2nd November - Bart's Birthday We are in an area known as 4,000 islands, staying on the largest, Don Khong. It's very beautiful. We went by boat in the morning to try and see the Irriwaddy dolphins. There are only 30 in the whole of the Mekong apparently, but there is one deep water place where they regularly come. Unfortunately it's in Cambodia and they haven't been seen for a few days, but we risk it, landing illegally on this small little island and just ...

Deep in the deepest south of Laos today, after yet another long bus journey. The weather is hot and drippingly humid. We arrived in Champasak, another world heritage site and an ancient temple built about the same time, and in the same style, as Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The mattress on our bed in our room dates from a similar era, with a similar odour of mustiness and damp. The television is tweely covered in a floral fabric. Brian investigates to see if he c...

Water Way to Go In Vientiane for an overnight stop, we went out for a meal in a posh French restaurant to celebrate the birthday of Debs (Our Glorious Leader). The bill came to a mere 2.4 million kip. Imagine the service charge. Off to the depths of the jungle the next day, a place called Hinboun. The bus journey would be long and possibly a bit twisty at the end which meant the Australian bloke decided he wouldn't join us again and would fly to the south to...

Slumming It Another day, another bus journey. The Australians wimp out - they can't take it. They announce their plans to take a flight to Vientiane and meet us there in 2 days time. We take pains to conceal our excitement. I travelled in their bus for an hour yesterday disobeying all Happy Bus Guidelines and Official Directives and found that they could occasionally rouse themselves from their front seat torpor sufficiently to adjust their seat recline and...

Bus Wars Back on the bus for another journey - this time to the Plain of Jars, a world heritage site set deep in the mountains and full of large stone jars of unknown origin.Popular opinion says that they were probably funeral urns but no-one knows for sure. The jars are impressive but my attempts to get Brian to climb into one for photographic effect came to nothing, the best I could do was get him to crouch behind one in a silly hat, which he thought was extr...