(Actually, that’s poetic license — I ordered fried crickets last night when I saw it on the menu, but they were “out” … or could it be nobody ever eats them, so it’s just on the menu for “shock value”? Nah, I don’t believe that; more likely the tasty li’l hoppers aren’t out in force during the wet-season. Guess we’d have more luck if we see gecko on the menu…)

But today we’re leaving Vientiane, and Laos, for Bangkok in Thailand. We’ve already booked our hotel — The White Orchid, in Chinatown — but haven’t yet got the tickets to get there, so today we’re tuk-tuking (can that be a verb??) into town, then onto Thanaleng where we hope to avoid the high-prices of the “Thailand Bus” and get a night-train all the way to Bangkok. For now we’re smug with knowledge: Internet research (traveller’s tales) suggests this is the best, most comfortable and cheapest way to do it, but none of the locals we’ve spoken too know about this mythical “train 70 from Thanaleng” so we have our fingers crossed it actually exists.

So we haven’t been to Vietnam this trip, and we might not go to Cambodia either (Warrick had a torrid tale of Cambodian border-crossing that Cece endured a couple of years back — lets say it ends with her being hosed off in the street before the hotel will let her in) but that just means we have somewhere to come back to (yes, there are plenty of places we’ve missed on this trip). I’d like to, but then I’d like to visit just about everywhere in the world, twice, so we have to be practical.

The hotel in Bangkok looks nice, and is a 20 minute walk from the train station (please exist, Train 70!). It is slightly more expensive than we’ve been paying (£20 instead of £15) but has a pool and jacuzzi; after the “rural life” we’ve been living, relaxing as it is, it might be nice to be back in the city and indulge in a few creature-comforts.

Well, breakfast is here so I best eat. See you in Bangkok!

We’ve had a bit of an adventure in Laos so far, largely due to “travellers’ belly” that hit us in Jinghong, near the border on the Chinese side. I think it started in Chengdu, however: one of the staff there was sneezing and coughing, and shortly after rolling out of town I did the same. (It was NOT bird ‘flu, as I may have suggested — or if it was, I recovered remarkably!)

The trip from China to Laos was a long, bumpy day with a whole lot of unnecessary stops — it became apparent early on that the whole purpose of the bus was to transport Chinese goods (tax-free?) into Laos, with humans as a secondary consideration at best. We sat on hard seats crammed between carrots and cabbages, sacks of potatoes and soggy-cardboard boxes filled with I-don’t-even-wanna-know, flying ’round corners and over dirt roads. There were a couple of breaks, of course: the passengers duly disembarked, clambering over the drygoods to disappear for a squat or pee into the trees at the side of the road.

After getting through border control,  over the border, and mostly over the head-cold, we stayed at a small Laos village called Luang Nam Tha — “area near Nam Tha (river)”. We had two nights here, and didn’t really do a lot — just spent the time recuperating from the first hit of “travellers’ belly” either of us had experienced. Something about the water, perhaps?

We checked into the biggest, most fancy-looking hotel we could find, the Royal. Showered, shaved, cleaned and relaxed, we headed out for dinner. There’s not much to see in LNT, but the food at Panda Restaurant was good. We filled our boots and retired for an early night — I couldn’t even finish half of the bottle of Beerlao that we were to find ubiquitous throughout the countryside.

From Nam Tha we took a short 5 hour bus to Oudomxay, a little town with not a whole lot going for it, but halfway between Luang Nam Tha and Luang Prabang. Our one night there was spent at a karaoke bar down the road (our guest house was plain, but right near the bus station).

Once we got to Luang Prabang we were old pros: negotiating with the tuk-tuk drivers, pointing out our chosen guest house on the (often wrong) Lonely Planet map, even attempting to pronounce the streets and temples nearby. Tuk-tuks are ubiquitous here, even more so than the infamous “Beerlao” beer, and for a small fee (we were happy to overpay at £4 for a few dusty miles) they’ll take you right to your door. In our case, it was the Lane Xang Villa, directly across from a “Wat”: we watched young monks in orange robes play football in the rain; wandered around wooden buildings, elaboratively carved; and looked at ancient stone stupas and archways.

All in all a relaxing time, although the nights were sometimes too hot to sleep!

But we’re in Laos now, so I can post what we got up to in China and upload a stack of photos from the nearest wifi-enabled pub (this Internet cafe is expensive). See you soon!