Hello once again.This could possibly be one of our last blogs from this trip but don't worry we'll be back in November when we hope to head off again!!We've been busy this past month, so busy that between eating, sleeping, sight seeing, eating, wandering around and generally doing nothing we've had no time to update the blog!!We left you in Hanoi about a month ago, from there we headed to the north of Vietnam and to Sapa a region as of yet un-spoilt by tourism and incredibly beautiful.We took the overnight train up which was great and arrived early and ready for our first trek through the local villages and stunning rice paddies.Our local guide Chung was 15 and from a local hill tribe.She spoke wonderful English that she had learnt just by listening to and speaking to tourists.All of the guides were young women working away from the villages until they married at around the age of 18 when they then went to work in the fields and raise families, the men….sorry guys but they seemed to sit around a lot drinking beer with their mates and sleeping we're sure you'd hate it, Vietnam is NOT FOR YOU!!After a couple of days trekking and a wonderful homestay with a very lovely hill tribe family where we all slept on mattresses on a mezzanine floor in their home and were fed a feast for a king cooked by Chung on a small wooden fire pit. Arriving back in Hanoi our Laos visa's all ready to go we decided to opt out of the 24 hour bus to Vientiane and instead take the bus to Vinh arriving at 2am in the deserted city.Not sure (not what the guide book says but we beg to differ) that any westerners take this route to cross the Vietnam/Laos border.Nobody spoke one word of English and our pigeon Vietnamese was a little embarrassing so it took us 2 days to get out of the city on the right bus.Quite an amusing couple of days, Emma with her pink plastic crocs and baggy pants and Jay with his bushy beard (Asian men cannot really grow beards certainly not like a westerner or Jay! (It's true)) well we became a bit of a novelty, people would come up to us on the street and shake our hands, stare at us as we walked along the road (children would point and wave and so would the adults!) and on occasion sit down with us when we were eating a meal and just…stare!!!Bit like being famous we guess!Anyway we finally crossed the boarder into Laos not without a brush with the crooked Vietnamese border patrol.Crossing the border we discover we are miles and miles and miles from anywhere and are looking at the very real possibility of sleeping with the chickens when 'God love Asia'….a tuk tuk arrives around the mountain!We take it to the next town Lak Sao where we manage to stay in a hotel that also did a nice trade as a brothel.Surprisingly we only spend a night there and arrive in Savannaket a couple of buses and 9 odd hours later (traveling never seems to take that long anymore).Really starting to love Laos, the nicest and most apt description we have heard is that Laos is like a sleepy village compared to the rest of Asia, this is so true even in the city.We spend a few days working our way south to the 4 Thousand Islands (Si Phan Don) where the pace of life gets slower the further south you go.We spent most of our time on Don Kone cycling around the islands, visiting the waterfalls, sleeping, reading and drinking Lao Lao (home brew rice wine that could kill a cow!) with our slightly mad but very generous landlord.Finally we prise ourselves away and head back north via Pakse and the Bolaven Plateau (famous for tea and coffee and bringing it back for you to try) to Vientiane the sleepy capital city of Laos.We have spent the past few days waiting to see if we can get a Chinese visa (we did today) due to the Olympics the restrictions have changed and we have had to shell out extra pennies to get them.Vientiane is lovely and has an amazing collection of French restaurants which we decided to spend quite a lot of our time sampling their steak and red wine collections.A very soporific and delightful way to spend a couple of days, but have shot the diet to pieces!Yesterday we went for a traditional Sauna and Massage at a monastery on the outskirts of the town, set in a beautiful woodland setting we had amazing pressure point massages in a wooden hut, filled with the smoke that heats the sauna, and then sweated buckets in the hottest sauna we have ever had.A fantastic and relaxing way to spend a few hours, meet some interesting (and naked) locals and all for $5.Today we have taken a bus into northern Laos to Vang Vieng, an incredibly beautiful area very popular with backpackers, the strangest thing here is the TV bars, believe it or not you can eat in any one of about 10 restaurants (it's a small town only about 20 places to eat and that takes up 85%+ of the buildings) and sit at a table/bed/chair thing and watch non stop episodes of 'Friends'…I think everyone is horrified at first but gradually you find yourself sitting there watching a 10 year old American TV show.Tomorrow we are going tubing…basically you pay some guy to rent you an inner tube from a truck, he drives you upstream a couple of hours, you jump in the river, along the way people throw you ropes to pull you ashore (and into their bar), you drink too much, you stagger back to town in the early evening with your tube and then probably end up watching Friends and eating a pizza!Looking forward to it very much…don't expect any pictures we don't have a good history with cameras and water!So, plans from here…well we are going to go north again (getting closer to home all the time) and stop in Luang Prebang for a couple of days, after that it's China.We have a planned itinery that we would like to do in China but all funds/time dependant so we will have to see what happens but we expect to be home within the month and we have even been learning a little Mandarin in preparation.So either see you soon and if possible we will hopefully update the blog throughout China.X X X X

PS now the 14th and we are back from tubing...funniest day ever will update you soon. x x