Just spent three days at Rivertime Resort and Eco-lodge, near Vientiane - it's one of the most beautiful, chilled out places I've ever seen. It's basically a handful of bamboo/wooden huts on the banks of the Mekhong river, with limited hot water and electricity but an amazing floating restaurant (homegrown fruit and veg, fish they catch themselves) and nature trails nearby.

Drinking beer while dangling my feet in the river at sunset was a definite highlight, but the best thing was taking a tour of the local village with Gail, one of the staff at Rivertime. After she showed us the temple, school, some people doing weaving and so on, we stumbled upon a group of locals having a wedding party, with super loud music and everyone sitting outside on blankets with lots of beer and food. They persuaded us to join them "for ten minute", which somehow turned into 5 hours! They were so nice and friendly - they didn't even expect us to buy stuff from them - very different t o Thailand! They gave us beer and fed us and taught us to say 'spoon', 'fork', 'chopsticks' and 'plate' in Lao, plus some other words which I now can't remember. Apparenly it's traditional to pour a glass of beer for the person next you, who dirnks it and passes the glass back, then you do the same for the person next to them, and keep going until everyone's drank some. The first time I did this the beer foamed up and went everywhere! We met the chief of the village who's only words of English were 'I - love - you!', and they all seemed highly amused by their foreign visitors. It was really fun.

Vientiane itself is pretty small, and there's not a whole lot to do, and every time the Shah and I went there something bad happened. It's pretty though - a bit like an Asian Paris, there's even an Arch de Triumph replica.

Unusual fruit of the locatin goes to baby green eggplants - I originally decided to call them pea-figs, because the look like fresh figs and taste like peas. Pretty tasty, we've been getting them in salads a lot.

Next stop, Vang Vieng...