Trip to South East Asia

Tree temple (the name has vanished from my small brain) Cambodia, Angkor Wat. A scene from Tomb Raider was filmed here. It's pretty amazing how certain parts of the temple are being held together by several old growth trees.

Michael and I checking for leeches, eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww. Don Khong Island, Laos.

Emma and I at the big waterfall at Khong Island, Laos.

The night of Emma's birthday in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Another delicacy....bamboo shoots, mmm mmmm.

Emma and I on the sleeping bus, such a treat for a 12 hour bus trip!!

Sunset at Harlong Bay, Vietnam. Quite beautiful, just before the lost key incident!

Jumping off the 10m trapeze at Vang Vieng when tubing. This is actually a random person, but I swear I did it!!

Emma and I coasting down the mighty Mekong River on the last leg of the tubing at Vang Vieng. Yes we are quite sauced and tired from the days efforts!

This stupid travel blog thing won't let me post photos because I've exceeded the limit for the month, hmmm all of 10 photos, crap! So will do that when I can.... probably in Cambodia in a couple of days.

Few facts to tell you about and I promise to put them in point point point form this time, not essay point form! If anyone got through the last blog I take my hat off to you, and sorry the spelling and grammer is a nightmare still.... it's nothing to do with me, i blame the sticky keyboard, internet speed and the fact no one speaks university grade englsih over here

1. The Vietnam/Laos boarder was unorganised as hell! A queue here is actually a mish mash crowd/sea of people who push and shove and first in best dressed is usually the way it goes. I ended up opening an officials door grabbing my own pen and custom form to fill out!! After about 30mins it was a 1.5km walk to Laos, unfortunately couldn't do the i'm in Vietnam, I'm in Laos, I'm in Vietnam, I'm in Laos happy dance.

2. We stayed in the capitol Vientiene in Laos. My first impression was the country was a lovely, green, quiet and laid back place. No tooting every 2 seconds and people drove cars here just as much as motorbikes and tuk tuks (an open taxi-tractor).

3. There wasn't much to do apart from eat French cakes and get fat, so we decided to go up north to Vang Vieng which put all our horrible bus nightmares behind us!

4. This place rocked our world. The scenery was mainly wooden and thatch houses on stilts, and concrete homes/guest houses amongst dense green foliage. It's pretty much made for tourists with restaurants filled with beds and tables. Some of them even had a series of tv's playing "Friends" and "The Simpsons"!! The food is scrumptious here, there is a mince meat dish with mint leaves in lettuce with sticky rice (kind of like san choi bow) .... party in your mouth.

5. There are strict laws here that you cannot do drugs, the police perform on the spot fines of $500US or higher if you get caught. But it seems that this makes the locals even more adament to sell you the stuff! There was a "Happy" menu as well as the dinner menu which listed all things like happy pancake, happy pizza, weed or opium by the bag ($15US) or joint ($2), and opium tea to name a few.

6. The next day after getting settled we did the tubing experience which was raved about in the lonely planet and from the tourists we've bumped into. And they were correct, quite possibly the best thing we've done apart from treking in Sapa.

7. How it works is you pay $4US (40,000 Kip) for an inflated tyre for the whole day and then you get taken to the top of the Mekong River. Here you jump in and let the bumpy rapids or slow current (depending on which part) take you down the river. The sweet thing is about every 10 metres there's a bar with a different theme, and this sweet little Laos dude yelling "Sai Bai Dii, Beer Lao", which means Hello come drink my beer!!

So you paddle madly (i chose thong-in-hand-paddle mode which worked a treat) over to the guy who pulls you in via a large bamboo stick. But that's not even the best bit! To get back into the water, or just for fun whilst intoxicating yourself and hanging out with other tourists from all over the world, there's a massive trapeze you swing off to get back into the river. These start about 6m high and get progressively scarier and higher as you go down the river. The highest one was over 12 metres!!! It was pretty fun and dangerous at the same time. By the end Emma and I were doing double acts and swinging out together....me screaming the whole way of course!

8. We have kept running into the same tourists that we've made friends with along the way. Bizzare! There's a british guy Mark who's a lovely guy/maniac to get pissed with, on the last stint of his 6 month trip around this side of the world. Also Ellie who's from England too who we met on the train to Sapa, she is one of those people who is so lovely and can relate to anyone and was not afraid to jump off a 10m trapeze when tubing. I could mention more but it'd be the case of suppose you had to be there so will save you the drag.

9. After Vang Vieng we caught a sleeping bus again (they are amazing, if you ever travel and there's an option to get a sleeping bus...DO IT!!) down south to Pakse (where I'm writing this from now!) which is even sleepier than the above mentioned cities. My god, we're almost slightly bored here tonight, everyone is so laid back and there are not many tourists to hang out with, which I spose is not necessarily a bad thing!!

10. Today we booked a tour from a cute Lao couple who came up to us whilst eating breakfast. He has his own mini bus and guides people around the Champasak province south of Laos. So he took us to coffee and tea farms, and on a small 2 hour trek to different waterfalls. The temperature here is pretty nice compared to up north or vietnam, about 25-29 degrees constant heat with some cloud cover. (I hear its flooding in Bairnsdale at the moment!! CNN is a beautiful thing.)

11. Anyway, it was my idea to do this waterfall trek and boy was it an experience we loved and hated.
Loved: because we saw some 'microsoft screen-saver like' waterfalls over 10m high and we walked the 5 of us (Emma, myself, Michael and two guides) through rainforest like terrain; dodging branches, falling over in the sludge and walking through streams.
Hated: well mostly I hated (because I'm a big sissy girl) and there were flipping leeches everywhere and all over us!! I had about 8 on me in total by the end of the trip and every 20 minutes we all got parranoid because someone would flick another one out of their shoe or off their leg, ewwwww!!
We then got to eat lunch with a local family which was lovely and they kept laughing at us at one point, I'm sure the guide was telling them about how i kept screaming like a sissy girl!

12. Tomorrow we will go down south further to the 4 thousand islands, check out more waterfalls and maybe do a home stay and trek around. There are rare dolphin spotting areas too. Then we will make our way to the border and somehow get to Siem Reap in Cambodia without spending a fortune!

13. Please post me a messege when you can to this site, it's great hearing what everyone is up to and what's happening in the world.

14. Love you all so much XOXOX

15. Sorry it's another long one, what else am I to do, read a book...might improve my grammer...peace out!