Sorry I have been so bad at filling this journal in. Will start as from now, but just means the entries will be a bit out of sync! Jim and I are currently in Luang Prabang in Laos. It is a beautiful little town and well worth the effort it took to get here - which is a story all in itself. We basically left Chaing Mai at midday on Friday by minibus (the most uncomfotable seats ive ever experienced, esp with hangover from night before - see Chaing Mai entry) and stayed over in the random guesthouse along the river for the evening. Getting up at 7:30 the next morning we had breakfast and then got a small boat over to Laos which took literally 2 minutes. Then had to wait around for an hour to sort out Visas and to wait for the bus to take us to the speedboat to Luang Prebang. Almost cried when I saw it. It was tiny! Thanked god for the first time that i had short legs. Poor Jim. Did not savour the thought of being in that thing for 7 hours. It travels along the Mekong river, I guess because the state of the roads means that attemting a bus would be a stupid idea, and stops of at a floating shack for 40 minutes for lunch. We did stop off a few other times. once for a local man to buy some mangoes and lychees and another time for a different man (that we picked up from a tiny little beach) to buy some freshly caught (still wrigling) catfish. Slightly different to popping down to the local Tesco's... Anyway the journey was not half as bad as I expected at all. Even managed to have a couple of micro sleeps. Wait until I upload photos - its no easy feat! Was slightly scary when we hit some turbulent water and thought I was going to bounce right out of the boat. Got to our destination in one piece and by 17:00 to Jim's joy because it meant that we had time to find somewhere to stay and settle a bit before the football! Staying in a very pleasant little guesthouse for $6 a night between us. Not bad! The toilets seem to be a lot nicer here in Laos than thailand - all of them have been Western so far with toilet paper as well. Oh how I miss those squatties... Grabbed dinner last night and were approached by a series of children very determined to sell us some jewellery. I ended up getting screwed over by the most homosexual boy ive ever seen. It was the hand -on-hips and wink that did it for me... 50 baht for a sandlewood bracelet that , well quite frankly stinks of wee wee. Jim ended up giving in to this little girl who just stood next to him and gave him little puppy dog eyes for half an hour. Another little girl got money out of both of us because of her unique sales technique aimed at Jim "You no buy, you ladyboy. You buy, you man" followed by continuous pinching. Classic. Then went to watch the footy with a few drinks and finally crawled into bed at about 2:00am, having to apologise to the guy that sleeps behind the reception desk everynight. So today is second day here and am really impressed with this place despite it not being particularly cheap which is quite surprising. No pollution and amazing scenery of the river. You can still see evidence of French collonial times as old men and children play boules along the roadside and you can buy baguettes and pastries in most restaurants. Have even seen a sign for ' Le cinema'. Just went to a temple and had a wonder and now looking forward to dinner...