in the price. From Champasak we paid for the ride, while the Laotians on the bus laughed at how much we were asked to pay, and picked up a tuk-tuk to Wat Phu.

Wat Phu is a large ruined temple, set into the side of a mountain. The site is large, and the guide book compares it to Angkor Wat. Admittedly the comparison is : “Not in the same league as Angkor Wat”, but the fact they mention it in the same sentence is impressive. The temple must once have been incredible, but now, sadly is completely ruined – most of it is just piles of rubble. There are plans to restore it, to do this will apparently cost one million euros, which doesn’t actually sound like very much money. I guess labour in Laos is cheap.

That said, the ruins are still pretty amazing. It was originally a Hindu temple, reordained as a Buddhist temple when that became the dominant religion in Laos. You walk up an avenue of monuments to the Hindu god Shiva. The symbol of the god is a phallic design. It seems the hindus had three main gods, Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh, who combined. The combined symbol for the three is a shaft with a circular bottom for Ganesh (elephant head), square middle for Shiva (3 or 4 heads) and octagonal top for Vishnu (four arms, can’t remember how many heads). These shafts are sunk into the pillars with Ganesh buried in the pillar – I guess he’s lord of the underworld.

About halfway along the boulevard are the two main standing temples, although they’re so ruined you can’t go in them. These are the North and South temples. Continuing along you go up some ruined steps, then a few more sets of ruined steps (watch your step) to the top, where there’s another temple, part of which you can go into – there’s a Buddha in there. Behind that is a slope, with some more ruined steps going up there and a cliff. Around there is also the elephant rock, which is a big rock with an elephant carved into it, and the crocodile rock, which has the imprint of a crocodile. All around is just rubble, but there was a small set of steps lying around with a couple of snakes carved as if wrapping around the steps. It’s interesting to see obvious bits of building just lying around.

We spent about an hour wandering around and exploring. Some areas are fairly inaccessible, we felt a bit like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (but without the acrobatics & dinosaurs). After that we wandered back to the tuk-tuk, who took us to the museum, which is where we learnt about Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh.

Now for the ride back. The tuk-tuk took us back to Champasak. From there we got the ferry across the river (we looked for someone to pay, but couldn’t find them). From the other side of the river there were no tuk-tuks and no more buses back to Pakse. Eventually we had to ask one of the shopkeepers what to do. She flagged down a builders’ pick-up truck who happily gave us a lift back to Pakse. At one point one of the guys in the cab came and sat in the back with us, and we attempted to communicate, but with limited success.

Back in Pakse, we’d previously booked a flight the next day to Siem Reap. Having lost a day in Koh Samui, spent an extra day in Bangkok and an extra couple of days in Vang Vieng, we couldn’t really afford to lose another two days on a bus ride, so the flight it would have to be!

The bus ride down was one of the better rides we’ve had. It only takes about 4 hours from Vang Vieng to Vientiane and I was sitting next to a hippy girl called Danielle who I chatted to about snowboarding for about 3 of those hours. She and her group were due to get on another bus, half an hour after arriving in Vientiane, to Hanoi, which takes something like 28 hours on the bus. I can’t say I envied them the 32 hour bus ride.

We checked in to the Mixay guesthouse on a recommendation that the breakfasts were amazing. Sadly it turned out that the menu had changed. While Cat had been offered curries and other goodies when she was there a few months before, all that was on offer now were badly fried eggs and toast. Still, the breakfast was included in the price of the dorm, so that was something at least!

This was also to be our first time staying in a dormitory. The idea was initially exciting – this was meant to be a good way of meeting people, but I got into mine to find one guy in bed, looking pretty grumpy that I’d woken him up. I never saw the other guy except when I woke up in the night.

We met a Liverpudlian girl called Sonia, whose accent sounded like no Liverpudlian I’ve ever met. Still, she was very chatty. The three of us went out for an Indian meal, laughed at the photocopied Lonely Planets in the Minimart which apparently had been published in March 2010, and headed back because, like Luang Prabang, the Lao curfew is observed in Vientiane. An early night was in order after my late one the night before.

On the second day, we’d booked a sleeper bus for that evening to go to Pakse. We spent the day looking at the sights around the city. We saw the outside of Wat Si Saket, which is the oldest temple in Laos, but it didn’t seem worth the 5000kip (for foreigners) entry fee. Looking back on it, that’s only 50 US cents. It’s funny how your sense of prices gets a little warped in these places. We also walked up a street that looks very much like the Champs Élysées in Paris, at the end of which is the Patuxay monument that seems very reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe. The differences are that they made it a little bit higher, with four gates instead of two, and it’s made out of concrete. The placard at the bottom describes it as a “concrete monster”. The concrete used to construct it was actually given to Laos by the US to build a runway, which leads to it’s other nickname of “the vertical runway”. Finally we stopped by the revolutionary monument, which is outside the front of the national assembly (I always wonder what function a national assembly has in a communist country) and visited Wat That, where the Pha That Luang stupa is. The stupa is the national symbol of Laos – it’s very big, golden and impressive. We paid the 5000kip (again only for foreigners) entry fee here to walk around inside, but there wasn’t a huge amount to see inside.

A quick Tuk-tuk back to the hostel, then we spent the rest of the day in coffee shops until our bus was due to go. I picked up a dodgy-looking cold pizza slice from the Minimart, since I had 20 minutes to get dinner. It turned out to be so tasty a couple of other guys in our hostel went and bought some. The tuk-tuk picked us up about an hour before the bus was due to go and proceeded to do laps of our hostel for about 45 minutes. We actually passed the same coffee shop, where we’d spent most of the day, just at the end of the street where the hostel was, 5 times. Eventually we arrived at the bus station and our bus.

The whole town is set up for one thing, and one thing only – tubing and drinking. Now that might sound like two things, but the two go so neatly (and so dangerously) together that they’re really not.

The theory of the tubing is that you rent out a giant rubber inner tube that’s come from a tractor or something, get on a tuk-tuk, head upriver, throw the tube in the water, jump on top of it and float back down the river. What actually happens is that the tuk-tuk takes you to the first of many bars along the riverfront. Many people never leave this bar, but if you do, you float down the river with the current and people at the other bars throw ropes out with plastic bottles tied on to the end. You can grab the rope if you want, and you get pulled in to the bar with your tube, where you get free shots and buy buckets of various concoctions. The trouble is that the first 7/8 bars are virtually next door to each other, so if you want to visit them all you really get very little tubing done.

We arrived there on the 17th or 18th November fairly late, having got the bus from Luang Prabang across the mountains, which were really beautiful. The first port of call as usual was to find a hostel. We’d decided on the Maylyn, which is recommended in the Lonely Planet. When we got there, however, we found that it’s on the wrong side of the river and there’s a 4000 kip toll to cross the bridge (just under $0.50). That put a bit of a downer on the idea – I didn’t want to pay that every time we entered or left the hostel. While Andy and Olle were checking that out and Anja and I stayed with the tuk-tuk, a random Laotian guy who appeared to have followed our tuk-tuk on his moped introduced himself as Tony and gave us flyers for his guesthouse: Tony’s. Against my better judgement we decided to go and stay there instead.

Tony’s guesthouse actually turned out to be quite magnificent. It’s a new build, with public balconies to sit out on and a nice artistic design. The rooms were pretty nice too.

The next day was tubing day! We went out and rented our tubes for 55,000 kip, plus a 60,000 kip deposit which you get back if you return the tube by 18:00. The tubes were piled on the roof of the tuk-tuk and we were off to the first bar, where we found Maia and Barb from the slow boat.

I forgot to mention, most of the bars have various swings, zip-lines and slides, some of which are more deadly than others. I tried the moneky wire, where you have to hang from a wire stretched across the water, touch a bucket, then make your way back. If you make it you get a free bucket. Irritatingly I only made it half-way back. My arms ached for days afterwards. At some point Maia spray-painted a big sun on my back.

After the second or third bar, Anja and Anna decided to tube all the way back to the town. Olle, Andy and I stayed on for more bars & drinks. God knows what had happened to the Canadian girls at this point. The three of us ended up in the slide bar, where first I destroyed the volleyball game (by knocking the ball into the river – by the time we retrieved it everyone had left), and then was refused entry to the slide as I hadn’t bought a drink – Olle had bought them for us. I didn’t think much of that bar…. They did have a good fire going though.

Since it was coming up to half past 5, we decided to head back, get our deposit and get ready to go out. Olle and I tubed across the river while Andy walked over the bridge. A tuk-tuk back, a quick change & shower and we were off to Q bar. Several more buckets were consumed, laughter and dancing ensued, and then I woke up in my room wondering what happened in the hour and a half between when the bar closes and when I actually got back to the guesthouse.

The next day was largely spent sitting in Family Guy and Friends bars – they have bars that just play back-to-back episodes of various TV shows. Basically it was a chill-out day.

The day after that Anja and Anna left for Vientiane. Andy, Olle and I wanted to go tubing again, so we did, but without the tubes. It was pretty cold that day anyway so we didn’t want to get in the water. We saw a couple of injuries that day – someone came off a zip line wrong and knocked his head on a rock (presumably). Lot of blood ensued, Someone else decided to climb a pole that really wasn’t designed for climbing – it snapped, but he was lucky to land on the flat deck instead of on the step. There was also a stunt swing competition. Later we went to Oh La La and Q bar and partied with Frieda and Anna, who we’d met on the tuk-tuk to the tubing.

The following day was the day we were all supposed to be heading to Vientiane. At the last minute Andy decided he was too ill to get on the bus, and the two of us cancelled. Olle had a flight to catch from Vientiane, so he had to go. So we had an extra night in Vang Vieng. Andy and I had had separate rooms up till then, so decided to get a twin room and save money. The new room was upstairs, and wasn’t a patch on our previous rooms. I even had a nice cute pink blanket with animals on it. Anyway, as Andy was feeling sorry for himself still I ended up going out with the two swedish girls again. I guess I dumped them at Q bar, as I ended up heading to Sunset bar with some random swedish guy we’d met that night, then chatted to various people at sunset bar, which to be honest was way too chilled out for that time at night.

On the following day we mainly hung out at the Family Guy bar, until it was time to get the sleeper bus to Vientiane.

On the first night there, the three of us went out and had a look around the Hmong (hill tribe people) night market. Lots of clothes and general trinkets were on offer, nothing appealed to me really. Louise and I then went to dinner, while Andy went back to the hostel with a stomach ache. The meal was nice enough – Louise got a rice wine, which actually turned out to be very tasty.

On the way out of the restaurant, Louise was going to head back to the hostel, and I fancied a night out. We bumped into Anja again, who’d been eating at the same place, so I joined her. This was at about 7:00, and she’d arranged to meet up with another bunch of people at 8:00, so we wandered around the various travel agents looking at the tours that were on offer. We had this idea we might do a 2 day tour if Andy was up to/for it. At 8:00 we wandered back to the Cafe d’Art and bumped into Louise again, just coming out of an internet cafe, so she joined us for drinks. The rice wine at the Cafe d’Art wasn’t nearly as good. Eventually Olle and Annelien joined us for drinks. We moved on to Lao Lao Garden and Louise left us.

I guess we arrived at Lao Lao Garden at 11:00, only to find it was closing at 11:30. I’m not sure if this is true across the whole of Laos, but certainly in Luang Prabang they have a curfew where everyone is meant to be in their hostel by midnight. Anja and Anna made the mistake of leaving it to me and Ole to order beers, so after considering the various prices, we decided the most cost-efficient option was to get a tower. A tower is basically a big 3 litre container of beer with ice down the middle to keep it cool and a tap. Let’s just say the girls weren’t too impressed that, with 20 minutes left, we had a pint and a half each to drink, so they invited a couple on the next table – Ben and Johanna to join us. It turned out these two had bought bicycles at the Laos border, cycled from there and planned to cycle all the way through Laos. Unsurprisingly they were German… .

At 11:30 we were ushered out by the staff, who gave us plastic cups to put the remaining beer in. At this point in Luang Prabang the only place open that serves beer until later is the bowling alley. This is open until 3:00am, so, as that’s where everyone goes, that’s where we all went. My bowling skills aren’t up to much at the best of times – apparently they get even worse after a few drinks. I believe I nearly won the first game, but by the end my skills were declining whereas Olle was only getting better.

The following day we’d arranged to meet up with a load of other people at the Cafe d’Art at 12:00 to go and visit the Kuang Si waterfall. Naturally Andy and I were late, arriving at 12:30. Anja had also been late (surprising for a German), having arrived at 12:15 to find everyone had gone. Anyway when we turned up her and Anna(?) had just decided to share a tuk-tuk with Cole from the minibus/slow boat and a couple of his friends, so we bundled in with them. The tuk-tuk was going to charge 30,000 kip (about $3) each to take us to the waterfall, wait for us to visit and take us back to Luang Prabang. Not a bad deal, considering it’s a long way away, although he must have been loving the fact that there were so many of us. I think the deal had been negotiated for 4-5 people rather than 7.

The waterfalls were beautiful. There’s a bit at the bottom where you can swim about, and you can walk right up to the top, which is quite a climb, but definitely worth it. In the swimming areas though there seemed to be some kind of biting fish. Nothing serious, but a little irritating. They didn’t get you if you kept moving. I believe there’s a monastery around there, as there’s a lot of monks wandering around. It’s certainly a very peaceful location! Good for meditating. At the bottom we found a big rock in front of the waterfall to pose on. Sadly I forgot to take my camera that day, so I’m waiting for Andy to upload his photos. Sorry guys!

In the evening we all met up – Me, Jean, Olle, Andy, Maia, Barb, Anna and Anja (in order of appearance in the group photo) for drinks and pizza at the Cafe d’Art for a few drinks. No bowling tonight.

The next day we’d decided to do some kayaking. We decided to do a one day tour instead of a two day in the end, so the kayaking was to take in the Tak Sai waterfalls (not to go over them). After the minibus collected us all and another couple – Matt and Stefania – and picked up the kayaks from some obscure location – it seemed to be someone’s house and there was a woman weaving outside, although they didn’t seem to be trying to sell us anything – we headed on down to the river. The kayaks were mostly two-man, so it was Andy and I in one, Anja and Anna, Matt and Stefania in the others and Olle in his own one, plus the two tour guides. We got in the river, paddled for about 10 minutes and arrived at the waterfall. Perfect timing for a 2 hour break…. These were also beautiful, and had many more areas where you could swim without any biting fish. There’s also a zip-wire trail up there, but we didn’t do it as it was horrifically expensive. We did another trek around instead, lost Olle and ended up climbing down a rope ladder through small hole. After a bit we found ourselves back at the start, and the guides wanted us to have lunch. Anna went off to find Olle, and eventually succeeded. After lunch it was back on the kayaks.

This time we kayaked for about four hours. It was great fun, took in some very simple rapids, and a couple of slightly more exciting ones. You had to be careful where you put the boat to avoid the rocks on these. There was splashing aplenty, and Andy and I had a race against the guides. Surprisingly they won and we still owe them a beer.

I’d say the kayaking was over all too quickly, but in fact we were all exhausted by then.

That night Andy, Anja, Olle, Anna and I went out for a Lao-style barbeque. Basically they put a big barbeque on the table with a load of ingredients, they give you a quick demonstration of what to do, and you cook the rest yourself. Anna left sometime after the barbeque and the rest of us went bowling. Another good night!

On our last day Anja was feeling pretty sick and Olle hung-over, so Andy and I met up to walk the temples in town. After a quick stop for coffees, Olle turned up to join us. He was just in time to visit the Royal Palace, home of the apparently famous Phra Bang buddha statue, after which the town is named. A few temples later and we were templed out. We met up with Anja in the l’Etranger bookshop, but she was still sick and left soon after. The rest of us climbed the hill to the Phou Si stupa, which was supposed to be a great place to watch the sunset. Judging by the crowds that were there to watch, this piece of news had got around everyone, and so it wasn’t such a great place to watch it. Still, I got some good photos.

That evening Andy took his laptop to l’Etranger (free wi-fi!) and we watched Yesman upstairs. The next day we’d be heading to Vang Vieng to do some tubing!

The accommodation in Chiang Khong was pretty nice. Basic in terms of facilities, but clean and well-kept. We made use of the mosquito nets provided that night, as the building was made of wood, there were lots of holes…. Dinner was included, and was ok. No meat was involved though . We chatted a bit to two Korean girls that had been on our minibus and watched “The 300″.

The next day involved the ferry over the river, the border crossing and the first day of the slow boat ride. The hotel had offered a service where they dash off to the border when it opens with your passport, sort out your visa and bring it back while you’re having breakfast for 100 baht, so we took advantage of that. The ferry across the river was one of these long, narrow boats, much like the one we took in Inle lake in Burma, which was kind of tough to get into with a big backpack on, while trying to squeeze past everyone else’s backpacks. We made it though and got through the border.

We were then all shipped off by tuk-tuk to a cafe where the slow boat went from, where one of the trip organisers gave us a talk where he basically lied through his face, first by telling us that the mid-point stop was a simple town where they wouldn’t accept baht (lie) so we needed kip (why didn’t he tell us this in town where there was a cashpoint? Oh yes, so he can change us dollars at a horrific exchange rate) and that the guesthouses would want 100,000 kip per night(lie), presumably so he could sell the 60,000/night ones before anyone left.

Not believing the price, but wary of the baht problem, we managed to get some dollars changed to kip at a merely unreasonable (8000/dollar) (rather than horrific (7000/dollar)) exchange rate by teaming up with a Polish chap. The rate at the exchange at the border was about 8500kip/dollar. As it turned out the guesthouses and restaurants in Pak Beng did accept baht.

After an hour or so, we were allowed onto the boat. Most of the seats were gone by this stage, so Andy and I had to split up. I ended up sitting next to Louise – a very nice Canadian woman of 48. We had a really interesting chat, she’d worked jobs in the music (BMG) and film (Sony) industry, and later we got chatting to Anja and some other Germans (never figured out their names – they kept moving around) in the seats in front of us.

The scenery around the Mekong river was really beautiful. The banks of the river are basically covered with jungle and it’s pretty mountainous as well. The river itself seems pretty wild – lots of rocks and eddies and even the odd little whirlpool. We had the option of doing the slow boat ride, which takes 2 days, or the speedboat ride, which takes 6-7 hours or so. However both our guidebooks advise not to take the speedboat as they tend to flip when they hit debris, which there’s plenty of, and lots of people die. As it was we were much better off on the slow boat anyway – it’s a good opportunity to meet people, and most of the speedboats we saw only had 2-4 people in.

The end of the first day on the boat, and getting off in Pak Beng was an experience…. Basically it was dark, and everyone gets off the boat and stands around on rocks. They then gradually unload the bags, which noone can really see because there’s too many people. Much pushing and shoving later, while everyone tries to figure out whose bag is whose, and yet more people shine torches in your eyes, trying to sell you a guesthouse, you somehow end up with a bag that belongs to you and a room to stay in for the night.

Louise joined up with Andy and I, and we took a couple of rooms in the same guesthouse, then headed out for dinner together. After choosing a restaurant, we eventually wandered in to one only to find Anja (AKA Tigerduck) with a group of people eating there, so we joined them. We later got to know Olle, Anneline, Maia and Barb who were on the same table. I ate a beef and mint lab – kind of a minced-meat salad. It was excellent.

The next day it was time to hit the slow boat again. This took about 8 hours to reach Luang Prabang. Luckily we got there with some daylight this time, so getting off the boat, collecting bags and finding a guesthouse was a bit less of a disaster. Andy and I booked in to the Chansavang guesthouse. More on Luang Prabang later!

We had decided on the way to stay at the Eagle House 2 guesthouse. We discovered on the way there that the road system in Chiang Mai is a bit odd. The old city is surrounded by a moat, and there used to be a city wall – bits of that can still be seen here and there. The moat and the wall enclose the old city in a 2km x 2km square (I believe). Of course the city’s grown way beyond that now, but the old town is where our guesthouse was and was pretty much where we stayed.

On the first day Andy and I wandered around the old town, looking at wats (temples). There’s a very impressive, very old and pretty ruined wat there called Wat Chedi Luang. We also looked at Buddhas inside and when we arrived at Wat Phra Singh a procession was just leaving. This consisted of a line of pickup trucks – the first one had various buddhist religious implements on (gold boxes and things), then the following ones variously had people playing drums and other musical instruments. We found out later that a monk had just been ordained there and so this was the celebration.

Feeling templed out by now, we walked back.

We arranged with the tour guides at the hostel to do a 3-day trek, starting the next day. This was to be a trek up into the hills, staying overnight in hill-tribe villages, riding elephants and white water rafting. Unfortunately a couple cancelled at the last minute and so the trip never happened. We decided not to put it back a day – we’d already spent too long in Thailand – so sadly the trek never happened. Apparently Sapa in Vietnam is a better place to do a trek anyway.

A bit later, I got a text message from Mitch. He was going to fly from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, and would be joining us that evening. We had an excellent dinner at Daret’s house (it’s a guesthouse, we didn’t just invade somebody’s house and demand that they feed us) and an early night – Andy was feeling a bit delicate that day.

On the next day, Andy was still feeling bad, so I teamed up with Mitch. After looking into elephant rides (really expensive), zip lines (almost as expensive) and tiger stroking we decided to go with the tigers. Our hostel pointed us at a chap at the hostel next door, who was planning to do the tour today. Before taking us to the tigers, he insisted on taking us to see some temples! After visiting Wat Chedi Luang and Wat Phra Singh again (although Mitch hadn’t seen them, and the sun was in a better place so I got some better photos), off we went to Tiger Kingdom!

Tiger Kingdom was pretty cool. They let you in to the cages and take photos of you cuddling up to the tigers. They won’t allow you to do the really big ones – the alpha male is about 230kg – but you can lie with the 130-150kg tigers. They did various packages at the door. I opted to go with the big tigers and young (9 months) lions package, while Mitch went for the baby tigers. It was a little nerve-racking, although they keep the tigers well fed and it’s really hot there, so all they really want to do is lie around and relax. When I got there one of them was getting pretty restless and a bit later we saw the trainer playing with him. He had a big long stick with some kind of balloon or plastic bag on the end. He would wave it around and the tiger would just leap at it. It’s amazing to see, it’s just like watching a house cat, except that it’s twice the size of you! The tiger kept leaping in the water as well, a nice way to cool off I think.

The baby tigers were really cute too. There were two of them, each about the size of a house cat, maybe slightly bigger. We went to see those next and this was Mitch’s turn. One of them was rolling around to have his belly played with and crawled up into his lap and everything.

Next was my turn again to go and see the lions. These were 9 months old and weighed about 50kg. These were walking around a lot more – we saw one of them playing with a rock earlier, in much the same way that a cat plays with a ball. I don’t know if I touched one of them wrongly, but it lunged at me at one point. I don’t think he was actually aiming to bite, probably just wanted me to go away.

The trainer was telling me they only feed the cats chicken. Apparently any other meat would give them a taste for flesh. They’re also trained from birth not to attack people – the guy with the baby tigers was a little worried about Mitch letting them bite him.

After the tigers, we got back to the hostel at mid-afternoon, by which time Andy was feeling a lot better. We went out that evening and started off playing pool at the Heaven Beach Bar. This was about as bad as the name suggests, and it had a truly awful Thai cover band on, but they did have a free pool table. A bumpier pool table I have never played on, the games were pretty hilarious. After that we went to the Reggae bar for a dance – Mitch went home sometime in the interim. A bargirl at Heaven Beach Bar advised me that people head on to Spicy afterwards, and we would need a tuk-tuk, so we grabbed one from outside, who drove for about 30 seconds and dropped us off. Stupid bar girl! We walked back at the end of the night.

The following day Mitch was leaving for Pai and we were leaving to get the slow boat to Luang Prabang. Roll on a three-day journey!

The trip there from Samui was generally a  bit of a disaster. The boat hadn’t left on the day we wanted to go because of the storm, and they weren’t really sure about sending the boat on the day when we did go. We soon discovered why – Between Ko Phangan and Ko Tao (about an hour and a half) the boat was pitching and rolling all over the place. We were sitting on top of the boat, but by the windward rail, and every time the boat crashed down we’d get drenched with spray. We quickly moved to a standing position in the middle. Still, it seems we chose our position well – apparently lots of people were moving up from downstairs as lots of people were getting sick. The boat ride from Ko Tao to Champhon was almost as bad, despite the fact we were moved to a larger boat. We were about 2 hours late getting to Champhon, but they’d timetabled a 3 hour wait between the ferry and the bus (I guess this happens a lot) so we had time for dinner (Nothing exciting, think I had sausages and chips…). The bus was meant to drop us in Bangkok at about 5am – perfect time to go looking for a room to stay. As it happened, we were actually dropped off at half past 3 and ended up sitting in Burger King for an hour and a half until places started opening.

Anyway, we eventually found a very nice room in the Sawasdee Banglampoo hotel which had air conditioning and a mini-bar and everything, although it did cost 800 baht (about 16 pounds) between us. Time to get a bit of sleep!

While in Bangkok, I decided to take the opportunity to replace a pair of shorts that had been ruined by seawater, a pair of sandals that had self-destructed and my nice sunglasses which I’d lost in Samui . The shorts I bought from the market but the sandals and sunglasses I bought from the Centrepoint shopping centre as I’m never really sure about the quality of stuff on the market.

So Andy and I hung about on the Kao San road, playing cards at the Kao San central while millions of salespeople attempted to sell us wooden frogs, bracelets and a thousand other things. Later on at the internet cafe, I got chatting to Blayze, who’d just been to a tiger sanctuary and had many many photos of her hugging tigers. She’d met a couple of others on that trip – Drew and John, so we all met up with them, picked up a Canadian breakdancer, Mitch, and our Bangkok crew was complete! Most of the evening following that was spent with a tower of San Miguel on the table (no idea why they didn’t do a Thai beer tower) and a Shisha pipe while we played the drinking game “21″. Later we ended up in a nightclub on the Kao San road where Mitch unveiled his breakdancing skills with a friendly dance-off with a Thai guy and his girlfriend. I think he nailed it with the backflip though.

One not-so-early night later, we all met up again (except Mitch, he’d gone when we arranged it) to go to the weekend market. The market itself is huge, selling loads of trinkets, clothes, shoes and just about everything else. Drew was looking for denim shoes – apparently he has a denim-themed party to go to. We actually found some too, but he just ended up with a denim bowtie. We had food there too. The rice was nothing to write home about but the noodles were just about the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. Impressively horrible tasting AND they looked like raw pieces of flesh. Blayze and someone else (Drew?) had them and they weren’t shy about sharing!

After more looking at markets and a sweltering bus ride home, which took ages in Bangkok traffic, we returned to Kao San Central to meet Mitch. A few beers later we headed off to the Thai boxing arena where the prices were pretty shocking! 1500 baht (30 pounds) for a 2nd class seat, 2000 baht (40 pounds) for ringside. We haggled them down to 1600 baht for ringside and took those. After a few beers, the fighting started.

Now, I’m not really sure why, but nearly all the fighters were really young – some looked about 12 – and none of them were that big. I don’t know if we read the program right, but I think the contestants in the main fight were only about 125lb. Still wouldn’t want to get in a fight with them though. Drew and Blayze were betting, Blayze was winning and there was a place out the back where you could get a photo with a thai boxer. I thought it would be one of the contenders, but I don’t remember that guy fighting. He looked far too pretty too – I don’t believe he’s been knocked around at all. Unless he is just that good!

After the fighting we had a tuk-tuk race to Patpong, ended up in an open bar and drank and danced the night away. It was nice.

So the next day would be the day we left. Everyone else except Jon was also about to leave Bangkok, so the last night was everyone’s kind of leaving do (you get a lot of those here). Andy and I were going to get the night train to Chiang Mai.