Hi everyone from a veeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyyy sleepy and exhausted Jo. (Poor Jo, travelling is such a hard life sniff sniff) Am now back in Bangkok after leaving the lovely Laos. Am absolutely plum tuckered out from all the crazy intensive sight seeing that was my tour through the south of the country. Not joking since my last blog I: Went river tubing for a whole day, jumped off awesome rope swings into the Nam Sung river and might just have got a teensy bit burnt and drunk, (I can't help it, these little old Laos guys on boats come out to sell you Beer Lao when you're floating down the river). Then despite evening of sleep planned, bumped into Ben and James again and continued to drink to the small hours. Got up at 6.30 to travel by bus to Vientiane again, then spent the rest of the afternoon until 5pm marching round the city visiting all the wats and famous landmarks etc. And there were alot. Then got dragged off to the market again still with the biggest hangover! Again planned to catch up with sleep but bumped into Alan, Linda and Karin and had a swedish pizza night in the hotel watching Briget Jones...so sleep deprivation might have continued! Up at six again for an 8 hour bus journey in which we had a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere, baking hot in the sun, around 40 degrees and guess what...the driver didn't have a jack for the minibus! By now the oldies have started complaining...blah blah its too hot, blah blah urgh no the air con is giving me a cold, blah blah why do we have so long between toilet breaks....you can imagine the rest. Finally we flag down a bus and borrow a jack but by now my nerves are stretched raw! Then to top it off we arrive in Savannakhet aka a big rubbish dump and stay at quite probably the spookiest hotel I have stayed at in my life. All we needed was a scary thunderstorm and it would have been the perfect setting for a teen slasher flick. Caroline and Nicola thought it was hilarious that I was freaked out and decided to knock and run on my door for half the night....I don't know 35 year olds these days. In the next few days, I saw 4 different waterfalls, swimming in one which was great, visited a tea plantation, a coffee plantation, a coffee factory, eight billion different mini wats, rode an elephant through the jungle for a bit, walked across Don Kon island, went on a river boat tour around the 4000 islands, then got a secret river boat down to Vienkhum where guess what.... I SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!!!! Yep thats right, not just any old Flipper either, we're talking endangered mekong dolphins, (admittedly I didn't get to touch them but swam out to about 10m away in the middle of the Mekong river) was best experience and really good fun swimming in the river, (despite being on cleanliness level with river ganges...). Then toured from Savannakhet all the way down through Pakse down to Don Khong, down to Vienkhum then back up to the border with Thailand by Pakse and flew to Bangkok from Ubon Ratchatthani.....phew, look on the map and you'll see how bloody far it is!!! And to make matters even more exciting, half the tour group decided to mutiny against the tour leader, who admittedly was a bit of a jerk but at the end of the day was just trying to do his job, anyway these people basically would just not stop moaning and complaining and even shouted at the locals when they didn't understand them. I was soooo embarassed to be seen with them and had I not been in chilled out jo traveller mode they would have got the full fry fury!! Anyways thank god I'm off the tour now, just back to my rubbish 180baht accomodation but at least I can chill and not have to go here and there with the same moany people all the time. Oh and the best thing is, I have another tour to look forward to in less than a week.... ho ho! A final word......no more pictures until I get pictures of you!!! Ha ha! I want to see how you all are and what you've been up to and stuff, (proof that you haven't got a tattoo or anything mum lol :P). Byeeeeeeeee zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Jo xxxxxxxxxx (P.S. Mum if you get a webcam, make sure you get a headset with earphones and microphone too so we can have video conversations on MSN! Also, my mobile phone is now working, I've just lost my thai simcard and my 02 sim is out of credit so it can now receive texts but not calls....urgh the confusion!)