Hi everybody...

It's been an eventful few days, or not really as I have been bed-ridden for most of it. After going out on Sunday night (to a bowling alley just outside of town as there's a curfew of 11:30pm inside the town) I woke up the next day missing my handbag and feeling awful. I spent the rest of the day in bed getting progressively sicker and the next day, felt slightly better before feeling worse again towards the end of the day. Even today I'm still feeling pretty fragile, although I've managed to eat breakfast and I actually feel like doing things today rather than just lying in my bed. I haven't been able to locate my bag, which means my camera with all my pictures has gone, along with my bank card, a fair amount of money, both my phones and lots of other little bits, like my Laos guidebook and my antibacterial handwash (this will be sorely missed!). But it could have been a lot worse. I still have all the really important things, such as my passport, travellers cheques and I've managed to buy some object that attempts to be a phone (it likes to do really wierd things though, to dial a number in the phone book you have to go to the number after it and press call and all texts have to be written in capitals otherwise it gets very complicated. And the time just re-sets itself to ..:.. after 45mins). Also, the whole 'Laos does not have many atms' rumour has worked quite well for me as it meant I took out a large chunk of what I planned to spend in Laos before I entered the country and most of this was left back at the guesthouse,which means I have enough to last until I can somehow get a new debit card send out to me. I am suspecting somebody spiked my drink with something though since 1) this makes me feel better that it's not my own silly fault for losing my bag and 2) I would have to be pretty unlucky to get some kind of virus/illness the day after losing my bag because whatever I had was definatly more than a hangover. And I remember nothing of the night passed a certain point. But, all things considered, it could have been a lot lot worse.

Anyway, up until that point I was absolutely loving Laos. The night after I wrote the last blog, I went and ate dinner in a nice little restaurant overlooking the Mekong. About half way through my phad thai, you could see lightning flashing over the hills of Thailand, it was quite spectacular to watch, but when the rain started coming down over our side of the river, and the lights flickered out in the resturant for a few seconds, I thought I'd better eat up and hurry home to the guesthouse. Just after I got back into my room, the heavens opened up and the rain started hammering down. And then the lightnening started and the power kept going. It was really quite exciting. It didn't last too long though, but I kept being woken up through the night by various noises, including monks chanting at about 4am and somebody enquiring downstairs about the slowboat at some ungodly hour of the morning.

The slowboat the next day was something of an experience. I'd heard horror stories of people having to spend hours cramped up in engine rooms or on wooden benches with no cushions (we'd been given a little cushion by the woman when we booked our tickets). And there were more people than seats. Luckily, we arrived pretty early, which meant we managed to get 'soft seats'; i.e. car seats that had been nailed to a plank of wood. After we'd all been sat there for over an hour, they asked us all if we could go and stand outside so they could load hundreds of bags of corn underneath all the seats. So about 2 hours after arriving we finally set off. The views on the way were stunning, lots of jungle and hills (I took lots of pictures...) and we passed lots of villages, women washing their clothes in the river, people fishing and others taking a bath in dirty river water. Luckily, I was sat next to a nice Finnish girl called Anna so talking to her (and reading my book) made the 7 hours fly past.

We arrived in Pak Beng for the overnight stop just before it got dark and hoardes of kids came and grabbed your bag and offered to carry it up the hill for you (for a price). Most of the bags were bigger than the kids though, I don't think anybody took them up on the offer. We managed to find a nice place to stay for a relatively good price before heading out to get something to eat at a nearby restuarant. There was another power cut whilst we were waiting for our food (something of a trend it seems in Laos), although I think it was just the resturant we were eating at as most of the buildings in Pak Beng run on individually generators between 6pm-10pm. We also had our first taste of BeerLao, which is suprisingly nice! I didn't really like any of the beers in Thailand that much, but BeerLao is quite sweet.

The next day on the slowboat was much of the same thing, although this time we had not been so lucky with the seats, and ended up on one of the tiny benches (although they were cushioned). We arrived in Luang Prabang fairly early and Anna and I went for a walk around the eerily quiet market place. There were quite a few people walking round, but I think it's just a sign of how laid back Laos is, because none of the vendors were really hawking for business. In Thailand, the market place is full of people shouting 'looking looking, hello, hello', but in Laos they just sit there as if to say 'look if you want to look, don't if you don't, I don't really care, whatever'. We managed to find a cheap street stall to eat at which was 5,000 kips (about 50p) for all you could fit on your plate. We got talking to a woman from Lowestoft, who had been to see the royal ballet that night and said there was a power cut (suprise suprise) but that the dancers had just kept on going and the man reading the narrative had to have a candle brought out to him so he could read the script.

Next day we decided to do a bit of a temple tour of the city and explore the royal museum and the side streets around there. It's quite a wierd mixture in Luang Prabang, it's very asian, but at the same time you can see the french influence everywhere. Some of the architecture is very European. And everybody is trying to sell you baguettes and coffee! In the evening, we went to find a bar that had been recommended to us overlooking the other river in Luang Prabang. It was really serene, lounging out overlooking the nice views watching the sunset with relaxing music and a big mango shake... until an aeroplane, that looked low enough to touch, flew over to the airport just across the river. The next day was spent in a similar way, we went to explore the biggest most impressive temple in Luang Prabang, and then headed off in the evening to a restaurant where you cooked your own food in the middle of the table. And then it was all downhill from there as we met up with some other people, drank lots of beerlao and lao lao (rice whisky, which is very cheap) and finally ended up and the bowling alley....

I had hoped to have seen the 'Plain of Jars' near Phonsaven at this point, but because of this unexpected delay in Luang Prabang, and since I need to be in Vientiane by the new year (14th, 15th, 16th), I think I may have to give it a miss and head straight down to Viang Vieng, if I feel up to it tommorow. Fingers crossed...