Our first visit to Vientiane was for a day before we did the Tha Khek loop. Vientiane is the capital of Laos and it's certainly the smallest capital city I've visited. It's not particularly pretty or action packed, but it's got lots of nice little restaurants, a glorious view across the Mekong to Thailand and a relaxed pace which generally makes it a nice place to be.

After we finished our loop, we came back again to look at the few touristy things that Vientiane does have before flying out to Hanoi. We only had a day but given how small the city is, that was plenty of time!

First we went to see a big gold stupa. This is a religious monument and it was surrounded by some other beautiful and very important religious buildings. This particular stupa is a national symbol of Laos, it's picture is on all of their money. It was nice to see lifesize and close up.

Next we went to see what the expats affectionately call the Vertical Runway. It's a dominant feature of the Vientianese skyline built using concrete received as a gift from the US. The concrete was intended for an airport runway, presumably to boost the economic development of Laos. But that's not what it became. I imagine the Laotian side of the conversation went a bit like this... "Hey, awesome! Concrete! Thanks America! What's that you say? Build a runway with it? Well that's a lovely idea and everything, and I can see where you're coming from, but now that it's here, I think we're going to use it to build a giant arch instead. Yeah, that's right, an arch. And we're going to make it just bigger than the one in Paris, so we can stick it to the French after all those years they spent pushing us around. Thanks!"

The arch really is quite huge and quite definitely made of concrete. It's also got three levels of tourist tat shops inside (and why not?) and a sign in english at the bottom which quotes someone who said that "it looks nice from afar, but get close up and it's just a giant concrete monster". Which is slightly harsh but mostly just a truly bizarre choice of text for the tourist information board. The breeze and views at the top made it well worth the visit though.

Last on our list of things to visit was the COPE visitor centre. COPE stands for Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise and their visitor centre is a deeply moving place. We were shown around by Zai, a lovely lady on the front desk and she explained that, despite being officially declared as a neutral territory, Laos was mercilessly bombed by the US during the Vietnam war. In this Secret War, the US flew more than 580,000 bombing campaigns over Laos and dropped on average one bomb every eight minutes for 9 years. Sweet little Laos still holds the unfortunate title of being the most heavily bombed country in the world.

That in itself is terrible enough. But 30% of the bombs didn't explode when they hit the ground. Around 80 million cluster bombs still remain intact in the Laotian soil today, many of them live and ready to go. Couple that with the fact that impoverished villagers can earn more money selling bomb shrapnel than they can by farming and you have yourself a situation where over a hundred people are still being blown up every year. The explosions often maim rather than kill and COPE provides free prosthetic limbs and support for these present-day victims of a long-finished war. It's the only charity to do so and they do it with a cheerful kindness that is thoroughly disarming. A leg costs $75 and it gives someone back their life.

(We also missed seeing Hilary Clinton visiting COPE by two days. Apparently she wasn't moved enough to immediately ratify the agreement to ban cluster bombs on behalf of the US, but she did say that they would continue to support the work of COPE. Which is a good start.)

You have to see COPE, but it's exhausting. Afterwards we went for an ice cream... Or we would have done, if Si hadn't started coming down with a bad headache. So we cycled back to the hotel instead and Si immediately took to his bed. It was all very weird as he very rarely gets headaches, let alone ones accompanied by painful eyes, a fever, nausea and a sore back. I tried to work out what was wrong with him using his broken descriptions and the internet. In the end I thought it was probably either a migraine or dengue fever. Neither good, but neither urgent. So I decided to fill him with paracetamol and wait to see if he would improve overnight and be good enough to fly to Hanoi the next day.

The next morning it was obvious that Simon's fever was worse than the night before. I abandoned our travel plans and called a highly reccomended French-funded clinic in Vientiane. Despite reading that they did call-outs, the lovely receptionist there explained that there was only one doctor and so we'd have to go to them.

Clutching a safety bucket that I'd negotiated from the hotel, Si slowly hauled himself, zombie-like, into a tuk tuk which then drove us to the clinic. The doctor turned out to be the best I've ever visited and he saw instantly how sick Si was. After talking for a while he took some blood and did an on-the-spot test for dengue fever - which turned out to be negative. Then he followed this up with a spot test for malaria - which turned out positive. Oh God. Simon's got malaria.

The doctor said that it was a bit baffling because we're on anti-malarials and that he would have to get another test done which was more reliable and less sensitive. But he also said in no uncertain terms "don't get your hopes up" and "I'm sorry".

So we went back to the hotel where Si slipped in and out of sleep, the codeine keep his headache down a bit and I read everything I could find online about Malaria. On the whole, I would reccomend NOT reading the internet about malaria while you're sitting next to a loved one who's got it - it's not a happy place. Of the four different types of malaria, I found out that only one gives you a continuous fever (which Si had) and this is also the one that kills people. The wisdom of the web was that death was rarely the case if this type of malaria was treated urgently. With Si looking like he was getting worse and worse I could have worn through a hundred carpets with the pacing I did waiting for the doctor to call back with the results of the second test.

Four hours later I cracked and called him myself. He told me in his wonderfully calm and lovely voice that Si's results had just hit his desk and that they showed negative. He said that Si had some kind of bacterial infection, but - after all that - it definately wasn't malaria. I was pretty much speechless with relief. An hour later, the amazing doctor came round and brought some antibiotics to our hotel room. He said that even though we didn't know what the infection was, he was sure that these would do the trick. If not, we were to go back to the clinic in two days for more tests to get to the bottom of it.

A couple of hours after taking the first of the antibiotics, Si smiled at one of my bad jokes. I'd been cracking them all day to try and keep team morale up, but they hadn't even registered with him before now. That was my first sign that he was getting better. The next day his fever broke in the morning and I dragged him out of bed for afternoon tea and then bullied him into going for dinner later. The next day he was well enough for breakfast and to go swimming; so the day after that, figuring he was in the clear if not quite fully recovered, we left Vientiane for Hanoi.

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Before finishing, I just want to say another quick thank you to everyone who sent us their best wishes on Facebook. We were both unbelievably cheered up to hear from you all!