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 sitting waiting and watching in the scorching hot sun.

Luckily the locals have set up a soft drink and beer stall, provided shade and will take kip, the Laotian currency, so we will not die of heatstroke or for want of a pepsi. In an attempt to make the dolphins appear we buy quantities of beer. Lora and Kate perform a dolphin dance. Something works and dolphins appear. One appears as a tiny log shaped dot in a photo. I am happy. I have glimpsed a rare dolphin. The group are divided between those who think the sacrificial beers did the trick and those who favour the dancing method. We have grown so bored with each other over the last few days of enforced bus imprisonment we keep this conversation going for far longer than is justified by the subject matter, and it is still being hotly discussed the next day.

We visit a couple of waterfalls, take a too-long ride home in a boat that petulantly refuses to start for an irritating half hour and get back to our hotel at about 6 p.m. hot, sweaty and tired. Tomorrow is our last day. It's been great, but it will be so good to be back in the world of soft beds and nice smells.

One of the highlights of Laos, particularly in the South, has been the friendliness of the locals, particularly the children. Wherever we go, by boat or bus, people wave at us and, of course, we wave back. Sometimes the kids run alongside our boats waving furiously and blowing kisses, it's really very sweet. Another big plus to this country is it's total intolerance of any form of sex tourism, so not only is their a complete absence of roadside bars staffed by young, bored looking girls calling out 'hello sir, happy hour' to any passing foreign male that is an unfortunate staple of travel throughout most of the rest of south-east asia; any foreign male reported taking a lao woman to his hotel room is liable to imprisonment and a fine. Good for them.
Travelling through Thailand and being constantly confronted by (usually) fat, ugly, old and always inadequate men walking along hand in hand with a young thai girl I never fail to be amazed that these men seem almost proud of the fact that they are advertising the fact that they are paying another human being to 'enjoy' their company. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that we live in the 21st century.