In any journey, there must be a time when you are ready to come back home. For me, it is now. I have spend the last two days sadly mourning my lost camera with all the photos of Bangkok and Phu Noi (there will not be a lot of pictures on the blog this time) and nursing a sick Maxim, sitting in a small hotel room with a loud air con and a broken toilet door (bad luck, that one) only venturing outside in the sulty heat and chaotic traffic to hunt for food, water and medicine...
I am hankering for good friends, good coffees, the same sofa every day and the same bed every night, oh yes and fresh drinkable water straight from the tap...to think that I used to take tap water for granted.... The boys actually miss school and home cooked dinners and Paul dreams of long bike rides, motorised or not. Yes, now we are all ready for a new, normal, confortable nest, to rest after our adventures. The timing could not be better, we are heading home in just a few days.

So what are we doing out there, twelve hours of night train away north of Bangkok, among smelly, hairy backpackers, sharkish beings and smiling handsome locals, in laid back, chaotic Vientiane, on the edge of Laos? Two words: visa extension. Going over a border from Thailand and back through custom allows us to stay on one more week in Bangkok and as a bonus, we got one more adventure before jumping on our last plane.

Next time you sit at a quiz table, and the question happens to be: "What is the capital of Laos?" (an excellent quiz night question), from now on (and thanks to us), you will know the answer: it is Vientiane.

Little Vientiane, sitting pretty on the lazy Mekong river, is in effervescence these days as it is hosting the 9th ASEAN conference between Asia and Europe. There are armed soldiers at every street corners and we nearly got kicked out of our (booked) hotel room to make space for a foreign delegation. The owner took pity on sick Maxim and let us stay. We saw many heads of state zooming by preceded and followed by stressed and armed young soldiers (not a good mix in this heat) including the red head of our very own Aussie, Julia Gillard, who sadly was one of the only ones caught in a traffic jam in front of our dining table tonight ( that is how we got a good look at her delegation).

This place is moving at breakneck speed away from communism towards a rich economic future. Sitting in massive golden temples, shaven monks in their golden robes are gravely chatting on their iPhones. Local kids in Nike shoes zoom around in colour coordinated mountain bikes with bright green wheels. Do not look anymore for the quaint food and craft markets, still on this year's map, they have been replaced by gleaming, airconditioned shopping centres. Gone are the cheap, bed bug ridden, backpackers guests houses, all what is left of them is a funny story in a blog. Laos is on the way up. It is on the world map, starting from today. You can feel it in the air hugging brand new cars, parked all over the place on pavements meant for pedestrians, left out on the street to dodge traffic. There seems to be no clear rules or organisation here, just an uplifting, hardworking hope for the best, a feeling that seems to be long gone from the USA and from some parts of Europe.

What are you guys going to be up to tomorrow?

Tomorrow, we will have to boost Maxim up with medicine, make sure we do not loose Callum's hip hop New yorker flat cap, negociate with the sharkish beings to make our way in time to the local train station, cross the bridge of friendship between communist Laos and capitalist Thailand, catch the night train back to Bangkok, bargain with the sharkish beings on the train for a decent bed (tip, tip) and a coffee in the morning (tip, tip) politely refuse drugged food from over-friendly strangers, sleep on our valuables, arrive bleary eyed in an over crowded train station and negotiate with the sharkish beings for a ride back to our hotel where our room will probably not be ready yet...and you know what, we will arrive, elated and exhausted, happy to be in one piece...

Life is fun on the road, we will miss this feeling.