A surfeit of cake

Jo and I are sitting in an internet cafe in Vang Vieng, tapping away with geckos and grasshoppers for company. I'm not feeling particularly verbose tonight so will keep it brief.

After 5 hours driving - punctuated by cake, beer and noodle stops - today we tukked into Vang Vieng. Laos could not be more different from Thailand and as we wound into the mountains, leaving the capital Vientiane behind us, I was struck by how incredibly bucolic this country is. Pigs, turkeys, cows and various other livestock roam the villages and the road (Route 13) was flanked all the way by rice paddies and tree-covered mountains. Very beautiful. A far cry from shopping malls and day-glo buses.



Vang Vieng is unfortunately a violent deviation from the rural idyll I have just illustrated. If any of you have ever been to Haadrin in Thailand then this is its Lao equivalent. Grotty guesthouses and TV bars cram the streets and everywhere there are signs of yet more grotty guesthouses being built. Yet the surrounding countryside is stunning and tomorrow Jo and I are going to kick back and spend a day tubing, imbibing - Beer Lao of course - and exploring caves. And probably eating cake, which we seem to have done quite a bit of lately. My visions of us returning lithe and brown after 3 months on the road are slowly dissolving and although I keep threatening to go running, I haven't quite made it yet.

Jo will fill you in on the rest...she's been beavering away on the nextdoor computer for a a while so I assume a masterpiece is in the offing. I've worked out how to resize photos so when I get my act together will brighten up our blog with some pics of our adventures so far.

Bye bye from Laos. x