After our three day trip and the copious amounts of alcohol that were supped by everyone, you would think that the evening meal before we all went our separate ways last night would be fairly straightforward? One thing we have learned from Vietnam...nothing is straightforward!

After three days straight of rice, omelette, fish and water spinach for lunch and dinner, it was time for something a little closer to home. Pizza!

We all met up at a lovely restaurant right on the bank of the lake and were promptly introduced to Tiger girl. This poor girl's job was to serve nothing but Tiger beer all night long. She was wearing a short dress complete with badges, all with the Tiger beer log splashed all over them and even the tray was a Tiger tray. The other thing she had to deal with was us asking her if they served Tiger.... all night long!

After we had all wrestled a few Tigers and finished off the pizzas, it was time for Ady, and Helen and David to catch the train to Sapa in the Northern reaches of Thailand, near the Chinese border. We bid them a fond farewell and decided a change of venue was necessary. On the advice of Connor (in fairness it was the book he had, but we'll blame him anyway) we headed for a bar that promised a unique experience of sound and light.

Unique it certainly was!!! We were ushered in and things looked promising enough. A nicely lit green walkway and some fancy marble stairs. However, it soon turned out to be far different than we had expected. All the staff were female and about 5 foot nothing, and all were dressed in what we can only assume were supposed to resemble school uniforms. As we sat down we were surrounded by a group of these midget oddlings, so much so that there was actually more of them then there was of us.

We all started to look at each other and began to feel a little seedy, when we looked around us to see groups of women as well as loads of elderly couples, so we figured that this must just be the norm. Not exactly a 'traditional' Vietnamese bar though.

All the tables were set up to look into the middle of the building and it soon became clear why. The light and sound extravaganza had begun and a woman dressed entirely in black started shrieking and dancing around the stage. This woman really did NOT need a microphone. Next up were six women dressed entirely in white with flowing dresses and waving ribbons in the air. This was actually kind of cool, but the next act blew them away. A funky girl with short spiky hair (you've no idea how rare that is over here??) started belting out a couple of songs and although none of us had a clue what she was singing, we could tell she had a cracking voice, so we thought we'd stay for the next act as well.

Well, that's when four poles came down onto the stage and things got REALLY weird. Three girls in tight trousers and bras came cavorting onto the stage, along with a token guy in tight vest and even tighter jeans. Now I'm sure this all sounds very dodgy indeed, and I'm sure that we would have all thought the same if we hadn't all been falling about laughing at them. These four soon turned into eight, this time dressed all in black leathery looking things, and not one of the them had any rhythm at all. It was like watching outtakes from an audition for "pole dance idol" or something as none of them look entirely sure what they were supposed to be doing, and when one of the girls did actually grab onto the pole and vaguely start gyrating, it was all she could do not to fall onto her face!

Enough was enough and we all decided to leave while we could still see through the tears that were streaming down our faces. We headed back to the hotel that we were staying in as it had a nice bar on the 8th floor, which overlooked the lake.

It was clear that we were the only business that the bar had taken all day as one of the waiters was asleep in the lounge area and the barmaid was watching TV. After about ten minutes of miscommunication and confusion, we got our drinks and found ourselves a nice vantage point.

After a little while people began to leave to make their way back to their hotels, and as we were about to go down to our room, we turned around to see Fran behind the bar with the barmaid stuffing herself with oranges!! (Which by the way, happen to be green over here!!)

After Fran had got her fill and was on her way to her hotel, we headed back to our room, as we had yet another early start this morning to catch our flight to Bangkok.