After another dodgy landing on the worlds smallest plane we landed in Laos. From the airport we took a TukTuk to the "Bus Station", we got there, a few stalls selling snacks & drinks, some trucks, but no buses! Our TukTuk driver pointed to one of the pickup trucks that were filled with cement, food, crates of beer & said that was our bus down to the islands! It had two planks of wood either side to sit on, the journey took us about 5 hours as we had to make various stops dropping off locals & some of the food & stuff that was crammed in around us but finally we got down to the boat yard to get across to the island, thatride was also dodgy! It was so rocking I thought we were going to capsize as soon as anyone moved. It was only 5 minutes over tho, so not too bad! We are in DonDet now & it's amazing. It's just a few shacks along the river bank, our room has a platform with a table, chair & hammock out the front & then just a bed & mosquito net in the room. It's much bigger than our other shack, at least you can stand up in it & it's much cooler! The bathroom is still a walk away tho & they only have a couple of hours of electricity in the evening so the night time toilet trip is very scary! It's like a little community from The Beach, very tranquil & relaxing, shame we are leaving tomorrow but we want to be in Vientiene for New Years Eve. Yesterday we booked a trip to see Asias biggest waterfall & the rare Irrawaddy (or Shawaddywaddy as we like to call them!) dolphins, it was supposed to be at 8am but when we got there they said our tour guide was sick & to come back at 1pm! So we took a bike out instead & explored a bit, we came across another pretty waterfall & cycled through some beautiful scenery. We went back for our tour, the giant waterfall was fantastic but the dolphins certainly were "rare" we saw two very far off in the distance & could only see their backs! We have a mammouth trip tomorrow going up half of the country - boo!

It's really lovely reading all of your messages, keep them coming! Have brilliant New Years Celebrations, lots of love from Gem & Charlie xxxxxxxx