howdy

helloooooooooooooooo!

hey again my dear fellows,i do hope everyone is doing great and all that malarkey as per usual!well,an eventful two weeks to say the least since my last email,in which i was sitting in this exact same seat i think!well,we started form the capital of laos(vientiane)which is where i now dwell once again and headed north on a very slow,but overall very pleasant bus journey to the next destination of vang vieng.a slight discomfort though due to the fact that i had to let myself dehydrate fairly and that my pea sized bladder,lots of water and 3 hours without a toilet would've surely created an even more uncomfortable trip hey!haha best be on the safe side n i'd rather be a little hot n sweaty than exploding on the back seat and the other sleepy passengers on board!hmmm a little too much information but bear with me here im trying to paint a picture!hehe anyway,one wee stop(which i didn't need!!doh)and some barbecued goat later we made it to vang vieng,dropped off by the bus at the bus stop...basically a wide open gravelled surface which also doubles up as an air strip.we then ventured through the dusty high street(track)in search of a guesthouse.luckily for us a western guy on his scooter with a local girl on the back then helped us on our way to our first bed for the night!sweet,and as mr b.a barrakus once said " aaaah love it when a plan comes tagether!" and that it did we were directed to a lovely guesthouse,funnily enough managed by the western guy and his laos lady friend and at only 1.5 dollars per night who were we to argue!on checking my emails a little later on we realised that a couple of good friends from koh pha ngan were also in the vacinity and we then went on a mission to find them(whoa sorry im blabbering a bit so i'll try to cut things a little simpler!)anyway basically we found them had a great time blah blah blah and all that jazz!
the next day we could actually see the true beauty of the place in which we had just arrived as we had gotten there on the brink of sunset and didn't really get a chance to look around.an awesome backdrop of beautifully formed mountains graced the skyline in the distance looking out from the veranda of the guesthouse was a great start and a great view to start the day with along side a coffee and an omlette and on a rainy day the slight possibilty of a dooby!; )sadly we must end the video diary that we've been making throughout each and every wonderful day as my video camera has finally given up on me and it brings a tear to our eyes every time we see something beautiful(which is near constant!)that we cannot log for you all to see on our return and this for us is very upsetting but also part of the experience and we are learning to deal with it!
hell,i knew i shouldn't have taken it to that jungle rave!!: )
you never know we may end up finding something by pure magic but contrary to popular belief it really isnt that cheap for that sort of thing out here!sadly!sob weep sob
ok so now armed with our camera we decide to hire mountain bikes and to head out toward the numerous mountain tracks and caves that are there to be explored,only two minutes down the track i decide(as you do as i big kid!)to test the brakes and do a big skid only to find,in a very abrupt manner that some smug joker had switched the front brake with the back brake and yes,over the handlebars i went!hmmm good start me thinks!so,needless to say we had made it only as far as the nam song river about a few hundred yards where in which we had a lovely fruit shake,a little dooby and there we stayed to nurse my fresh cuts and take in the ambience of the river side!after that we did actually make it exploring and there are countless different caves to explore.some that are about 3km into the mountains!there is one particular cave that at the same time every evening at sunset thousands of bats disperse from the cave and flow as one complete unit like a giant ribbon blowing in the wind ,visible for a mile or so before slipping off into little flocks that are almost like the formations that fish like barracuda use to ward off potential predators and i must say it was a spectacular sight!
the next thing was the river,i think it was the nam song or nam som not sure but it was sooooo pretty and the best way to see both the beauty of the river and the countryside was to take a tube down it!by tube,yes i mean an inner tube for a tractor tyre which are easy to rent and a little tuk tuk takes you up the river about 3-4 km and drops you off!its very slow moving so its perfect and takes a few hours to float down to vang vieng depending on how many stops you make on the way and how many beer lao's also!!there are many different bamboo bars along the river side and each one trying to intice you in with something or other and its pretty hard to say no and needless to say that our first stop was about 100 yards down river!: )fed with a free lao lao (local moonshine!)on our arrival i instantly felt welcome and happy!(until i drank it that is!) but that was my first encounter of the flavoursome tipple and im now well accostomed!: ) these bars have constructed the craziest rope swings ive ever seen and the make shift wobbly wooden platforms are about 30+ feet up and don't look much from the ground but once you climb them you instantly regret it!hmmmm not a great one for heights me but swing i did and manged a back flip while i was at it allbeit a very petrified,scared stiff sort of technique!if you let go at the right time then you probably make around 40 feet high before you begin your descent into the clear,cool water below trying to avoid kamakaze tubers along the way!after that we then set off sown stream again but yet again made it only 100yards before we stopped again!not really a bar but just a bamboo platform in the middle of the river with a very drunken local guy with a guitar so as ross can sing and play guitar very well and i'm learning to play he flagged us down and we stopped for a while!well,several free lao lao's later we were all singing and gaining new members to the group as we did!great fun!finally,happy and half pissed we managed to leave that little pagoda of joy and set afloat once more trying to race the sun and get back before dark as this can cause somewhat of a problem!well ok,one more beer stop and then homeward bound and just before dark too!phew!what a great day!
my guitar playing is coming on pretty well and i'm very pleased overall with my progress and ross is now starting to see some progress on the didgeridoo also which is great and now he has even more incentive to continue which makes me happy.
this will make you laugh and,well,i did afterwards but it was a little embarrassing at the time as i had said this to many people over my various trips.i was speaking with a laos guesthouse owner and very sincerely told her in laos that i was tired!no big deal!apart from the fact that instead of saying"i'm very tired " i actually said " i have a very hairy dick!!"haha shit!!yes i cringed fairly but luckily she was laughing more than me and wasn't atall offended but the difference of the two sentences is a mere virtually unrecognisable change of tone in one of the words!hehe oops and when in thailand i asked for an orange shake once and he looked blankly then up at the roof and then back at me with a puzzled face!this happened two or three times until i evetually just said "ok",in english "i'll have an orange shake please" and he laughed and told me that he though i wanted to fix the roof!shit,i only said two words and usually they work fine but i was a little tired and a little fungally annebriated!!unbeknown by me of course!so now if im tired i just make the two hands clasped by the head gesture instead and it works just as well!hehe
one other upsetting incident that occurred (other than the video camera getting malaria)that i must regretfully report is of a burglary in our room!luckily for us they only took some dollars and thai baht,ross' mobile phone and my mp3 player and could've taken passports, t.cheques you name it so like the morphys,we're not bitter,well not anymore but we have a suspect and boy i hope we don't see him around as i'd quite like to stay outa the bangkok hilton for now!its very upsetting that a fellow traveller could even think of such a dreadful deed but we're here for the duration and we're taking whatever is thrown our way and dealing with it,although we have been plagued by some terrible luck over the trip so far!everything has a bright side and if ross' bag hadn't been sliced apart in numerous spots we wouldn't have known that we were actually naturals with a needle and thread recieving praise for our new found skill far and wide : ),and now his brand new 150pound rucksack has its own story to tell complete with battle scars so its all good!
the time eventually came to depart this wonderful spot and we made a snap decision to head for a big man made lake slightly soth between vang vieng and vientiane and as it was so cheap we took a taxi,boy what a mistake!by taxi i mean a pick with a roof over the back and two benches along the two insides.it was a very overcast and misty morning and thinking we were taking a bus there we sat in shorts and a thin shirt each,freezing cold,our bodies squashed up against the back of the drivers cab and a local guy asleep against my back the whole way!now,considering this was the only day that my stomach decided to be a little tender shall i say,i then braced myself for one of....no ..no...the most terrible journeys so far!freezing cold,squashed,slept on(which wasn't so bad as he seemed like he had a good snooze!)feeling like i was going to have an accident at any given moment be it,orally or otherwise and the fact th that we were going all of 15miles per hour due to the excessive over of people and produce on board i then started to dream about how it would be on the bus that we really ought to have taken!hhmmm definately one of those grin n bear it moments!hehe all two hours of it!after that we were dropped of in a pretty much tourist free area n had to put our local lingo into action and headed by tuk tuk to the lake which has a massive dam and is used as a reservoir and provided hydro eclectric power for laos and parts of thailand!still ill and dropped off in a little shanti town,very poor and delapidated a guy who spoke broken english then talked us into heading over to one of the numerous islands on the lake!now,at this point i agreed to anything and everything as my illness was really pulling me lower and lower!these islands are the remnants of the mountains that once stood in this valley as they are the mountain peaks that weren't quite covered by the flood water when they flooded the vally in 1971 and the water is very clear and a captivating turqoisey green sort of colour!arriving at this tiny tiny island seemed,on top of the illness,all a bit too surreal!now i cannot explain it but basically a tiny island about 70meters wide with a guest house at the centre peak and not a soul on it apart from a little laos lady and her little wooden(derelict)restaurant and home perched on the edge of the island,a few chickens and two dogs!all very mystified and still feeling like the place looked we were shown our room in the top of the guesthouse and indeed the toilet where the moment i closed the door bluuuuuuuuurrrrgggghh out it came!hmmm nice!especially with no lights and electric it made for a wonderful experience!haha the place sort of looked like you'd expect the house on haunted hill to look like,all derelict,no lights,electric,people and every object on the island creaked!oooooh!we were the only ones in the whole place and it felt like we were in a film for the evening and started to dread for the darkness to fall!oh well i was soooo happy to have a bed and to rest my now achey boney structure that we soon settled in,and when darkness fell we took our two candles,kindly placed in the room for us and made the most of the two hours of light they gave us and enjoyed a few games of yahtzee before bed!now i wish i could just paint the picture for you as it was for us but sadly,it's an imposible task but if tranquility is your thing then this is the place and it is a beautiful ambience that i could only really appreciate the day after as my illness had subsided!
hence now we are back in the capital and tomorrow will go to the thai embassy and try to get a 60day visa for our re-entry but before we do we will travel down to southern laos and then hopefully into cambodia to see angkor wat and a friend so i'll keep you posted!sorry for writing such a long winded one email!my love to one and all
take care
love dimson doolittle : ) x