Blogs from Laos, Asia - page 556

Hello to you! Hope you are all well and good. The weather is still lovely here, but getting hotter by the day. The tans are definitely improving and we haven't killed each other yet! Even manged a bit of a romantic getaway at the beginning of the week! Stu has been warned that Valentines day does still count when your travelling, so looking forward to that (Sarah)... Our travels have been taking us further North in Laos. This time we were at the old capital of Laos called Louang Phabang. The old town is now a world heritage sight and contains lots of old French Colonial buildings. We travelled up to Louang Phabang with Laura and Andy. The journey was, erm, memorable.. It was six hours of twists and turns and a bus driver who drove ... read more

Well, probably not - 8km isn't all that long unless you get lost. Getting there I was a bit late getting up at Tha Khek and only just caught the 9:15 bus to Vieng Tham and, as the last passenger, had a plastic stool in the isle. I changed buses at Vieng Tham and arrived at Na Hin at about 1pm. I jumped in the 2pm Seungtheauw for a very uncomfortable 4 hour ride to Kong Low. It started with about 10 of us in the back an got up to 23 at one stage - along with half a ton of cement and a refrigerator. I guess we must have averaged about 10km/h as the trip was about 40 km. It certainly didn’t feel any faster than 10km/h. Kong Lo Village I was met at ... read more

I thought I'd start out with a little insight into how my mind works. This is important in two ways. One - it is cathartic for me to write these things down and, second, it gives each and every one of you empathy for Aneta. She spends each and everyday with me (and forever) and listens as I share some of this with her. I feel particularly empowered as I am reading a collection of David Sedaris short stories which make my neurosis seem quaint and quite mainstream. Today I was thinking about how jipped I feel about the whole Malaria thing. Maybe the whole medical travel thing. Firstly, let me say that we are grateful for our relative health during this trip barring some skin infections and stop offs for immunizations. But, really, the "exotic ... read more

Some of you may have been wondering what I have been up to since my last entry. Yes, once again I have been bad at keeping up to date with my stories, but hopefully I will be able to stick to my once a month update from now on. No promises though! So….where do I begin? December was as expected a fairly crazy month. I found myself a house with plenty of room for guests so let me know if you are coming through. It is a wonderful house with a great garden and has what I am labeling the biggest mango tree in the world. Can’t wait till mango season and I can string up a hammock and lie there swinging away eating mango after juicy mango. My house is on the same road as ... read more

The bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng was memorable - unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. There were in fact 2 minibuses departing at the same time. We ran into our South African friend from the border crossing, Claudia, who had luckily got on the nice new minibus. We were on the old decrepid one. Read no Aircon & highly cramped. Being one to get carsick & being the first person there I put my day bag in the two front seats - behind the drivers seat then stood outside stretching my legs while waiting for everyone else to turn up. Unfortunately 3 nice friendly chinese men saw that those were the best seats - in fact they looked like first class airline seats and (no joke) had as much space as the whole 6 ... read more