hello!

I am in Vang Vien at the moment having an extremely relaxing time- laos is so different to the rest of S.E. asia, it's quiet and chilled as well as being really beautiful...after my last blog, i went up to hanoi which was really nice and from there did a trip to halong bay, which was absolutely stunning (much bigger than i expected) and to sapa in the north which is home to several hill tribes, who have learnt exceptionally good english from the tourists and now make amazing sales women (which i did not mind as the stuff they were selling was gorgeous and shiny!)...

I flew from hanoi to luang prabang in laos (it was that or take a 40 hour bus journey and clearly it was a case of b***** that, i'll fly). luang prabang was soooooooo pretty. it's a UNESCO world heritage site and the architecture was ridiculously lovely and there were about a million wats in this really small town (monks galore!). I stayed there a few days doing very little, just enjoying the town and doing lots of reading in nice cafes, then I came down here with a few girls I met.

One of the main attractions of Vang Vien is 'tubing': getting in a tractor tyre and floating down the river making numerous stops at makeshifts bars- whoever thought this up was a genius. what do westerners want?= novelty and beer. genius. it was great fun and only marginally dangerous.

There are also a stupid number of bars here that just continuously show episodes of "friends". I'd like to say that I am far too a sophisticated traveler to be interested in such things, but that would be a blantant lie. it's now raining and so sitting drinking coffee shakes and watching tv with loads of other people is in fact, ace.

I'm off to bangkok tomorrow in order to be at the airport on saturday morning to meet my friend chris (yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I am so excited that he is coming to meet me here and that I'll have an old friend to travel around with before going to India to meet more friends- huzzah!

Right, off to do more relaxing...it's such a hard life.