Danang

As the bus drives into Danang, the first impression is - concrete blocks of flats streaked with black mildew scattered about in a litter-strewn wasteland - depressing.

But the centre of Danang is chic. Riverside bars and cafes where well-heeled Vietnamese gather in noisy groups, streets illuminated by multicoloured Christmas decorative lights and lanterns hanging from trees.
When I reached my guesthouse, the owner offered me rice wine, which we drank in tiny glasses "My sister made this" he said "It's very good"

Today I went to visit the Cham Museum - the reason for coming to Danang. Yesterday I did not see one Westerner in Danang. But today the museum was crawling with them. The rooms echoed with the shouted explanations of the many guides, all competing with each other. Thank goodness I had half an hour to myself before they all arrived.

Cham sculpture is sinuous and sexy, somewhat reminiscent of ancient Indian temple sculptures.
The Kingdom of Champa was an Indianised kingdom of Malayo-Polynesian origins. It controlled southern and cental Vietnam from the seventh century until 1832. The finest works of art were created between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Cham culture was influenced over the centuries by China, India, Cambodia and Java. The scholars used Sanskrit. Hinduism was the state religion. There are a few ruined temples left, but the American bombs destroyed a lot. Their temples were tall, built of brick and highly decorative.

Imperial Tombs, Hue, Vietnam

Last night I went to the roof top of the Imperial Hotel, where a small bottle of beer costs three whole dollars!!! But they give it to you with a frozen glass. A whole group of us watched the sunset over the old city of Hue from the rooftop. Then I tried to find a bar where Philipinos were playing, but failed, so returned to the Backpacker's Hostel, werhe Happy Hour was in full swing. They were serving a drink called Passion Fruit leg opener!!! two for one for a mere seventy pence. It was the most delicious drink I have ever tasted. Only the end of happy hour put a stop to my drinking this lovely drink.

I went on a tour of the tombs of the Emperors of Vietnam - one of those tours where every hotel books people onto the tour of their choice, then buses of various sizes go round picking up the people for each particular tour from all the hotels. Except that my bus was also picking up people to take them to the bus station to catch a bus to Hoi An. But the Vietnamese can multi-task, organise, co-operate and coordinate. It took half an hour to pick up, drop, pick up some more and eventually leave Hue. Then, in what seemed like seconds, we were in depest countryside, green and dense all around us.

The tombs were hidden underground. They took great care to hide their dead emperors, even digging long tunnels, creating whole underground rooms, transporting the body secretly through the tunnels, then filling them in so that no-one would be able to find them and their accompanying treasures.

So what we went to see were the buildings the Emperors built in the countryside before they died, set in the middle of parkland, complete with artifical lakes, idyllic places for the Emperors to rest, relax meditate and write poetry.

One Emperor wanted to be very avant guarde, so he imported cement (unknown in Vietnam in that era) to build with. The cement is scultpted into dragons, flowers, climbing plants and all manner of mythical beasts.
Inside one of the buildings he ordered craftsmen to cover the walls with mosaics, but rather than use coloured glass, as is traditional, he had them make mosaics out of pieces of fine porcelain.

Hue, Vietnam

Everyone on the bus said you can't take kip (Lao money) out of Laos. So when a band of women got onto the bus just before the border, asking if we wanted to change money, everyone changed money. But they gave me a lousy rate. Later, at the border, I saw a money exchange booth. I took my last 6,000 kip there they they changed it at the correct rate. Who propogates this myth that you can't change money? This was the first Vietnamese rip off. Followed shortly after by the taxi in Hue, who wanted four dollars to take us to the centre, a trip we could have managed on foot, if we had had the faintest idea where we were. Then the hotel that gave us rooms for 120,000 dong, half an hour later, by which time we had dragged our bags upstairs and started unpacking them, discovered that she "was in trouble with her boss" and had to charge us 150,000 dong.

Welcome to Vietnam. All this was a bit of a disappointment after honest Laos. And Hue is a big city, also a bit of a shock after living in bamboo huts in the hills of Laos.

However, I decided to improve the shining hour by visiting the ancient imperial walled city, and the forbidden city - a walled city within a walled city. The Americans bombed the ancient city to bits, but they left the old city walls. There are two moats, rather full of weed due to eutrification, which interferes with the water lilies and purple water hyacinths, which struggle bravely to survive.

There are still some imperial palaces in the forbidden city. I'm not sure whether they were re-built or whether they survived the bombs.

Savanaket

To tell you the truth I didn't get very far from the bus station. Last night the bus from Paxe arrived at nine. It took five hours to go two hundred kilometres. That was because it stopped to pick up passengers, stopped so the lady sitting in the front could buy a basket, stopped so that the man sitting in the back could go and collect his chicken from his village, stopped so that the bus conductor could go and visit his auntie, stopped to wait for another bus that might, or might not connect with this bus, stopped so that the driver could get out and say hello to someone, stopped to pick up sacks of something, and so on. It seemed to spend more time stopped than moving.

So by the time that I arrived I wanted nothing more than to find a cheap hotel, which I did, within spitting distance of the bus station. I checked in and went to a local restaurant where lots of young Lao people were drinking beer and making a lot of noise. The food had a lot of chilli in it. The restaurant had long rough-hewn wooden tables and benches and plaster (or maybe concrete) statues of dinosaurs, elephants, zebras and penguins, all the same size, among a forest of green potted plants. Two big-leaved trees provided dappled shade. A TV was playing an American film with no sound, while a separate system played Lao pop music. The young Lao people all cheered and laughed when a couple kissed in the film. They gave me friendly smiles from time to time.

Vat Phou, Champasak, Laos

Vat Phu is a Khmer temple complex at the foot of Mount Phou Kao, overlooking the Mekong flood plain. Phou Kao mountain is 1,416 metres high and the peak is a natural lingam, ten metres high. The ancient Khmers called Phou Kao mountain Lingaparvata (Sanskrit). They chose this site to pay tribute to the mountain lingam, which people could see from miles around. The earliest remains in the site are seventh century, but most of the site was rebuilt in the tenth and eleventh century. The site was maintained by the rulers of Angkor until the fourteenth century. In the thirteenth century the whole complex was converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. The locals still use the temples today.


The shrine was built out of stone in the eleventh century AD on a natural terrace of Phou Kao, where there is a fresh water spring. The temple complex below is laid out in a linear plan, covering 1,400 square metres, rising up the lower slopes of the mountain. This linear/axial layout is rare in pre-Angkor temples, and in Angkorian temples, and clearly reflects the conscious use of the natural terrain to maximum effect. With the magestic mountain rising up behind the temple complex, and the pools at the base, the effect is spectacular.


At the lowest level there are two tenth century pools, flanked by an elaborate stone embankment. There is a processional causeway between them, lined by stone lingams on both sides. Beyond this there are the remains of two very large temples, each with four galleries around a courtyard. There is currently an Italian/Lao project to salvage what is left of these temples. A lot of Lao workers were lounging around, watching a few move stones with the help of a mechanical digger. Carved stones lie around outside the remains of the temples in untidy piles. A lot of these stones have been taken to be used in other buildings, including the steps up to the shrine.


The shrine at the top was originally dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva, who was represented by a big stone lingam, kept permanently wet by a spring, which was channeled to flow through the shrine and over it. But when the temple complex converted to Buddhism the lingam was taken away and replaced by a statue of Buddha, which the locals have adorned with yellow cloth.Yet the Buddhists left the linga lining the causeway below, as they left the Hindu sculptures which decorate the doorways of the shrine. Ever since the sixth century Buddhism and Hinduism have co-existed peacefully in the Champasak area.


Steep stone steps lead up to the shrine. Trees with knarled bark cling to the sides of the steps, insinuating their roots between the stones of the supporting walls and hiding the shrine from view until you reach the top. Sweet smelling blossoms fall from the trees. Part of the shrine is still intact with beautiful carved doorways. Tufts of grass sprout from the roof. The building is surrounded by huge trees.

I had fish with lemongrass, steamed in a banana leaf for lunch. Delicious.Then in the afternoon I got lucky. The hotel where I was staying the night before uses a boatman to deliver guests to his hotel. Just as I arrived back from Vat Phou, he told me that five guests had just been delivered and the boatman had to go back to Paxe. He would take me for sixty thousand kip (four pounds fifty), as he had to return anyway.

The Mekong is very wide at this point, stately and shallow, but with deceptively fast currents. It runs alongside a ridge of mountains on the Champasak side, while the other side is flat. There are villages and palm trees on the banks and fishing boats, sand banks and numerous flat stones emerge from the river. The boat goes past an island covered in thick jungle. Dead branches stick out of the water. Fish traps are clearly marked by floating plastic bottles.

Tad Lo

It took all day yesterday in local busses to get to Paxe. Sebastian and Janes went ahead of us and caught the bus to Tad Lo. We got to Paxe too late for that, so took a cheap room in the bus station, then went to a Lao restaurant where none of the wairesses spoke word of english. We were served by a lady boy (a man who dresses as a woman) who never smiled.

The next day we cught a bus to Tad Lo. Half way there the bus stopped. We go out.There was a queue of busses, tuktuks and cars. Francesco and I walked down the road, where we found that the bridge had collapsed. Bulldozers had created a diversion. But it had rained torrentially in the night and the diversion had turned into slippery mud. Two vehicles were stuck. Just then  a four by four arrived and proceeded to tow the the two vehicles out of the mud. Francesco begged he driver to take us to Tad Lo. At first he refused, then he relented, so we ran back to our bus, got our bags and finished our journey in a four by four.

Later in the day the rain stopped and it became very humid and hot. We went for a walk by the river, where Sebastian tried to swm, but it was too shallow, then through fields, a local village, where the ground was completely covered in shit - pig shit, chicken shit, cow shit - probably cat and dog shit too. Local boys were playing football with bare feet in the middle of this.

We walked past burnt fields, the tree stumps sticking up pathetically, past fields recovering from slash and burn agriculture, sprouting all kinds of lush, green vegetation.

The group of four split up this morning.The boys hired motorbikes to explore the Bolovan plateau. Janes set off on the regular bus to Paxe and I hitch hiked in a semicircle round the central mountain in the middle of the plateau. The road for the first part of the journey was a bumpy dirt track, through plantations of coffee and fruit, banana trees and thatched villages. At one point a driver in a tray top let me ride in the back, with his spare tyres and spare fuel. His wife didn't like the look of me enough to share the front seat with me.

From Paxe to Champasak the road was being rebuilt - that's to say bulldozers had piled earth up and flattened it. But our old bus had to drive on a swtchback of beaten tracks. Progress was painfully slow.

Vientiane

I stayed in a cheap guesthouse in Vientiane that laid on breakfast from eight til eleven, every morning. At eight a few hopeful guests sit in the lobby, where instant coffee and hot water are supplied. About a quarter of an hour later plates begin to appear with toast and  fried eggs, about one plate every five minutes. Then plates of fruit. The lobby begins to fill up. People sit at the tables outside. At about nine o'clock they bring folding tables out, then a big bowl of rice. Later a big steaming bowl of green thai curry appears, with chicken and vegetables. Half an hour later a big bowl of salad joins the rest. Then gradually little plates of sticky rice cooked in coconut milk with mango and miniscule pieces of cake arrive. It is an intensely social affair.

Bus
I took a bus to Paxsan. Every seat was full. Then more passengers got on and were provided with plastic stools in the centre isle. In the suburbs we stopped and vendors climbed in selling bread, meat on sticks, fruit, drinks, magazines. They squeezed past the people sitting in the aisle shouting their wares. Then just as suddenly, they all piled off. Further along the road we stopped and people got out to pee and more vendors got in. These stayed with us until the next stop where half the bus got out to pee and the vendors disappeared.The bus played Lao pop music videos for the first hour, then a Lao comedy show, that had the whole bus roaring with laughter.

This is the first bit of flat countryside that I have seen. It's mostly rice fields, which are dry and brown.

I got out at Paxan, which is just a straight bit of road with a few houses on either side. There seem to be three guest houses and one restaurant. I went to the bus station where a tuktuk said it would cost me fifty thousand kip to go to Lak Sao.

On the trip to Lak Sao I met Sebastioan and Janes, who persuaded me to get out at Ba Na Hin and join them on a trip to the famous seven km long cave. Later we met Francesco, who took us to his guest house and told us about a local Italian restaurant."How come," we wanted to know "there's an Italian restautant in this tiny place?" It turns out that an Italian company are building a dam near here. The wife of one of the engineers decided to open a restaurant, because she was bored. And of course all the Italian workers come to her restaurant after work to drink. At ten thirty she puts the shutters down and has a lock in.

We ordered a litre of wine and big plates of pasta.
Next day we went to the only restaurant we could find for breakfast. It was the greasiest, most disgusting breakfast that I have had since I've been in Laos.

Then we caught the tuktuk to the cave.
The tuktuk went to the market to pick up some boxes of groceries and a sack of rice. Then it turned back on itself, picked up a box of eggs, two crates of beer and some more groceries and two people. We continued. We stopped for a woman with a sack of rice. We stopped to pick up four containers of petrol. We picked up more people, who put mysterious objects on the roof. There was a bag of catfish (still live) under the seat. By now we were fairly squashed between boxes, bags and containers and several Lao people, who left the tuktuk gradually, taking their provisions with them. It took two hours to reach the cave.

A river runs through the cave. We had to take a long tailed boat, which stuck in the shallow water frequently, obliging us to get out and walk in the fast-moving river, on pebbles that shifted under out feet.

One boatman sat at the front of the boat, miner's lamp strapped to his head, acting as headlamp for the boat, illuminating the way for the boatman at the back, also wearing a miner's headlight and steering the boat. Every time the boat grounded we had to get out, and the boatmen pushed the boat along the gravelley bottom, sometimes up rapids.

At one point we came to an illuminated area with stalactites and stalacmites where we got out to climb up the bank and explore them. Sometimes the cave opened into cathedral tall areas, sometimes passing through narrow passageways. There seemed to be a network of tunnels, passageways, caverns, eventually coming out into luxurant vegetation.

We stopped at a boat landing and climbed onto the bank. Under the trees there were stalls selling buiscuits and crisps, alongside tables and benches. The boatmen were drinking Lao Whiskey. We ate a few buiscuits, drank some water, then back in the boat for the return journey, this time missing out the illuminated stalactites.

The journey back in the tuktuk was very cold. We gradually got colder and colder, eventually arriving frozen.

Next day we caught a couple of busses to Thakek, where we met a tuktuk driver who took us to a beautiful guesthouse. We hired him for the afternoon to take us to yet more caves, one absolutely full of stalactites with a lake at the bottom. Then he took us to a beautiful lake, at the foot of limestone karst formations. Sebastian went swimming while we watched and took photos of him.

Vientiane

I meant to catch the local bus from Luang Prabang. So I set my alarm for five thirty am Monday. It didn't go off - maybe because it was Tuesday. So I rushed to the bus station only to find that all the local busses had gone. I could catch a VIP bus for double the price if I wanted. OK, I thought, against my better judgement - I'll give it a try. VIP is a misnomer. It's a huge double decker thing with filthy windows that you can hardly see out of, which, because it is air conditioned, don't open. It has soft suspension, which, because the roads are so auful, make it bounce up and down like a yoyo. And because the road twists and turns up and down mountains all the way to Viang Veng (which is almost all the way) the combined effect is to churn the passengers like cream, making them into butter - or rather, because the contents of the passengers' stomachs is not cream but a mixture of other things, bringing their breakfast, last night's supper and maybe even meals long forgotten, back up their throats. I have seldom felt so ill. Ten hours later we finally arrived in Vientiane, utterly wrecked. I was not the only one who vowed never to take a VIP bus again. Clattery old local busses from now on. And short journeys.

Too exhausted to treck round Vientiane for hours looking for a cheap room, I settled for a bunk bed in a dorm full of young men who, fortunately, were completely exhausted from their visit to Viang Veng. Most of them went to sleep with the light on at nine oclock.

This morning, on venturing out, I was assailed by the sweet smell of freshly baked croissants. The only cafe open in the street was serving breakfast to people, who, like me, couldn't resist the smell of freshly baked croissants and good coffee. Vientiane is a quiet place with wide, tree-lined streets and lovely restaurants serving every kind of food.

I have just been to the national museum, a rather scruffy place exhibiting all sorts of prehistoric pots (mostly stuck together with glue), bronze drums and other artifacts dug up by Swedish archeologists. Upstairs there are lots of photos of members of the Lao resistance - first resistance to the French, then later to the Americans, who installed a puppet government after the French left. I didn't get to the end of the exhibition because they shut for lunch at twelve o'clock. I could go back there if I wanted, using the same entrance ticket I paid for this morning.

There are lots of hippies and freaks here in Vientiane, some quite old. There is even a ninety one year old women from north Wales. "Anywhere," she said "is better than north Wales, at any time of the year". "So why don't you move?" I asked her. "Well," she said "would you live in Thailand?" I failed to follow the logic of this non-sequiteur, so left it at that. "I'm going to catch a local bus to Luang Prabang tomorrow" she announced, after telling me stories of forgetting which hotel she had left her rucksack in, getting the police involved in looking for it, getting sick in Thailand and being nursed by kind local people. I reckon she gets by because people are so amazed that she is travelling at her age that they take pity on her and look after her.

I met other people who I had spent time with in Muang Gnoi, who had saved themselves the trauma of the bus by flying from Luang Prabang to Vientiane.

UXO

UXO, or unexploded ordinance.
There is a UXO Museum in Luang Prabang, but you could be forgiven for not noticing it. Everywhere I asked I was told "No UXO museum in Luang Prabang. only in Phonsavan." But after several hours I found it, behind the statue of the president.

There are scary pictures of villagers using unexploded bombs to build their houses and of people wounded by UXO. Bombs are used as fences and barbecues. Bombie cases are made into lamp shades, candlestick holders, metal is smelted for knives, explosives are used for fishing and de-stumping.

UXO Lao is a national organisation. It trains and employs people to defuse and clear UXO and educates people about UXO safety. UXO Lao also provides technical advice and support for Lao PDR in its campaign for a global ban on cluster munitions.

Between 1964 and 1973 the US dropped an estimated two million tons of bombs in Laos, making it the most heavily bombed country in the world. Most of these bombs were cluster bombs, each one of which contains hundreds of 'bombies'. When the bomb breaks open, it releases bombies that cover an area the size of two to three football fields. As many as eighty million bombies failed to explode. In addition over four million big bombs, mortars, artillery shells, landmines and grenades still litter the country.

15 out of the 17 provinces in Laos have significant UXO contamination. At least twenty five percent of settlements report UXO.

The most heavily bombed area was the Ho Chi Minh trail. Hundreds of kilometres long, the Ho Chi Minh trail was a network of tracks from North Vietnam through east Lao to South Vietnam. The Americans bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail daily for nine years, but the north Vietnamese never stopped using it for even a day.The Americans also dropped defoliants, including Agent Orange. They tried spraying the whole area with liquid detergent to make it slippery. Chemicals continue to pollute food and water and children continue to be born deformed. Scarcely any research has been carried out to determine how bad this problem is.

Although banned, there is a roaring trade in UXO scrap metal. One person is killed or injured almost every day by UXO in Laos. Scrap collection is the most common cause of known UXO deaths (because of course a lot of the time people do not report the death, because the person was illegally collecting UXO scrap metal). In heavily contaminated areas many families have metal detectors, which are now cheap to buy. They are so poor that they are prepared to risk death in order to make money selling scrap metal (which of course often contains unexploded ordinance).

Lao is the most bombie-contaminated country in the world. And it has more post-conflict cluster bomb casualties than any other country in the world. BLU-26 were the most commonly used cluster bombs. 

In a typical year UXO Lao removes and destroys apoximately 65,500 UXO items. It is the largest of seven organisations all operating in Lao. There are clearance teams, survey teams, roving teams and community awareness teams. 700 of the 1,000 strong workforce are dedicated to clearance. These include deminers, international advisors, drivers, and medics.

Villages that need UXO removed apply to UXO Lao for clearance. Unfortunately the organisation doesn't have enough resources to deal with all the applications they receive, so they have to prioritise (places like school yards).

In 2008, 94 countries signed the cluster bomb treaty.

Which countries didn't sign the treaty?

Up River

I have been travelling up the Nam Ou, a tributary of the Mekong, and back for the past week. We travel in a very small boat with hard wooden planks to sit on. We stop at the river bank when the boat driver wants to stop for a pee. Then everyone scuttles off to squat behind some rock. We move slowly past blue dragons-back mountain ridges in the distance, beyond wooded hills. At one point we crunched onto something - rocks? the river bottom? Our driver turned round and gave us a big grin, then continued. Past Pac Ou caves we turned off the Mekong into a narrow channel, through high Karst formations. After the brown, muddy Mekong, the water of the Nam Ou is glassy green. Suddenly it was so shallow that we all had to get out and push the boat. We continued, crunching the river bed from time to time.

After seven hours we stopped at Nong Kiau, a little village beside a huge concrete bridge, the other side of which are rows of bamboo huts for tourists to stay . Spectacular high Karst formations loom either side of the river. The boat lands at the base of a dirt track, leading up to a ramshackle village of tin-roofed shacks. No-one meets us at the boat landing, offers to carry our bags or transport us by tuktuk to the nearest guesthouse. We are completely ignored! I drag my bag up the rough, stoney dirt track to the village, then all the way along the village high street - more dirt track -  to the bridge, where suddely the road turns to tarmac. On the other side of the bridge is a beautful cafe - a wooden platform under a roof with carved wooden railings all round and the whole expanse above it open, with views of the river, palm trees, bamboo sided huts, fishing boats and the steep cliffs of the Karst formations, trees clinging to their sides.

Next day I went for a walk with an American woman who is living and teaching in Seoul, Korea. We walked along a nice, flat, paved road, high peaked mountains all around us, covered in jungle, until we came to a sign indicating the way to the caves. A man in a little bamboo hut sold us tickets to see the caves. We followed a path through dense undergrowth, over a little stream then up steep steps to the cave. We saw the bamboo ladder that people used to use before the steps were built. It must have been difficult climbing that ladder with sacks of rice, barrols of water and other necessities. Incidentally a former president of Lao spent some time living in a cave during one of the many wars that afflicted Laos.

Muang Gnoi

A little boat took us up river to Muang Gnoi. The rapids are faster and more furious than down river and the boat kicks up a huge spray as we go against them.

Muang Gnoi is a dirt road with bamboo hut guesthouses on either side. It is about a thousand metres altitude, so cold at night, but very hot in the middle of the day.There are no roads to or from it, just the ever-dwindling river. Diesel-powered generators run from six til nine pm and for an hour in the morning.

At half past one it was hot and hazy. The only sounds were the cocks crowing. The river, which was distant and low was glassy, reflecting the riverside trees and feathery bamboo. Steep, peaked mountains are thickly covered in forest. Giant banana leaves wave lazily in the breeze. The woman of the house has put her baby in a basket, suspended from a beam by two ropes. She pushes it to make it swing. The baby is silent.I have a little shack at the edge of the forest to sleep in. There's a shared toilet and dip and pour cold-water washing facilities.

The trip down river back to Luang Prabang was slow and long. The river level seems to have fallen. Twice we had to get out of the boat and walk several hundred metres along the bank, while the boat (lighter wihout us in it) continued on its way, then picked us up further down stream. Frequently the boat slowed almost to a standstill as we navigated rocks. It took over seven hours.

Across the Bamboo Bridge

Early in the morning, I set off from Luang Prabang, to the edge of the river Nam Ou, where a steep path leads down to a bamboo bridge across the river. At the river's edge a ticket seller sits in a little bamboo booth, selling tickets to cross the river. On the other side, up a steep, narrow path through vegetable gardens and bamboo forests to a village. A dirt track leads to another village, where many of the households have big weaving looms. Women weave complex patterns with amazing agility. I stood watching, fascinated for a long time, but could not begin to describe the techniques they were using.

Early in the morning I was the only westener in this weaving wonderland. Beatiful woven designs were displayed in most of the houses, shops and even warehouses. A woman showed me how she made paper out of mulberry bark, saoking it in water, then pounding it before spreading it out on racks to dry in the sun.

Back in Luang Prabang

The bus ride from Muang Sing to Luang Namtha zigzags along the bottom of a steep sided valley covered in thick luxuriant jungle. Which sounds lovely. Except that the already full bus went on a little detour round the back streets of Muang Sing to pick up a man with a sack and a hoe, then did another little detour to pick up another man with a sack. Then we headed back to the hospital to pick up a girl with an intravenous drip attached to her arm, the other end of which was attached to a bottle, which her mother was obliged to hold above the grl's head for the whole two hour journey, lurching round corners at top speed. Most of the passengers had to get out in order to fit the patient and her mother in, then, somehow or other the rest squashed themselves into the remaining spaces.

The bus set off playing local pop music, the passengers chatting loudly. Then gradually, as we started to go round the hundredth bend, the chatting was overtaken by communal retching. Those with window seats vomitted out of the windows, those without vommitted into plastic bags. I didn't see whether the poor woman holding up the intravenous drip bottle joined in the vomitfest or not. I daren't turn round.

The bus journey from Luang Namtha to Luang Prabang took eight hours - eight hours on roads that for the most part had no tarmac. In some places they were building the roads. Sometimes the traffic ground to a halt while buldozers shunted backwards and forwards, shifting huge piles of earth. The scenery was spectacular, when we could see it, through the thick clouds of dust that the convoy of busses, trucks and cars stirred up, rattling and bumping along theses beaten tracks. Steep, green forest-clad hillsides, blue mountain peaks, thatched roofed villages, lush vegetation all around.

I have found a cheap hotel in Luang Prabang. It is truly basic. But the seating/restaurant area outside is completely surrounded by banana trees, palm trees, flowers, vines, green leaves of every kind. A very tranquil place in a back street between two temples.

Muang Sing

Today we travelled with chickens on the roof of the minivan, which would have been funny if they had not crapped all over my bag! Muang Sing is another dusty frontier town - on the border with China. Akha tribe women sit on the side of the road stitching seeds and beads onto belts and bags.

I went for a one day treck when I was in Luang Namtha. We followed a steep narrow path up the side of a thikly forested hill, until we came to a stopping place, where our guides built a fire and roasted fishes on split sticks. They spread banana leaves onto the bamboo picnic table and laid out bundles of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, pieces of dill omlette, boiled greens and roast fish.

After lunch we walked though bamboo forests, past banana trees (the animals had eaten all the bananas) and more forest, coming down into the valley carpeted with rice fields. We stopped at a lone house built out of wood and bamboo to wait for the old couple who were valiently bringing up the rear.