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Hi all,
Thanks for all your lovely messages, its really good to hear from you all. It feels like we've had an eventful time since last writing. We crossed the Thai border and took the slow boat down the Mekong river for 2 days to Louang prabang, it was a lovely way to travel becasue of the scenery howeverthe overnight stop wasn't great, we arrived in the dark & had to drag our luggage up a rocky steep bank we were desperate to find a bed for the night so unfotunately chose a room which we later realised had cockroaches in. Along the bug theme the sweet & sour chicken arrived with a large dead grasshopper on top, at first I thought it was some traditional extra, but luckily before eating it realised it was just an error! We were really glad to arrive in Luang Prabang which is a really stunning place, set alongside the river with a really french feel from its colonial days. We enjoyed a couple of days exploring the city & enjoying the baguettes and crepes (a nice change from rice & noodles!). Unfortunately we had a sleepless night when Mark woke up at 2am feeling uncomfortable and we realised we had bed bugs- lovely! Not much more sleep that night but we were lucky to find a nice place to stay for the next few nights a little pricier than our usual. We had a fantastic day on which we mountain biked for 25km to a beautiful waterfall, after a dip and a cool off we kayaked back to the city 25km along the river, were were pleased to be joined by our friend Greg from NZ who we'd met in thailand it was nice to see a familiar face. Next we travelled to Vientiane which was very scenic but 10 hours long and again we had difficulty finding accomodation so opted for a very basic room with shared bathroom, unfortunately noit a good night for shared bathroom as i (Jo) was on the toilet alot of it with a touch of food poisoning, never mind. It settled pretty quickly.
We have changed our plans slightly and are flying to malaysia tomorrow for a couple of weeks we were abit ahead of our schedule and didn't fancy what we'd read about southern laos & thees a few things we didn't get to do there so we are excited about that.
Hope you all have a good weekend
Lots of love
Jo & Mark
xxxx

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