Hello!

I have finally managed to break free from Vang Vieng. I was only planning on being there for a day or 2 really but the place just sucks you in because it is so chilled out. It was a nightmare! All the restuarants show episodes of friends so you go for a quick bite to eat with a plan of doing something active afterwards and 3 hours later you have watched a whole series and its time to go home and get ready to go out!

One day I woke up early with the mission of hiring a bike and going out riding all day. James (one of the english guys) said he's come with me so we got ourselves bikes and went off into the countryside. It is sooo hot in Laos at the moment so after about 3 miles we were ready to die. We decided to head back into town but on the way took a little detour to the river so we could take some pictures of the people tubing.

After a little paddle we thought it would be fun to paddle through the river to the first bar and have a 'little' drink. So we bought a vodka bucket! Then we went on to the next bar and had anohter and the next bar for another! They have crazy rope swings over the river for people to jump off and so I had a go at a zip wire one which was really fun.

Later on we had about 15 Laos children playing with us and they loved my camera and were taking videos of each other jumping in the river. They persuaded me to climb up this HUGE tower ad do the rope swing into the river but unfortunately I couldn;t hold myslef on it so the second it went I just did a major bellyflop into the river. This led to concussion and a night of much confusion! James had to get our bikes on a tuk tuk so we could get home because there was no way we could ride back! The next day my whole body was aching and I have only just recoevered properly now! After that I couldn't face going tubing so I'm just going to have to miss out on that experience!

Today I got the bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. The guys stayed behind to wait for their friend who was arriving from Thailand. I was really happy to be leaving and heading somewhere new. There is a rocket festival in Laos today where all the Laos people get extremely drunk and set off HUGE rockets that they have made themselves. Apparantly there was a few near misses this morning when they were letting them off so that was another reason that I was happy to be leaving. It would just be my luck that one would hit me on the head!

Laos is just like Thailand would have been about 10 years ago. In the major tourist areas you can buy all the usual western stuff but as soon as you leave those areas it is literally just miles and miles of rice fields and hill tribes. The people here are so poor but they never beg and they seem so happy when you drive through their villages. They always wave at the bus as it goes through.

So I have been in the capital for a few hours. It is probably the size of Winslow so not exactly like Bangkok or Sydney but it seems quite big because I have been in such tiny places for the past week. I have been so sick of Laos food which is nowhere near as nice as Thai food so today I found a great restuarant run by Australians and had some delicious fish and chips! I might have to go back tomorrow for bangers and mash because who knows when I'll get good food again. I'm craving a pizza express and a chinese from home too!

If you could all put some money together and get some dough balls sent over that would be great!! Miss you all xxxx