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This is going to be my last journal entry before leaving South East Asia. I've had such a great time here and feel a little sad that I have to move on.
During my last few days here, I squeezed in a short visit to Laos. After one night in the remarkably quiet capital 'Vientiane', I met up with my Aussie friends Mike and Sally, as well as a Canadian guy called Dave, who looks remarkably like Chris Martin out of Coldplay. We caught a 'VIP' bus to Vang Vieng (yet another scam, but you get used to it after a while) which took about 5 hours in total.
Arriving in Vang Vieng to a beautiful sunset, flowing river and a mountainous backdrop, I already knew I had made the right decision. Vang Vieng was like a breath of fresh air in comparison to the hustle and bustle of Cambodia. People come here to take it easy and have fun. The most popular past-time here is 'tubing' which involves sitting in a huge inner tube and floating down the river all day. If you fancy a beer, there are numerous stop off points where the barworkers throw out a long bamboo to drag you ashore. To add to the fun, most of these bars have either a 'zipline' or a swing, which you can use to fly across the river before letting go and attempting to land gracefully in the water. It just goes to show that the simplest things in life are very often the best! On my first attempt, I landed flat on my back and boy did it sting. I surfaced to the sound of an audience shouting 'Oooh!!!'.
On our second day here we went on a Kayaking river trip which included stopping off at a couple of caves. When our cheeky little tour leader introduced himself as 'Pornstar', we knew we were in for a day of fun. In one of the caves ('Tham None', meaning 'Sleeping Cave') we saw the biggest spider that I have ever seen in my life sitting on the wall. Even our Aussie friends were impressed, saying that it was bigger than a Huntsman. Curious to see whether it was still alive, I got a bit closer. Mike meanwhile decided it would be funny to blow on it. It slithered across the wall at bullet speed as we all fell backwards like dominoes, screaming with fear!
As if the spider wasn't enough, at the end of the cave we had to squeeze through a very narrow crack to get a final little cavernous room in which the exit above could be reached. Pornstar started to climb up, and got very excited when he saw a monkey in the opening. As he ascended, he suddenly started struggling and dropped down, white as a sheet, landing on Mike and pushing the rest of us back. I thought that maybe the monkey had attacked him. The next thing we knew, a very angry black cobra sprung down in to the cave to attack him, missed and then shot back up to get away. Whilst everyone scampered back through the narrow crack behind us, I grabbed a huge stick as I didn't know whether the snake had gone for good. Fortunately, it was probably more scared than us, given the screaming coming from the cave, and it had scarpered. Nevertheless, there was no way any of us were going to take the exit, and went back the way we came in.
To top off a crazy day, we were all having cocktails at a bar by the riverside after the pubs had shut, when suddenly the police turned up carrying AK47s and politely asked us to go home to bed! Needless to say, we drank up very quickly and left.
I'm now back in Bangkok, and have a rather nasty case of the runs. Hopefully it will clear up before my flight to Australia at 5pm. The pharmacist advised me not to drink for the next 5 days. Yeah right. Next stop, Sydney!
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