Hello again world!! You'll be pleased to hear nearly all of us are still alive. Unfortunately since we wrote last there has been chaos to say the least, I will not reveal until the end which lost boy is no longer with us and for the record this is not Dan B writing the Blog for a change, he's let someone else have ago and stopped hogging it!!

In short, since arriving in Lao there has been gun shots fired, there has been an horrific coach journey across cliffs that make Beachy Head look like a mole hill, but the worst of all was the boat crash of Thursday the 3rd of April.

Picture this, there was approximately 100 people crammed onto a boat made for 11 people actually more like 50/60 people but certainly not the 100 of us. The crew of the boat were not your typical re-assuring captain and sailors dressed in white and bidding you "good afternoon sir", instead that were constantly smoking weed and opium and didn't speak a word of English and this was only our second day in Lao so our foreign tongue at this point was letting us down somewhat. Now we are all fluent in Thai and Laos, however, Shary speaks Laos in a cockney accent and steve in a scottish so sometimes there is confusion.

Anyway after being on this poor mans Titanic for about 7 hours, we stopped at this little island where the locals handed to the members of the scag head crew approximately 78 of these massive bags of peanuts which were then put on top of the boat. We are not sure whether this was to ship them to Luang Probang (our destination) or whether they had the munchies from all the weed they had smoked or whether they simply decided the current circumstances were not substantially dangerous enough, nevertheless the 78 bags of peanuts were hoisted on top of our boat and instantly you could feel the boat rocking violently as ventured on down the dangerous Lao river, I can't remember it's name but we'll call it for arguments sake the river of death.

After approximately 45 minutes of this white nuckle ride inevetibly we smashed into a collosus amount of evil razor sharp rocks which flipped the boat onto it's side for about 6.3 seconds but what felt like a lifetime, narrowly escaping capsizing and iminant death (i admit sometimes i do over exaggerate marginly when writing the blog and use words that perhaps make things seem more exciting, however, on this occasion i swear the boat when right up on it's side, everyone jumped out of the seats screaming and prepared themselves for the boat to capsize and to have to jump out)!! Luckily we witnessed a miracle and somehow as if influenced by the almighty himslef the boat managed to restore balance and our innocent lives were spared.

The nightmare, however, did not end there. Yeah we had just witnessed the biggest miracle since the parting of the red sea by moses and yes we were all enormously high on life and yes we were all glowing with our new dark tans and looking like handsome greeks, with our chizzled chins, white teeth from the salt of the sea and develishly handsome boyish good looks, however, despite all this we were still faced with the iminant danger of getting the women and children from the boat first and safe to land, and i admit we were scared. None of us let any of the children or the pathetic screaming women see this (Dan's and Sharys acting experience from Koh Samet certainly came in handy here and they quickly de-briefed the boys on techniques to look brave and courageous e.g. by tensing the right bicep the girls would striaght away feel safer and protected) but in reality we were genuinely scared for their lives. Not for our lives i might add, infact there was a defining moment, where each one of the five lost boys looked up making eye contact one by one and in unisome through their 'man bags' holing their passports to the floor as if acknowledging they would today meet their maker and in saving the young children and ridiculously pathetic deluded women (who were by now running round the boat flopping their arms and crying) they would give up their own lives.

Luckily by the time the Lao guys had pulled the boat to shore and put planks from the boat down to the sand, above the water, which was a bout a foot deep, and you could walk from the boat to the shore in one step, we didn't actually technically save anyone but essentially without us keeping everyone calm and re-assuring the stupid, pathetic, dumb, deluded, halfwit, loopy, delirious women they would have all died on the banks of that river, there is no doubt in my mind!!

In short we picked up our man bags got to shore, we were picked up by a boat an hour later, taken down the river to Luang Probang and were all fine. Oh yeah no-body actually died and it is Dan writing this.

We are now in the capital of Lao and i do have more stories for you which are based on real live events of our travels. I must re-illiterate that since arriving in the capital gun shots have been fired, infact like his homeboy Jay Z once quoted, Andy has been shot at and shot shot back with a Luger handgun whilst shouting "i'm not a new jack no-body gonna Weskey Snipe me it's less than likely, move back" (there was more)!!! I don't have time to write anymore now, and you know how i always like to keep these short.

I hope you are entertained, till we/ if we speak again, take care and stay tuned!!

Dan and the boys x x