Suba dei from laos!!! I know that I have been entirely rubbish at updating this blog, so I'm sure most people will have stopped checking it. Never mind....hi mum!!!

Sooo since I last wrote anything I have been travelling through Vietnam and Laos, both of which I have completely fallen in love with.

The only downside to Vietnam is that the food wasn't that impressive. They use a lot of seafood (i tried squid and crab and everything!) and a lot of the food we had, especially in the south, seemed a bit bland. A lot of the travelling we did was by overnight train, which is by far my favourite way to travel - play cards and sleep the journey away and in the morning you're at your destination.

Sooo we started off the Vietnam leg in Saigon, which was of course the American 'camp' in the Vietnamese war, which was interesting as there were lots of museums about the war (all completely biased of course, yet at the same time shocking) and the resistance by the local people (they dug miles and miles of underground tunnels...we went in them and they are so stiflingly claustrophic I couldn't cope for more than about 5 minutes and had to get out!). I also tried my hand at shooting an AK47, got very scared, and decided that the army definately shouldn't be my backup plan should medicine go tit's up.

Then from Saigon we moved up the coast to Nha Trang which is by the beach which was nice and chilled. Had an amazing piss up and discovered that mud baths are quite a good hangover cure (although maybe not that accessible for next time i have one in birmingham). From here we went to Hoi An where you can get tailor made anything for pennies...i got a bit carried away, and now have far too much luggage to carry back to the UK. Not entirely sure how I'm going to solve that problem yet...

From there we travelled to Hue where we took a motorbike tour (!) of all the surrounding countryside, royal tombs etc and entertained the locals with our kareoke renditions of Madonna and Abba (they loved it, really...)

Finally we finished off in Hanoi which there is quite a cool place - there's a real blend of French and Chinese influence which is random but good!!! We went to see the water puppets, which is a puppet show although the stage is a pool of water and the puppets are attached to wooden poles that protrude beneath the water from behind a screen, it's really clever and completely crazy - there's absolutely no story line just random animals dancing!

After Vietnam we crossed over into Laos (in an epic 15 hour bus journey) and it's a gorgeous country - the landscape is stunning with mountains everywhere you look, and the pace of life is really chilled. You can walk through a market with no-one bothering you unless you actually look like you want to buy something, which is amazing after the hassle you get in Cambodia and Vietnam. There are a lot of backpackers around, and one of the places we visited, Vang Vieng, was basically full of backpackers and nothing else. This is because of the famous tubing that takes place there - floating down the river in a giant rubber ring surrounded by mountains, being pulled in by a rope to bars on the riverside, to be greeted by random people bearing neon paint and permanent marker pens, mud-pit tug-of-war etc.

At the moment I'm in Luang Prabang, which is just a very pretty town in Laos. Yesterday we went out of town to this amazing waterfall with perfectly clear green water, and we pretty m,uch had the place to ourselves...it was amazing. And today i went to cooking school so I don't need to eat for a week. When i get back i will have to try some of the dishes out on everyone.

Anyway i'm going to head off and explore the night market now, and I doubt i'll update this again before I get back to the UK (based on previous record) so I look forward to seeing everyone again. Lots of love and kisses xxxx