I have accepted, mastered and now fully endorse the bum gun, the hand-held, high pressure hose that is Asia's alternative to toilet paper! Go on, screw your faces up in disgust, but I promise you I end up cleaner than you do, and in this climate things dry pretty quickly. And water is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than toilet paper. Only just thought of those two additional benefits, but definitely valid.

This is my foremost comment on our time spent in Luang Prabang. The second most memorable thing was a fantastic film we happened to watch, called "Into The Wild". Which I guess says something about our thoughts on Luang Prabang. We didn't dislike it, by any means, but just weren't blown away by it. I think probably in part due to that old expectation thing again. Nearly everyone we know who's been there has waxed lyrical about it. And voted Lonely Planet readers number one city destination in 2009? You're kidding! Has anyone who voted for it been to Manchester, England? Miles better! It was nice. Nicer than Vientiane, too, by a country mile. But "nice" is very much the right word. The views of and from the city were nice, not stunning. People were friendly, just like everywhere in Laos. We had some nice food, but nothing spectacular. There was lots of stuff in the night market, if you like shopping, and some picturesque wats, if you like visiting religious buildings. And lots of young orange-robed monks, of course. Probably more than anywhere else in Laos. Which is nice, if you like orange-robed monks! So, yeah, nothing bad to say about Luang Prabang, and I wouldn't suggest anyone steers clear, but just not a huge amount to shout about, either. But I definitely disagree with those Lonely Planet readers, and for me, in order of visits on our travels, Split, Sarajevo, Bucharest, Budapest, Krakow, Warsaw, Moscow, Beijing, Hue, Saigon and Bangkok all edge it, for one reason or another. Sorry, maybe I'm just becoming a miserable old git!

"Into The Wild", on the other hand, was an unexpected revelation! We just stuck the film on one night, on our netbook, knowing absolutely nothing about it beyond a general plot summary. American, of the non-Hollywood variety, it tells the tale of a young, well educated, intelligent, middle class boy, who one day decides to rip up his credit cards, give all of his savings / college funds to charity, and just up and leave to experience real life in America. Telling no-one, taking next to nothing, leaving himself at the mercy of luck and the goodwill of strangers. I won't tell you what happens, and thus anyone's potential viewing pleasure, but any film that can be all of beautiful, exciting, sad, heart-warming and inspiring gets a tick in my book! And when the credits rolled down at the end, revealing that it was in fact a true story and therefore all the more incredible, we had the icing on the cake. Needless to say, it's now on the DVD purchase list for when we return!

At this point, Paula and I had decided to do some solo travelling. Having spent six months in each others' pockets, and whilst doing so met so many independent travelers, we were both intrigued as to what it would be like. So we both read up on Northern Laos to make our plans, aiming to hook up again in about ten days to travel down to the elephant festival,… and came up with exactly the same plan! So after a few minutes of umming and arring about the feasibility of one giving the other a day head start, or somehow changing the order of places, we decided either would be ridiculously contrived, we'd be bound to keep on bumping into each other, and so postponed solo travelling to a later date. We set off together for Phonsavan a couple of days later.