Zip zip

Now I know I am prone to getting a little over excited about things but honestly the last 3 days have been some of the best in my life.

Having finally made it to the north of Laos after 18 hours on the 'hell bus' I was, to be honest, completely unenthusiastic about spending 3 days in the darkest reaches of the Bokeo Reserve in the hope of seeing some gibbons. It was cold, threatening to rain and I was very very tired and as everyone knows I am not at my best when tired.... However I decided to persevere and as we got in to the jeep and sped off the sun started to try and shine, by the time the 8 of us had reached the first stop off point we were taking off jumpers and things were starting to look up.

After a couple of hours trekking we were given the harnesses that we were to live in for the next 3 days and told to hook on to the first zip line and jump off.... So I did and was hurtled hundreds of metres into the jungle emerging over a valley and way above the tree canopy. It was incredible. No fair ground adrenalin as such just completely breathtaking. My hitherto undiscovered 'Lara' came out and there was no stopping me.

Sadly one of the group couldn't face the first zip and so that was the end of her and her very loyal friend leaving just the 6 - 2 guys from Hampsted (Jonny and Jamie) that know Peter Levinger's son (weird), 2 lovely ladies from New Zealand (Holly) and America (Rebecca) and Rebecca's fabulous treeman from Germany, Flo. As you can imagine living in a treehouse hundreds of metres above the trees we all got to know each other very quickly and they made the whole thing even more special - we laughed and zipped our way around the jungle.

The last day we all got up at 4am and zipped off the treehouse into complete darkness (scary) and off on a 2 hour trek to find the gibbons ... which we did and I will never ever forget sitting in the middle of the jungle with their calls echoing all around - hauntingly beautiful...then I GOT TO SEE ONE - Flo saw its bottom bit but I saw it swing (as did the guide so I am not making it up and yes I did have my lenses in) through the trees.

As you can see I am still rubbish at posting photos and as I lost my USB cable I have bought one of those card reader things (???? but Flo was very nice and patient and explained about a hundred times the difference beteen that and a USB stick and I think I get it) and I've decided to describe the photos by number going from the top left to right. There are two videos of zipping in action too but the card reader decided not to read them so I will post them tomorrow (hopefully)

1. Happy Holly.

2. Flo in his element swinging from the zip.

3. Rebecca - braving a mid zip line hang.

4. The toilet. Overlooking the jungle. The best toilet experience a human can have.

5. The beds in the second treehouse. Overlooking the jungle. The best view a human can have from their bed.

6. Me about to zip. Very happy Hoad.

7. Food. Delivered by the local villagers by zip of course to the treehouse. The best restaurant a human can eat at.

8. One of the treehouses. Taken as I am approaching on the zip

9. Me in the waterfall pool. Possibly the coldest bath a human can get into.

10. Jungle Mushrooms. I just liked the look of them.

11. Me about to jump off the zip from the treehouse. Please note the break which is made of a motorcycle tyre. Hmmm.

12. Me having completed my Lara training coming back in.

Jamie and Jonny will follow but the computer and the card reader are having a fight and I haven't got the energy to sort them out tonight so they will follow tomorrow along with the videos of the zipzip zip zip. x

A bit of a goose chase

There we are, Vicky and I, enjoying our Laoatian BBQ overlooking the Mekong when we get an invite from a very sweet looking 18 year old Lao guy (Mr Tee above on boat in white top) to go visit his family - he is so excited and happy at the prospect of us going to his village that it becomes impossible to refuse.... so off we go at 8 am the following morning ...first a tuk-tuk, then a 2 hour bus ride, an hours boat ride in a long tail boat (basically a carved out tree open to the elements) to his village where we see many many beautiful but so so so poor children - some cried when they saw us as they'd not seen western faces before, others got so excited they were almost knocking us down. Mr Tee then took us on another 4 boat rides to other villages along the river ....... neither of us had asked how much the day was going to cost - thinking that we would be travelling locally and on local prices - yeah right by the end of the day he had managed to relieve us of all our money and even wanted to come to our guesthouse so we could get more to pay for stickers for his studies (!). I had heard how westerners - without exception - are all considered to be millionaires which is true on the face of it not taking in to account our cost of living but this was the first time I had experienced it. Glad to say we

got back safe but frozen to the core and a little poorer.

Waterfalls

Just to make you all jealous here are some photos of the incredible waterfalls outside Luang Prabang that I was swimming in the other day and a tiger that was hanging out in the grounds ... poor thing had been rescued from poachers when it was tiny but all it does is walk up and down all day - I think they would have been better off shooting it.

A young monk's idol

So there I am wandering around another Wat indulging in my favorite pastime - monkchat - when I come upon young Khoum who's football mad. His favorite team? Well Manchester United of course...he lifts up his outer robe to reveal the name of his favorite player in the whole world ....Wayne Rooney .... not sure if he's aware of Wayne's penchant for old whores and I didn't let on as it didn't seem right to knock an idol from his perch. If anyone has anything with Manchester United on it - or even better Wayne - please please let me know as I would love to send him something.

I love Luang Probang

Not surprisingly I love this place -being a UNESCO-listed world heritage previsouly French colonial town it's beautiful and full of monks who like talking to me .... It is one of those places where you can just wander through great little streets filled with lovely Lao life. Lao as a country is idyllic ... the sweetest, kindest people, incredible scenery relatively untouched, daily life is unhurried, colourful and straight forward. Easy to travel and easily the most rewarding place I have been to on this trip.

Vang Vieng

Hedonists paradise, bars filled to the rafters with people high on opium watching Friends, getting drunk and high from dawn til dawn .... just a few of the things people have said about Vang Vieng. I couldn't find it. There are a few people looking mildly high and a couple of empty bars with TVs showing episodes of Friends and the usual drunken middle class traveller twats but no more than anywhere else. The main attraction is the incredible limestone Kast scenery which you can float through on tractor tyre inner tubes - lovely for the first 3 hours - painful after 6 but with a winning smile and a 'Sabideeeeeeeeeeeee' to a guy in a canoe I was soon on speeding along back to town. Stayed in a beautiful treehouse - reminiscent of Koh Chang - right on the Mekong, soaked up the sun and re-recharged my battery ....

Vientiane

After the excitement of the Plateau I thought I had better quit whilst I was ahead and get to Laos' capital, Vientiane, to top up my rapidly depleting cosmopolitan reserve....Hmmm. Funny city. Absolutely nothing to here other than visit a few Wats (temples), a wannabe Arc De Triomphe and some outdoor aerobics classes that I couldn't have joined in as I would have been laughing too much at my co-aerobicers (watch for the guy in the blue shorts). To be honest I don't think things were helped by the 11 hour bus journey I had to endure from the south and the cold weather. That said I met some girls on the bus and we managed to find our own beer pump and a herbal sauna with the stupidest cat in the world. Sadly my picture doesn't do it justice but if you see the cat and imagine a burn down its entire spine from sitting to close to the sauna's furnace. I also bumped in to Jessie and Lyndon's friend, Lloyd, who is without doubt the most incredible human in the world...without arms he can drive, smoke and live life like most of us with arms...you try smoking a cigarette or unlocking a car door with your feet.

Bolaven Plateau ... or not

After digging myself out of my Don Det hammock I headed back to the mainland with no clue as to where I was going to go next... east to the Bolaven Plateau or north to Tha Khaek or Vientiane. A few people had talked about the wonders of the Plateau ... rugged countryside where the world's best coffee comes from .... so ..... off I went whilst Vicky (above middle) and Rico (left) headed to Van Vieng and Vientiane respectively. Well there's independent travel and the bloody stupid - my experience being the latter .... Paksong, the main 'town', was in the middle of nowhere, cold, damp and so few services that I thought I was going to have to find frogs and spiders to roast over a campfire. Above left are coffee beans drying and in the middle are some waterfalls that I found after carrying ALL of my belongings some 3km in a fit of determination that my trip to the Plateau would not be wiped forever from my memory. Anyone heading that way - sort things out in Pakse before you go - I thought I had it bad but the next day I met another girl who'd had to sleep outside on her rucksack until being woken up by a local at 2 am .....

Canbodia - Kratie to Laos - 4,000 Islands

I've been many many miles since my last entry so bear with me as I will need to rack my brain for all the things that have happened. From Phnom Pehn I headed north to a small non-descript town called Kratie - famous only for the irrawaddy dolphins. So naturally I found a boatman with his beautiful longtail boat (left) to take me out on the Mekong to find these very rare creatures ... which we did. I even managed to video them but it will take 20 mins to download it so you'll have to wait for that award winning footage.

I then had an arduous journey north to the Laos border which took hours and hours and hours - lots of sitting around watching Khmer people go about their life - still being amazed by the amount of stuff that one human can transport on a moped and chatting in pigeon english with locals. The final part was a boat ride from the mainland in the very south of Laos to one of the 4,000 islands, Don Det. The first thing that strikes you is that there are no moto drivers, tuk tuks or anything like wanting to whisk you away to their preferred guesthouse ... the next is that you may possibly just have found heaven on earth - beaches, waterfalls, canoing, bamboo bungalows, electricity only for a couple of hours a day, cycling through villages as yet untouched by tourism. All this is set to change as the concrete posts are on the main beach ready to bring electricity and progress to the island .....