hey guys, i've just left laos after spending the laziest week and a half of my life on the four thousand islands. after leaving vang vieng i went to vien tiane, the capital, just for a short trip because i was told that there is b***** all there and it's best to spend as little time there as possible. one night was enough for me. but that one night was quite good. i met up with an aussie guy i met in china and he took me to a bar where we played pool for a while and these 2 lao girls took us to a club. absolutely mental club!! after feeling like s***e the whole day due to drinking the local horrible rubbish it was time to leave for the south of laos. i booked a ticket to savanaket on the over night bus. managed to fall asleep again on ther bus and miss my stop and woke up in pakse! it didn't bother me to much that i missed my stop it just ment i now had a couple more days on the islands. the south of laos is by far the laziest place i have ever been in my life! i spent one night on don khong, which is the biggest of the islands, with a couple of people i met on the bus on the way down there. not to much happening on don khong, so we all decided to go to don det the next morning. the boat ride down the mekong was really nice but with the water being so high the river is brown and covers most of the islands, i really think i'd like to come back here in the dry season. don det was amazing! not because there was loads to do but because you could just chill out in your hammock all day and do nothing but read and sleep. alot of the time it was raining anyway which gave me even more reason to just chill out and do nothing in my hammock which suited me down to the ground. when the weather did brighten up a bit i did manage to get over to the next island by bike but that only took a few hours to cycle over and see the rapids and then it was back to drinking again with a couple of english lads and a canadian guy. the islands also have no electricity through the day and the only power comes from a generator which is turned on at 6pm and is shut off at 11pm, after that it's all down to candel light and torches! i had a few scary drunken late night walks to the toilet! i stayed on don det for 9 nights and i could have quite easily spent more time there but the visa was running out and i needed to do some washing, i'm starting to smell like a foot!! i can see why lots of people like laos better than any other place in south east asia, i thought it was fantastic and it's the rainy season. i will go back in the dry season. next stop bangkok, thailand. back to where my journey began. speak to you all soon. christopher.