Good morning Vietnam!!!

This is not a long blog as we have just retuned from a 2 day boat trip and we have had little sleep!!! We are all still here and very much live!!

The picture above is from when we down to the south of LAO which is called the 4000 Islands, very nice ay, we were enjoying an indian (yum) when i took that shot! Our next destination from there was Vientienne which is the capital where we mainly went bowling and shot handguns cos there was unfortunately little else for us to do culturally. Oh yeah we also went to Vientienne Drift 2008 which was basically sup'd up cars and women dressed like they should be in rap video's. With that and all the gun shooting Fred truely was in his limelight, think he even wrote a rap about it, in fact here's an extract below for you!!

"My name is Fred and that s*** is whack

Had so much sun, I'm dam near turning black

Been shooting colt 45's..... brap brap brap

And been watching Mustangs zooming round the track

But still despite of all of this and all of that,

East Barnet's still where my heart is at

I love Ty and Jan, and know they love me back

So my homeboy azbo holla back"

(very nice Andrew)

Anyway the next place we went was Vangvien, our favourite by far. This was more what travelling is all about and what i feel has cultured us and made us grow into the men our mothers would be proud of. Before Vangvien i admit there has been times where we'd have a few drinks, be a bit ladish if you like and not really be enjoyin what we could be doing away from home that is different and unique i guess. Vangvien enabled us to meet alot of people from alot of countries, we were able to swim in the gorgeous local river, eat the local quisine, watch the local tv broadcasts which although were not strictly English we learn't to understand.

Allow me to ellaberate a typical day in Vangvien involved waking up bright and early at about 12am and walking down to the local stalls, we prefered to eat there because it helps the local community, not because it cost about 30p mfor a large baggette with Bacon. After this we would head down via tuk tuk to the river, alovely quite place that you could imagine looked the same a thousand years ago, infact it's as if time has stood still here apart from the 400 drunk westerners on rubber tubes heading down the water and swinging above your heads like monkeys on rope swings (we didn't know they'd be there)!! Anyway you head down the river and every now and then a friendly local out of the kindness of their hearts throws out a stick or rope to you which you grab hold of and get pulled onto those wooden huts on the river bank, almost like they are inviting you into their homes to share with them their culture. I guess objectively you could mistake these places for bars but it wasn't really like that, and the local culture just happened to be beer lao which they gave you a bottle of free and as a gesture we would then give them in return 12,000 Kip which essentially represents about 60p in their made up cultural language, they also then give you shots of Lao Lao which is a local whiski that would to say the least warm the cockles of even the eldest generation and a lot more. In this culture it is all about giving and receiving, sharing and giving, it's beautiful. Anyway in order to thank the kind laoians for their hospitality we would then at their request fly down a zip line from their bar, about 20 foot in the air until you hit the knot at the end, this would then prepel your body approximately 360 sometimes 540 and beleive it or not pending your velocity 720 degrees before you crashed into the water below. I must make clear that we did not choose to do this but accepted it as part of their culture from thousands of years and who were we to question it. The fact that one of us did it naked once was merely by accident, the certain person was attacked by a massive mosqito moments before they were going to go down the zip line, it flew straight down their shorts and they had no choice but to take their shorts off, then in attempt to jump away from the mosqito they jumped and accidently caught hold of the zip linee handles and before they knew it were hurling down the zip line at 100 miles an hour, white arse on show and smashed into the knot violently fliiping them upside down and into the water. A terrible accident but these things happen, having to tread water trying to get his shorts on whilst the locals poured lao lao down his throat as a thank you for the humour he had provided to them and their families was probably the hardest thing the young traveller has to do so far and another near death experience!!

Anway after this you head back into your tube and continue down the peacfull river intil you are invited into the next Lao gentlmens home, this is usually 100 metres further down the river and where the same procedure ironically takes place again. It's crazy but it's Lao culture and that's what we promised our families we would experience. By the end of the river you probably go into ten of these homes/bars and by 7pm the light is gone and you simpl drift home on a boat with your tube in hand.

Uh no the culture does not stop there. You go home get showered then it's out to the local shacks where you eat local quisine such as the Lao pizza or cheeseburger or maybe go to a local Lao indian restarant which is run by Lao people who look exactly like Indians, incredible. In these restarants as i mentioned earlier, you indulge in the foreign tv which is on in every bar, the choice is either 'friends' or 'family guy', not English so culural. From there it's your choice whether to have some more local Lao Lao (support the locals) or have one of their delightful happy shakes which must have so much sugar in cos we couldn't stop laughing after them.

From there it's down to the local bars where once again we broadened our horizons by talking with american, canadian, dutch, french, Irish, Lao and Israeli girls. We then had several local Lao Lao buckets before heading back to the local stalls for bacon bagettes and then back to bed to re-charge for another day of culture on the river.

That's all for now folkes, gotta go get showered cos we're meeting for dinner then a court session (where we analyse everyone's individual performance from our time in Lao and punish them and reward them by making them drink) on the Vietnamese street bars where you sit on primary school-esk chairs and drink beers which are 9p a glass - more culture!! Goodbye and god bless x x