So most of our day was driving through the curvy mountains road (actually as far as I could tell there was just the one long road. We passed through a few towns, and many villages, each with the same, slow Lao way of life. The Lao people are very relaxed and laid back, like they all possess one speed only. This is great most of the time, though apparently infuriating in emergencies lol. The villages and the landscape mostly looked the same - gorgeous 100% - and I...

Basically i had the best day EVER today!!!! After a lot of confusion last night, we eventually booked a boat tour and 3 kayaks for (after the bumpy bike ride yesterday i was in no shape for kayaking! John ended up teaming with Oliver, whose girlfriend - Lisa - was also pretty sore lol). Actually paying was a bit of a hassle too, because it seems like a lot of Lao people have difficulties with basic math, like adding etc. which is a problem when it comes to paying...

I am in love with Laos already! We crossed the border from China into Laos by tuktuk early today, and arrived at our bright blue guesathouse around lunchtime. We pretty much have the entire house to ourselves, so in the afternoon we dragged the couches outside onto the balkcony, everyone gathered around drinking "Beer Lao", exhausted after our bike ride. We rented mountain bikes for the day (quite a step up from our Japanese bikes) and rode through our...

We drove for a coupleof hours from Jinghong to Mengla today, through a neverending series of randforest-covered hills. The streams and rivers are red-brown like the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolaten Factory (I suspect the water doesn't taste quite the same). I can't imagine having to use such dirty water, but as we were driving through town I saw one womanbrushing her wet hair by a small hut beside the river, I can only assume she must have just bathe...

We had a much better day today - the sun was out, we could see even more blue sky, and after walking around for around an hourwe suddenly found Kunming's "Flower Market".We had been ust about to give up, content having found a street of stalls selling everything from meat skewers to tupperware - nothing we actually wnated of course, but interesting to take a look all the same! We wandered wearily down a dirty street selling mostly knives and guns and ra...