Sun 24/09/2006

Woke at 05.30 and felt heaps better so decided to go watch the sunrise in just my sheet as I couldn’t be bothered to put any clothes on!

Forty five minutes the sun decided to get its lazy butt out of bed for a half hearted sunrise, I mean it didn’t even shine it was just like a dull orange ball!

Had some breakfast and this time I could taste it, well a little bit anyway, at 08.30 we caught a little fisherman’s bought to the country of Laos. A fisherman’s boat you may ask to a different country, well all that separated these the two countries of Thailand and Laos at this point was a three hundred metre river.

On the other side of the river we checked into Laos, I managed to get away without paying the entrance fee until someone grassed me up to the officials who weren’t happy and even unhappier when I told them it was their fault!

On the otherside we got aboard a much nicer long boat with a crew, seats and an area to lie down.

Needless to say I headed straight for the area to lie down and chill out; I was joined by Rich, Sal, Diana, Steve and Meera so we decided to play cards. Me being an awesome card shark I lost straight away and so opted to listen to my Ipod in the sunshine while napping.

We got Pak Beng around 15.30 and decided that this would be where we would make camp for the night. It was an incredibly small village maybe even smaller than Micklefield, actually no that’s a lie it had more than one place to get a drink at anything and a lot less weirdo’s!

We got to the guest house after trekking up a 45 degrees hill with our backpacks and with me being a new naïve traveler my bags are so heavy as I basically brought anything and everything!

The guest house was lovely and clean, the only problem being that the electric was turned on until 18.30 and then back off again at 22.00. This wouldn’t have been such a problem had it not been plus thirty outside and the only means of cooling the room slightly was a little electric yes flipping electric fan!

Before heading out I had a freezing shower to try and cool down. It worked slightly but by the time we had got to the markets a kilometer up the road I was really warm again! The market was kind of smelly and sold all kinds of things that I didn’t want, it did however have the most beautiful little girls selling all sorts of rubbish.

We spotted a temple in the distance and having only visited a million of them in the last month how could I not visit this tiny one? So of we trekked to the temple only to find the most miserable and most disgusting monks ever. They were so down looking and spent all their time trying to cough their lungs up, only to be disappointed when all that came up was a heap of green flem-YUK!

After another shower we headed out for a meal, we had chosen the Indian restaurant as this well….was the only one there to choose from so we had to!

So glad we chose this restaurant anyway, you only had to wait two hours for the food to come. No it wasn’t too bad we had a good laugh whilst waiting for it to come.

I had lost to eat and only cost me fifty thousand Kip which was equal to two pounds fifty!

Quickly made my way back to the room before lights out time to cool down under the fan and fall to sleep!