Hello!

The sleeper bus wasn't as bad as we'd thought; although it's made up of bunkbeds as wide as two bus seats and barely long enough for me, so I definately had a more sleep filled and comfortable night than Rich! However, at around 5am the horn honking started as the roads were full of recently awakened water buffalo, cows and goats, and the pumping beats of Laotian pop music started blaring at full blast! Consequently, when we got to 4000 Islands at about 11am we spent most of the afternoon sleeping in hammocks.

We are staying on Don Det, one of the "4000" Islands in Southern Laos, at the Mekong rivers widest point - 14km wide! As the name suggests, it's made up of lots of little islands, but I think 4000 might be a bit of an exaggeration. Our guesthouse has a huge communal balcony full of hammocks on the riverbank where we can look out on the huge river full of tiny uninhabited islands, its so beautiful! We've also found our cheapest room yet at about 80p a night each! We havnt seen many horrible bugs around so far on our travels, but 2 out of our 3 nights here, when the electricity had gone out (it's only turned on for about 3 hours each night), we were tucking the mosquito net in to the side of the bed as a cockroach ran up inside it! We (Rich) got the first one out fine, but last night it literally disappeared! We (Rich) went through the bedding at least twice, but couldn't find it :( We also saw the biggest cockroach in the world on the wall by torch light-thank god that my backpack and Rich's inappropriate suitcase were done up properly!

Its been raining a lot here, and apparently the thing to do is relax, so we spent a whole day playing cards and reading in hammocks which was lovely. The weather was good yesterday morning, so we went on a bike ride with some friends we'd met in Vang Vieng. We cycled through beautiful paddie fields, watching the Laotians hard at work, to the neighbouring Island of Don Kone. Here we went to Li Phi Falls, a waterfall that stretches about 1km across the Mekong. It looked like huge rapids rather than a traditional waterfall, but was very impressive. Then we got lunch, and the first of many terential downpours for the day started. It was fun cycling around in the rain with our ponchos on though! We stopped off at the famous Austrailian bakery for some cakes :)

We are off to Vietnam today, leaving here at 11am, and should hopefully get to Hoi An early afternoon tomorrow. Fun fun fun! Just hope we get a nice bus and dont get scammed at the border!

Bye!