As I mentioned in my last post, I have been taking a little holiday.

It’s been a busy few weeks, I spent 10 days wandering around Laos in a daze, I then met Loek and Winchy in Bangkok and we headed off on a little adventure in Bangkok, Pattaya and on Koh Samui. I have also moved house and have a new girlfriend. In my spare time I became a qualified scuba diver certified to dive to depths of up to 18 metres.
For now I will deal with Laos and post more detailed stuff about the rest of the trip over the next few days.

I crossed the border at Chiang Khong and spent 2 days floating down the Mekong river, a partly good and partly bad experience. The Mekong itself is awe inspiring, a truly magnificent river but the boat was very uncomfortable and the overnight accommodation was the worst I have ever stayed in!

Luang Prabang was pretty cool, lots of french inspired architecture which strangely doesn’t look at all out of place in south east Asia.

Laos is a dramatic country, this is the view from my hotel window in Vang Vieng.

One dissappointment was the food, I found it very bland after eating spicy Thai food for so long now. The people also seemed more greedy, at times it was almost impossible to spend the local currency (Kip) as I was constantly asked for either US dollars or Thai baht.

I was a millionaire for a short time though, £100 exchanged into over 1 million kip!

Anyway, enough for now, I’ll start posting the interesting stuff starting with our exploits in Bangkok and Pattaya tomorrow!