Hi everyone,

Been a while since last blog so i've got 2 countries to cover. I think the last blog took us up to our departure from Cambodia so ill start with Vientienne Laos.

We arrived there by plane and quickly realised that there wasn't really much to do in the capital city of Laos. I think we spent 2 days there in total. We saw the Golden Temple and the Buddha Garden and spent the rest of the time 10 pin bowling. I had a bit of a nightmare on one of those days as i accidentally deleted from my camera all of the pictures that i had taken of the trip so far!! Apparently you are not supposed to change the format of the camera when you already have pictures stored. Lesson - never press buttons when you dont actually know what they do! Or just read the manual. Who actually reads the manual though eh? I was absolutely gutted as i had not backed up the pictures of Hong Kong or Cambodia. Oh well. Later that night i thought my luck had changed a bit when i won what i thought was a free pint of Tiger Beer in a bar. Imagine my disappointment when the bar woman came over with my prize which was an Arsenal FC pen with a picture of the team from last season. I went to bed shortly after.

So the next stop was Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is brilliant. It was definitely the most fun place we had been on the trip so far because of "tubing". Tubing involves sailing down a river in a big inflatable tube, stopping off at numerous bars along the river, swinging from rope swings into the water, playing volleyball in a mudbath and getting very drunk. We ended up staying in Vang Vieng for 8 days i think. We had a couple of days of chilling out in the bars watching re-runs of Friends, as every single bar has Friends playing constantly throughout the day. When we left Vang Vieng we were all of the opinion that if we never watched another episode of Friends again it wouldn't be a bad thing. But tubing was great and we met alot of people who we have met up with again since and are going to meet up with again in the future. The only drama in Vang Vieng was the night a spider tried to spend the night with Chris & Mike. Chris had noticed a huge spider in their room after returning from a night out. So naturally he spent the night in the hallway of the hotel sleeping on a bench. Mike returned later that night, saw Chris sleeping on the bench, thought "thats weird" and went off to bed. The next day Chris explained why he was sleeping rough and so the both of them started to panic as the spider was nowhere to be seen and they are both terrified of spiders. Later that night i was in their room and Mike asked me to pass him a bag from the floor. As i lifted the bag this huge spider shot out and for the next 45 minutes we were involved in a stand off - 3 men against a spider. Chris and Mike were standing on their beds petrified, each with a shoe in their hand ready to launch if the spider advanced, i was at the front pretending not to be scared. The atmosphere was tense. Finally the spider backed off and climbed under the door out to the hallway. We were all relieved especially as it was getting very late and we all wanted to sleep. I opened the door to leave and there was the spider on the other side of the door. Mike and Chris jumped back on to their beds. I slammed the door shut and waited. After about 10 minuted i opened the door again and it had crawled along the wall down the hallway. We finally went to bed.

After deciding that our livers were taking a bit of a pounding we decided to move on to Luang Prabang. Pretty scary coach journey there as it is basically winding mountain roads the whole way from Vang Vieng and the coach does get very close to the barrier-free mountain edge. We learnt that looking out of the window just increases your heart rate so we stopped doing it early on. Luang Prabang was a really nice little town and the most amazing waterfalls i have ever seen. They were right in the middle of the jungle and it was beautiful. We went swimming in them which was really nice but Mike and Miles were attacked by leeches. Luckily Chris and I got away free. We also did an elephant ride through one of the waterfalls. I think we all felt a bit underwhelmed by the elephant riding though. It was just uncomfortable and felt a bit cruel on the elephant. Oh well. The nightlife in Luang Prabang wasn't great though as everywhere in Laos shuts at midnight. There is a curfew and everyone has to be indoors by 12. I think they are a bit more lenient towards tourists but its a bit annoying that everything shuts. However it seemed the only exception to this rule was the local bowling alley as that stayed open until about 3am. So as you can imagine all the backpackers gathered there for some late night drinking. And as you can imagine the quality of bowling on display is good for comedy value. Chris and I joined a group of people for a match and i think ended up with scores of 21 and 22. I think we both fell over too.

So after Luang Prabang we flew into Thailand and to the town of Chiang Mai. For some reason the first thing that we did there was to get suits made up. I dont know why but we did. If you've seen the film Anchorman then you can imagine how we look, cool. The next day we set off for a 2 day jungle trek. It was just us and another couple on the trek. It was a really good experience and we got to spend a night in the jungle with the village people. I have to stress that we did not stay in a YMCA. It was actually a wooden hut with no doors just a couple of blankets and a mosquito net. It was a really cool experience and as there is no electricity or light in the jungle the amount of stars in the sky was incredible. The only bad thing was that the toilet was in a seperate hut outside and trying to go to the toilet in the pitch black is quite a challenge. They had a good supply of beers though. The next day we started the trek back and were joined by a couple of dogs for the long journey back. They were Charlie Dogman and Ewan McGrowler. They literally accompanied us the whole way back through the jungle right up to the point where we jumped in the back of the truck. When we drove off they chased us down the road until we couldnt see them anymore. It was quite sad really. Anyway as part of our jungle trek we signed up for some white water rafting. It was brilliant. Although im pretty sure our "experienced" instructor wasn't so experienced as we found ourselves stuck on top of rocks on a number of occassions and at one point nearly capsizing into the rapids. Great fun though and we will definitely be doing it again at some stage on the trip.

We left Chiang Mai the next day after a scare with the train tickets. Basically i mislaid them somewhere and found myself going down the bins in a supermarket infront of all the customers trying to find them. Quite humiliating. Frustrating too as it turned out that one of the staff had found them earlier and put them behind the counter for me. Anyway the train ride to Bangkok was not the best as a group of old Dutch people sporting mullet haircuts seemed to be having a party right next to where we were trying to sleep. There was also a fat man on the bunk next to me constantly breaking wind and snoring unbelieveably loudly. First use of the ear plugs on the trip, unfortunately i had nothing for my nose.

So we arrived in Bangkok and spent the next week partying in the famous Ko San Road. Bangkok is crazy. On our first night out we ate fried insects and i was harrassed by a ladyboy. Thankfully he/she left after someone came to my rescue. As Alan Partridge would say "i dont find them attractive, its just confusing". Miles and I both celebrated our 25th birthdays in Bangkok. A lady in Chiang Mai told me that 25 is very bad luck in Thailand so i should go to Temple on my birthday and donate something to the monks. So naturally i did. I think i donated about 3 times just to be sure. We also went off to a private room where we all sat down in front of an old monk who threw holy water on us and blessed us. I've got to be safe after that surely.

So after spending about a week in Bangkok we got the boat/bus to the island of Koh Pha Ngan for the Full Moon Party. We were staying in a really nice place that had its own private beach. The beach was beautiful and the island is just one big place to party. The Full Moon Party was brilliant. Thousands of people dancing on the beach until the sun comes up and then beyond. Lots of crazy stuff going on it was great fun. I found myself pulling out all the moves to the YMCA at one point so im pretty sure my drink was spiked...

So now we are in Koh Samui after spending about a week on Koh Pha Ngan and leave for Phuket tomorrow.

So that's all, mail me when you get a chance and ill send another one of these soon...

Nick x