Hanoi - turning Vietnamese!

Hello again. I've moved on to Hanoi in northern Vietnam. All my thoughts are on Australia now and the day of my flight to Sydney is fast approaching. But my trek through Asia is far from over. I've 12 days left in which to see the whole of Vietnam, and that's not a lot by any stretch of the imagination!

But the whole essence of my journey has been to see as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, surviving on overnight journeys galore and big bags of crisps from roadside shops. So grab a bumper pack of Lays (what Walkers crisps are sold as in Asia), a dubious bottle of local spring water and join me once again upon my journey!

I left off having just arrived in Vang Vieng in Laos. Vang Vieng is a town of modest size, a couple of hours north of the capital Vientiane. It is situated in a dramatic landscape of rivers and forests, in the midst of a range of beautiful and surreal dome-shaped mountains that glower down from over the water.

Once upon a time this place was a well-kept secret, but fast forward to 2008 and now it is more packed with tourists than anywhere in Laos. The town's central streets are swamped with bar after bar after bar. In a peculiar quirk of supply-and-demand marketing, there is a rash of 'Friends bars' in Vang Vieng; places kitted out with TVs and DVD players, endlessly replaying episodes of Friends all day long! I voted with my feet and went elsewhere.

If getting pissed in an exotic location - and watching actors who are now very very rich acting out humourous situations involving people who are not rich or famous - isn't your cup of tea, Vang Vieng offers alternatives. As promised I've been dabbling in watersports (teehee), and I had a mixed degree of success!

The main pursuit on offer at the dozens of tourist agencies in Vang Vieng is tubing, which skilfully combines the joys of drinking, swimming and floating in a river! By utilising a tractor's rubber inner tyre and the natural river currents, you can drift downstream in peaceful serenity. Don't forget to don your swimming togs first of course!

Backpackers throng to Vang Vieng for the tubing, and it is choked with travellers. Every morning the local guys who work as tourist guides ferry people up to the starting point, driving fleets of tuk-tuks with racks of rubber rings piled haphazardly on the roof. A long stretch of bars built on the banks of the river offer travellers drinks (plus in some cases the discreet vending of herbal products, should they be desired).

Failing to see a downside in any of this, we arranged to go tubing with one of the agencies. Dozens of tourist agencies exist in the town (side-by-side on the street in many cases), boasting similar prices and trying to undercut one another. But at the end of it all, no matter which agency you book with, or how low you haggle the price down, it's the same blokes that pick you up and act as your guides!

And so, after an exciting trip through some water-filled underground caves, our guides drove our group in a tuk-tuk to a patch of ground a few kilometres up the river. Then they issued us each with a giant rubber ring, and left us to float back down to Vang Vieng on the river currents! There's a lot to say for floating past the stunning mountain scenery in such comfort and serenity. All that was missing was a bland soundtrack by the Lighthouse Family and I could have been in an insurance commercial!

The river winds its way through several kilometres back to Vang Vieng, and at every bend in the river is a bar with rope swings or volleyball courts, blasting out loud reggae or trance music. Thirsty? Paddle closer to the bank and a man with a stick comes and tows you in to buy a drink. Then once you've bought a beer you can take it back in the water with you if you like, and drift away!

Or if you want to stay at the bar and enjoy the ambience, a tuk-tuk will ferry you back to town at night! This is rest and relaxation taken to a ridiculous extreme. On a sunny day it would have been utterly brilliant, but we went tubing in overcast weather and the time soon began to drag. Thank f**k I didn't have to listen to the Lighthouse Family!

I spent a few days in Vang Vieng and we did a guided cycling trip round a lagoon and some nearby villages, which was jolly good wholesome exercise. (I'd struggle to define what a lagoon is, but basically I think it's a pond that looks really pretty, with some trees and a swing and shit.) Sonia and I made friends with the guys at the tourist agency and ended up going out drinking with them in a Lao karaoke bar. They seemed really happy to show us around, and gave us a lift on their mopeds to a bar at the edge of town!

It was cool to get away from the main tourist strip and see where the locals hang out. The bar was a small dark room lit with neon, with the ever-present Thai pop music on the karaoke system; full of friendly folk enjoying a drink and a sing-song. Lao people love drinking in dimly-lit establishments, which oddly mirrors British culture!

On our last day in Vang Vieng we went kayaking. It was my first time on a kayak and I fell in a few times, as is the way. In a rush of bravado I followed all the experienced daredevils up a rock face, to dive off a ten metre high cliff!

When I reached the top of the cliff I realised I was not an experienced daredevil and began to sh*t myself slightly. I got the better of my nerves, stepped off the edge, then dropped like a stone and did a comical 'back flop' into the water! That was an experience I'll never forget for sure. Throwing myself hell-for-leather into life's turbulent jetstream, hoping for it to make me more of a man.

After the kayaking the guides drove us to our next destination, Vientiane. The capital of Laos is a smallish riverside city on the Mekong with some of the urban crush and pollution you'd expect of a capital. We quickly tried all the recommended guest houses, discovering as the hot and humid evening descended that horror of horrors, everywhere was full.

We met up with some Americans and Canadians who were kayaking with us, and eventually the five of us found a couple of rooms to share in a hotel. We recovered from the heat in the fridge-like air-conditioned rooms then headed out for a meal. A night of drinking ensued, and we ended up heading off in a tuk-tuk for a game in Vientiane's one and only ten-pin bowling alley! For me, bowling is a precursor to alcohol, not the culmination of the evening, and I struggled to adapt to the American way! It's hard to get in the game being several drinks worse for wear.

The next day I handed over my passport and a large wad of Lao Kip at the hotel reception to get my Vietnam visa rush-processed. This was followed by a rather good fry-up at a nearby cafe. Lao cuisine takes a back seat on many restaurants' menus! Bacon + hot dog sausages = enlightenment. What can I say?

The heat of the day became intense. Sonia, an American guy named Cesar and I did some sight-seeing round a bizarre park full of giant Buddha sculptures (Xieng Khuan). This lies just outside the city and is only reachable by taking a tuk-tuk down a long and extremely bumpy road. Then we went for a look round one of Vientiane's main temples, Pha That Luang. Always with the bloody temples! It was an amazing sight though, resplendent with a magnificent gold stupa. We chatted with some of the Buddhist monks, who were delightful chaps. One of the younger guys had been studying in the temple for ten years and was due to complete his duties and leave town the very next day!

One of the sights that defines Laos (and Thailand) for me is the flocks of orange-robed monks that congregate in towns and round temples. Being a monk is a highly respected position and most men will serve as a monk at some point in their life - in Thailand the back row of seats on buses is actually reserved for monks!

Another night of drinking with our kayaking cousins from across the pond ensued. The next morning (29th March) I was in a near-comatose state from over-exertion - not a good position to be in when you've got to pack your things and get ready for a flight! Somehow I managed. Sonia and I were leaving Laos for Hanoi.

I was a bit apprehensive about flying with Lao Airlines, having heard the rumours that they have frequent crashes. Their accident statistics are cloaked in secrecy by the Lao government and I know for a fact they're banned from flying over the EU!

The flight really was okay though. We flew in a smallish twin-engined propeller plane and got to Hanoi inside an hour. Lao Airlines seem to be tidying up their act these days; they're phasing out all the dodgy old Russian aircraft and they even gave us a charming in-flight lunch of shrinkwrapped cheese and ham sandwiches, much to my delight!

And so on to Vietnam. From the little I've seen so far it's clear that Hanoi is a hectic, bustling, frenetic place. It is built around the Old Quarter, which has existed for five centuries as a sort of giant marketplace. Whole streets are dedicated to shops selling different commodities such as shoes, china bowls and roasted fish. Women in conical hats sell fruit from baskets that they carry on a pole over their shoulder. It's like something from a different era.

The first thing you notice is how many motorbikes there are on the streets - there's millions of them! The roads are unbelievably chaotic. The unending streams of bikes and traffic constantly race from A to B, jostling for position. That's the thing about traffic in Asia - they just have a completely different idea of how it's supposed to work compared to us!

Crossing the road in Vietnam takes nerve and practice; unlike elsewhere I've been you literally have to step in front of the traffic and let it swarm around you! Vietnamese drivers will often even grant you the courtesy of keeping your life.

Also it is bloody confusing to find your way around Hanoi, as all the streets look alike and have similar-sounding names, e.g. Ngo Gach, Nguyen Sieu, Hang Chieu... eeh, it's all Greek to me! By which I mean Vietnamese. I like the Old Quarter though, it's got a definite character to it. There are some picturesque views round the Hoan Kiem lake in the centre of the city; the algae-infested water shines a pretty bottle green under the dour cloudy skies.

We've seen a few sights in Hanoi, such as Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, where the former communist leader's embalmed body is on display for public viewing, and a museum of his life story. I didn't really get the point of the museum, it was more like a modern art exhibition extolling the joys of Communism. Everywhere were photos of Ho Chi Minh making speaches and attending state events, but there was little obvious explanation of his life story. The whole thing seemed to serve to make a political point I had neither the patience or inclination to figure out.

Hanoi is famous for is its centuries-old tradition of water-puppetry, and I saw a water puppet show in a theatre by the lake. It was an eerie and magical experience unlike anything I've seen. The puppets appear to float by themselves in time to the unearthly oriental music. The stage is a rectangular pool of shallow water on which the figures float, and a group of musicians sit in a kind of orchestral pit at the side playing traditional Vietnamese music.

The puppets are cleverly controlled by levers from behind a bamboo screen, but glide around as if moving on their own. A bewildering cast featuring dozens of puppets are used to portray different animals and people. It was hard to tell what the f**k was happening, as the play just explores various themes rather than having a structured plot (various scenes are titled 'on a buffalo with a flute', 'catching frogs' and 'unicorns play with ball'), but it was an impressive spectacle. Apparently water puppeteers have to train for 3 years to master the art, and they have to get used to donning waders and working in waist-high water!

Also I went on a cruise round the northern beauty spot of Halong Bay, where thousands of small limestone islands are grouped in clusters around the coast. That was the first time since northern India that I've experienced weather as cold as the UK. It was beautiful, though the weather was cold and blustery and we couldn't see an awful lot.

We stayed overnight on Cat Ba island (where there is a large national park), and saw a massive street party commemorating the day 49 years ago when Ho Chi Minh visited the island. This guy pops up everywhere! I can't distinguish whether he is actually revered as a national hero among the people or whether the authorities are adamant that he be perceived that way.

Tomorrow we catch the night bus south to Hoi An to continue our journey. Hopefully there will come many more enlightening discoveries and wonderful adventures. But that's all for now - time for a crafty Bia Hoi at a streetside bar methinks! Arriverderci for now folks.

Laos part 2 - you've only got one pop song...

Oh God, I'm sat in an internet cafe again. What am I doing here? I might as well give you another update eh!

Me and Sonia have now moved on to Vang Vieng in central Laos, a nice little city next to a river with lots of beautiful craggy mountains nearby. It is a popular centre for trekking, cave-exploring and watersports (teehee). The watersports attract lots of barechested western jock types who drive up and down hollering like chimps on adrenaline. Watersports always bring out this side in people I suspect. Other than that life is very good. I myself will be going to caves and trying some watersports tomorrow. I will keep you updated on my progress!

I've been to Luang Prabang and Phonsovanh so far in Laos. Luang Prabang is a beautiful place. It's Laos' second city but has yet to develop any of the characteristics of a city; for now it is just a small unspoilt town that sits on the meeting-place of two rivers.

With no skyscrapers or modern buildings, and with its quiet streets and Parisian lamp-posts, it is strangely evocative of a small town in pre-war France. But then Laos was a former French colony - the British weren't the only ones who liked nicking other people's countries and changing all their shit around! There are hundreds of beautiful, glittering Buddhist temples spread throughout Luang Prabang, populated with flocks of orange-robed monks. After a day spent temple-spotting in the old town I have now definitely seen enough temples to last me a lifetime!

Late on Monday afternoon (17th March) our slow boat chugged up the river to the town, completing its mammoth journey down the Mekong. We gratefully disembarked, free to explore the town as dusk fell. Like many of the places in Thailand and Laos I've been, a small, cheap and friendly guest house just happened to be waiting in a backstreet for us to chance upon it.

The friendly old lady greeted us with 'sabadee!' (Lao for 'alright me ducks!') and once a price was agreed, she showed us to our room. That night I changed approximately 50 pounds of my Thai money into the local currency and was presented with 870,000 Lao Kip - a humungous wad of money literally an inch thick! I was rich!

The guest house, we later discovered, is built right next door to some sort of all-night open-air karaoke bar, where pissed Lao people go and sing Thai pop songs rather badly all the way into the wee small hours. But on the plus side, guests are welcome to free tea, coffee and bananas round the clock, so I was quickly placated! Oh and they have a big wall collage of former guests' pictures, from which one of my utterly minging passport photos is now gurning out at the world for all posterity. I cannot be held accountable for any loss of business or unforseen mental problems which will ensue from the airing of that rather unappetising photo.

Thai music and TV is everywhere in Laos. In some ways Laos is like a smaller sibling of Thailand, and the Thai culture pours into the void which westernisation is creating in Lao society. The two countries have different languages, and completely separate alphabets, yet there are many cultural similarities.

Even in the quiet backwaters, nearly every village has a house with a huge Jodrell Bank-size satellite dish bracketted to its roof to pick up all the Thai channels. Having seen Thai TV I'd rather face a life with no technology at all!

Thai pop music is kind of strange too. They ape western musical styles but they only seem to have grasped one basic tune. It crops up all the time on the radio in countless different songs - the chords run in a dirge-like circle of C minor-B flat-A flat-B flat, or something like that. And they've taken to one particular musical style with a relish - the all-out, balls-to-the-wall 1980s power ballad!

Our first two nights in Luang Prabang were marked with calm weather and unexpected monsoon-like downpours of rain. We did a few trips out to surrounding villages and beauty spots as is the usual way. First we rode on a boat to the cavernous Pak Ou caves, which nestle inside a big cliff on the Mekong. The caves contain a massive shrine and countless sacred Buddha figurines - small gold statues which visitors must not touch.

Then we visited a village where locals produce Lao whisky and rice wine for tourists, in rustic-looking metal vats. The white rice wine is excellent stuff - alongside the excellent lager Beer Lao, Laos has a lot to shout about alcohol-wise!

Finally we went swimming at the stunning Kouang Si waterfalls, discovering the Lonely Planet brigade from the river boat had all come to visit too! Eeh, it's like taking your holidays at Blackpool. I was affecting a haughty air of anti-western snobbery by this point.

On Friday (21st March) it was time to pack up and move on. We booked tickets at a travel agency and endured an eight-hour bus ride to Phonsovanh. That was tough going. Phonsovanh is a small town a couple of hundred kilometres from Luang Prabang through very mountainous terrain.

At many points on the journey the elderly bus was slowed to a crawl by the uncompromising gradients of the road's endless twists and turns. The views of the wooded valleys and plains, however, were spectacular. Our sanity was further tested by the endless replays of Thailand's one ubiquitous pop tune blaring from the driver's radio at full blast! I turned my music player up on full, stuck my headphones in, lay back and thought of England.

Phonsovanh was bombed to oblivion during the Vietnam war. Quick history lesson - America bombed Laos because they were on the commies' side, and refused to see that communism is dirty and nasty and wrong. Bad Laos! Dirty Laos! In your bed! And they didn't do it by half measures, dropping two million tons of explosives on the country in ten years; more than was used on both Germany and Japan in the second world war.

The town now been entirely rebuilt from scratch, featuring street after street of entirely new buildings. But bomb craters and unexploded bombs still litter the countryside. The debris of war lies everywhere, and much of it has been ingeniously recycled by opportunistic scrap-hunters. Rusted old bomb casings are used as fencing, house foundations and water carriers, and many of the guest houses have some sort of arrangement of old bombs and metal helmets outside to try and catch the tourists' eyes.

We came to visit one of the other 'must sees' in Laos, the Plain of Jars. This is an area of about 15 square kilometres of countryside, near Phonsovanh, containing thousands of giant prehistoric stone jars. No-one really knows when they came from, or why they were put there by the ancient civilisation of the time - are they funeral urns? Food storage? Was it... aliens?

The area was also the centre of intense fighting during the war and is still littered with UXOs (unexploded bombs) dropped by US planes in the late 60s. As much as 30% of the bombs dropped over Laos never detonated, and still lie in wait somewhere. (I have many more bomb facts and figures I intend to save for small talk at future dinner parties!)

So I spent the day yesterday wandering round various picturesque hillsides, littered with giant stone jars and ancient mossy bomb craters. In some places the earth is still churned up from those terrible events many years ago; and always the bomb craters are perfectly round and spherical in depth.

Also we went to see a cave where the Lao people once sheltered from the incessant American bombing raids, a rusting Soviet tank in a nearby village that had been cannibalised for scrap, and an imposing war memorial for Lao & Vietnamese soldiers up on a hillside. Am I a communist now? Not sure. But I certainly take the Vietnam war a lot more seriously now I've seen its implications in people's lives forty years on.

Finally we visited the local office of MAG, a Manchester-based charity who organise the clearing of explosives from Lao villages. There was a hugely interesting exhibition there explaining how many Lao villagers are very poor as they cannot farm on their bomb-infested land. Due to intense poverty they are forced into the incredibly dangerous route of digging up the bombs, attempting to diffuse them, then selling them on as scrap metal. The unused explosives also have monetary value. In an absolute sense the people are attempting to live off the land any way they can; accidents and deaths are commonplace.

What I can't believe is how forgiving the Lao people are - they love all foreigners! They're even friendlier than the people of Thailand. I was expecting the older generation to harbour grudges against Hawaiian shirt-wearing Americans at least. Most of the people don't seem to care, and every credit to them. They only want to rebuild the country and move on.

Laos: Mekong madness!

Hello friends, enemies, relatives, the 'Man' or whoever else is reading this. I have now begun a whole new chapter of my travels. I'm in Laos; a wonderful and mysterious land that sadly, due to the Vietnam war, has a scarred legacy of being one of the most bombed countries in the world.

Take a look past the beautiful scenery and the nation is still struggling to find its feet after decades of war damage and oppressive regimes. The people are extremely poor. Whole areas of the countryside are still littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, dropped by US warplanes during the conflict. The bomb disposal squads from international charities will need to work away for several more decades (if not a whole century) to get rid of them all.

Since opening its borders in recent times - particularly the one it shares with Thailand - Laos is now suckling on the teat of tourism. If you can picture such an image. The yankee dollars are starting to pour in and the times, well, they are becoming different. There are hordes of tourists here, fresh off the riverboat from Thailand and trooping around landmark after landmark with their Lonely Planet guidebooks. My travel buddy Sonia (who I met on the volunteer camp) and I have ungratefully entered their ranks. This country didn't stay a well-kept secret for long!

Well the Akha volunteer camp finished last week. It was a really great experience and told me much about what goes on in this corner of the world. I was sad to move on, and I really liked the group of people, but such is life; nought but a patchwork of brief moments of respite.

The people at AFECT treated us with the typical warmth and hospitality westerners find so flattering and bewildering in south-east Asia. I think we learnt an incredible amount as a group in the two weeks.

We didn't do much work for the communities, mind you. We spoke to some other western people staying with us who told us this is always the case! I came to accept this project was more of an exercise in cultural exchange, i.e. like when you had to write a letter to a French pen-pal back at school saying, "bonjour, je m'appelle Andrew, j'aime jouer au guitar, ping-pong et le mini-disco" or something like that, and then wait eagerly for their reply.

Traditionally the hill tribes cultivated opium crops for their own use, but they are now forbidden to do this by the government, and now many people from the hill tribes have to migrate to the big cities in search of work. But the majority of tribespeople have not been taught and educated in Thai schools, and cannot obtain a national ID card.

The government will only properly acknowledge citizens who have an ID card, and as such, the Akhas struggle to fight for their rights. Their tribe's traditional way of life is dying out, and the other hill tribes of the region, such as the Lahu, Lisu, Karen and Hmong face the same threats too - so awareness needs to be spread.

On our final days we saw lots more of the region. On Thursday (13th March) we went on a day-trip to the Golden Triangle, where two rivers intersect and the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos converge together like the slices of a big pizza. It was a delightful view, with lush green countryside on all three sides. There were no big black lines running over the terrain like wot there are on the maps, so it was kind of confusing to remember where each country ended and where each one began. Luckily though, God had marked out the borders with some handily-placed rivers.

The same day we went to the Hall of Opium in the nearby town of Sop Ruak, a compact little museum lovingly decked in regal bunting and portraits of the royal family that documents the Golden Triangle region's legacy of opium production. It was a fascinating place, packed with information and featuring real poppy plants and ornate 19th century opium pipes.

One of the things I discovered was that the British were originally to blame for introducing opium to Asia, when their traders needed something to bargain with the Chinese. That's the British empire for you - an efficient machine that spread railways, venereal disease, civil service-style bureaucracy and hard drugs to all corners of the world. I am seeing a lot more of our disturbing legacy as I voyage from country to country!

We also went on a crazy speedboat trip to Laos, which lay five minutes away across the Mekong river. Have you ever tried to eat an orange ice-lolly on a rocketing speedboat? It ain't easy. I got gunk from my lolly all over my digital camera and the lens jammed. And they say the US Marines had it tough in the Vietnam war!

The Mekong is a truly mighty river; it flows thousands of miles, all the way from the snowy mountains of Tibet down into the cornucopia of rivers forming the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. The stretch I've seen has a sludgey brown colour reminiscent of the Irish sea though; you wouldn't want to go swimming in it!

On the final evening we had a big outdoor party at AFECT's headquarters, dining on a huge spread of food with all the other volunteer groups. A dancing troupe of Akha ladies in fancy traditional costumes gyrated on stage to cheesy Thai pop music, while we filled our glasses from the endless bottles of Chang beer doing the rounds.

Our group cooked food from each of our countries; I treated everyone to the British classic bangers and mash! It lost something in translation, as the only sausages the supermarket sold were hotdog sausages, and they had nothing I recognised as gravy. But the mashed potato worked out well, and it seemed to go down a treat!

Then the next day it was all over, and we all left on our respective onwards journeys. Most people have travelled to Bangkok to fly home, or gone on to other places in Thailand. Zach went to Burma (brave guy!), and Sonia and I headed for the Laos border at Chiang Khong, a two hour bus ride away.

At Chiang Khong we caught a small ferry-boat over the wide expanse of the Mekong river, and that was it - the month I'd spent in Thailand was at an end. A month barely did it justice and there's plenty more that will have to wait for my next visit, such as the beaches in the south.

We disembarked across the river, at the Lao village of Houay Xai, and hauled our rucksacks up the concrete jetty. The first task was to join the queues of travellers waiting in the baking afternoon heat to get a tourist visa. We paid about 40 US dollars for a month's visa at the small immigration office. (In many Asian countries the US dollar acts as an unofficial second currency.)

We celebrated arriving in Laos with lunch at a small cafe. A Lao guy played his acoustic guitar at one of the tables nearby, before running off to shake some fruit down from a tree. The guitar is a very popular instrument in Laos - quite often you walk past guys sat on their own on the pavement, strumming on a guitar without a care in the world!

Houay Xai is a quiet little border town with nothing much to it really. There is one dusty main road lined with restaurants and tourist offices, targetted at the waves of people coming over from Thailand every day. All the shops and cafes accept Thai Baht, US dollars and Lao Kip, requiring their employees to do impressive leaps of mental arithmetic when calculating prices. The lights of Thailand blinked away from across the river in the night, reminding us of the place we'd just left behind (i.e. Thailand).

The next day we began what has been hailed as one of the definitive experiences of Laos - the two-day riverboat journey to Luang Prabang down the Mekong! I was really excited about doing this. Bear in mind most areas of Laos have never had proper roads, so journeying by river is often the quickest way to get from A to B (though this is slowly changing as more highways are built).

To get to Luang Prabang you have two choices: a) do it in six hours by speedboat, running the risk of losing either your hearing (from the deafeningly loud engine) or your life (in one of the fatal speedboat crashes that frequently occur). Or do the journey in much more relaxed style on a slow boat. While the conditions on a slow boat are cramped and uncomfortable, it leaves you free to chill out and enjoy the dramatic scenery.

We set off early in the morning from our guest house and we were collected by a man in a rickety tuk-tuk (rickshaw). A tuk-tuk is a small three-wheeled vehicle with a lightweight metal cage welded to the back, common in Laos and Thailand. I was astonished to discover a dozen other bleary-eyed travellers crammed into the back, and their luggage, piled into a tottering pyramid on the roof!

We gently hoisted our things on to the roof, taking care not to disturb the fragile equilibrium of baggage. Then we inserted ourselves into the cram of bodies and the driver set off through town to the slow-boat pier.

Down at the pier we registered for the trip, showing our passports to a stern uniformed man sat in an empty office whose job it obviously was to reassure us travellers that Laos really does have some sort of functioning government, honest! A line of slow-boats was waiting down on the river, one of them chugging its engine with intent. After carrying our rucksacks across a narrow rickety plank, we were safely on board!

Soon the wooden benches (and all other free space) inside the boat became packed with travellers, and after waiting for a few more stragglers, we were on our way. The boat made steady progress down the river, much swifter than I'd expected it to. The hours flew by; whirlpools, riptides, mountainous valleys and forests were punctuated by stops at villages on the riverside. Groups of village kids swimming in the river would wave to us - the latest bunch of exotic spectators passing through their lives. Despite the basic conditions of the boat and the arse-numbing wooden seats, such scenes of isolated bliss almost untouched by humanity made the time pass by quite fast.

Eventually it grew dark and it was time to make the overnight stop at the village of Pak Beng, halfway on our journey. Getting off the boat was a mad scramble, as everyone rushed to retrieve their baggage from the hold before the local villagers doubling as 'porters' attempted to carry their bags off for a fee! Time to stretch our legs after sitting on the cramped and uncomfortable wooden benches for several hours. Sonia and I clambered off with difficulty and joined the snake of travellers heading for the guidebooks' recommended guest houses.

Like Houay Xai before it, Pak Beng experiences a daily rush of tourists making the journey down the Mekong. The sights, sounds and smells of rural Thailand were present here too; chickens crowing day and night, the smell of wood smoke lingering in the air. We knew all the hotel rooms in the tiny village would quickly fill up from the people off the boat, but we managed to find a room in a small wooden guest house just up from the jetty that many people had overlooked.

It was cheap and accomodating and had fly nets over the beds, and a communal bathroom with cold water only - standard fare for this part of the world! The guy running it was very jolly and even offered to sell us a bag of weed for 500 Baht. What a rip-off!

Everywhere in town we glimpsed familiar faces from the boat. I randomly bumped into a British couple I met staying in the same hostel in Singapore. Then Sonia and I headed out for a meal, and we got talking to a jolly old Canadian guy who reminded me a bit of the Major off Fawlty Towers. He was raving about what a great place Vietnam is. Then we just had time to head back for an ice-cold shower before the village's electricity was shut off at 10pm. Many remote areas of Laos such as Pak Beng only have electricity for a few hours in the evening.

Normally when you wake in the middle of the night your eyes have adjusted to the dark surroundings of the room. But I woke and it was so dark I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. A night with zero electricity or light pollution in the surrounding area is a very black night indeed!

Luckily the sun obliged and came back to light up the world several hours later. And off we left for Luang Prabang. And the rest of the Lonely Planet brigade left with us. And so, Pak Beng became a sleepy ghost town once more, for a few hours.

That was nearly a week ago and I've spent several days in Luang Prabang and Phonsovanh (town in eastern Laos). I will write more when I get chance. Ciao for now!

Thailand part 3 - hanging with the hill-tribes

So now I'm well and truly off the beaten track! For two weeks I've been staying in remote mountain villages in northern Thailand and learning about the culture of the Akha hill-tribe, a group of people living throughout neighbouring regions of Thailand, Laos, Burma, Vietnam and China, whose population numbers 2.3 million in total. Why would I go and do a crazy thing like that you ask? Well I am one crazy guy, and it looked far too interesting to miss. As a traveller I am a fly buzzing on the cake of life, and here comes another cherry.

The volunteer camp I've gone on is run by a Thai organisation called AFECT, who have been working since 1981 to try and preserve Akha culture. The Akhas' traditional way of life is under threat, as they have few democratic rights in Thailand, and evil Christian missionaries from the US are seeking to convert as many of their villagers and villages as possible to Christianity.

The Akhas inhabit hundreds of little villages in the border region known as the Golden Triangle, which historically produced a lot of the world's opium. Their people have been left to struggle with opium addiction and poverty, unsupported by the government. AFECT is trying to help these communities, and to raise international awareness of their plight.

Last week we spent four nights in a place called Hue Yo, which is a tiny village up in the mountains that numbers fifty or so inhabitants. There is only one street, lined with simple wood and straw houses, and no electricity. Dogs and chickens run around everywhere. Children play in the street, running wild and free. One time I saw a pair of kids playing with a dead bird as if it was a toy doll!

The Akhas live by simple means, supporting themselves through crops of vegetables and plants, and keeping chickens and other livestock. As a guest of a local family, I lived as they lived, sleeping on the ground in a bare-floored breezeblock building, and bathing in a small bamboo hut by pouring bowlfuls of cold water on myself from a trough (not to mention having to master the dreaded squat toilets). It was an experience far-removed from the Chiang Mai Plaza Hotel, and I didn't miss the scented hand-towels one bit!

Also on my volunteer project are people from Oklahoma (Zach), Italy (Sonia), Norway (Mathilde), Austria (Julia), Canada (Danelle), and - like on my last project - lots of Koreans! (I won't attempt to spell their names.) They are all great people and I've enjoyed meeting them and travelling with them very much. The two weeks have flown by 'like a speeding antelope' (as I opined at breakfast this morning) and it will be a shame to move on. I feel like I've gained a great insight into this region's culture; a culture that may sadly vanish before too long.

The guides take care of the ten of us well, providing us food and shuttling us round in two flat-back trucks. Up and down the dusty mountain roads we go, travelling through kilometre after kilometre of unspoilt woodlands sprinkled with tiny hill-tribe settlements. It's exciting to travel on the back of a truck - it feels like doing a road-trip in the American desert! Despite our general bonhomie the rest of my group possibly suspect me of being an alcoholic, due to my frequent sulks when I am unable to obtain beer.

During our stay at Hue Yo we helped the villagers to sweep up leaves in the forest, as a defence against forest fires. This was quite a tiring task and our guides Miti and Aiyo treated us to a buffet lunch of roast pork and dog (yes, dog!) served on banana leaves for our troubles. My curiosity got the better of me and I'm ashamed to say, I tried some dog. To all the dogs I have ever patted, I apologise. It actually tasted okay. The meat is a bit fatty and I guess it is quite similar to duck. Oh, and we saw an Akha guy make a bong from a length of freshly-cut bamboo!

Bonus fact: did you know that the only word the country of Laos has contributed to the international vocabulary is 'bong'? (Bong technology originates from Lao hill tribes apparently.)

The next day we went to see all the nearby villages take on each other at a local sports day! With a sports field, a marching band and a bloke compering the festivities on a microphone, it reminded me a bit of an English country gala! Our group got to take part in the procession, where all the villages paraded along in their finery to the sports field. The women wore traditional Akha headgear and dresses, while in something of a break in tradition, the men wore knock-off replica football shirts!

Each village adopted a football team's strip. Hue Yo wore AC Milan shirts. Other villages wore Man U, Chelsea, Marseille, Roma and Argentina shirts. It was definitely a football-themed day. (There was even talk our volunteer group would take part in an exhibition match, but thankfully for me that was probably just someone's joke!) The villages' men took on each other at football and takraw (foot-volleyball), with winners and losers seeming to enjoy the fun equally. The women spectated, while some danced in cheerleader troupes or sold ice lollies.

We were unable to determine if Hue Yo won or lost in the championships - when we asked Aiyo he issued the rather ambiguous reply, 'yes... no', and didn't clarify further. As with much I've seen on this project, you have to shrug and accept it only makes sense in the context of life in Thailand!

After the games finished we went to see a museum dedicated to opium warload Khun Sa, housed in his derelict former forest hideout. The Golden Triangle area produced up to 70% of the world's heroin back in the 80s, and Khun Sa was one of the world's most powerful figures in heroin production.

Later in the week we took a memorable trip to the top of a mountain called Doi Tung that lies on the border with Burma. We dismounted from the trucks and climbed the hill, emerging in a stunning vista of untouched green pastures that was bisected by a stern wooden fence running the length of the border, wreathed in barbed wire. Staring across the hill to the Burmese guardpost on the other side, I saw the two armies are very much interested in keeping their two countries as separate as possible! (Interestingly, the countryside in a totalitarian state looks much like the countryside in any other. And they say the grass is greener!)

It's been fun to travel in Thailand, but by Christ I've found it difficult to master the Thai language. It is a tonal language, meaning you have to put the correct emphasis on every word and speak it in a certain pitch. Different tones/pitches give words entirely different meanings, so trying to pronounce the words right is not enough; it won't be understood unless you use the right tones. I quickly gave up and resigned myself to being a dumb tourist yet again!

We've also been learning the Akha language, which is completely different from Thai, but shares the similarities of being a tonal language and hence difficult to master. We were given comprehensive printouts with lots of phrases on, then we discovered the phonetic spellings made no sense! I can just about manage 'uddu tamar' (hello) and 'goo long hooma' (thank you) after two weeks. Give me a month and I might manage to learn the Akha for 'make me a cup of tea'!

Our group quickly struck up a rapport with one another, and we all spent a weekend back in Chiang Rai (where I attempted to write that last blog in a hungover state). After several days of roughing it, we treated ourselves to hot showers and western-style toilets at the friendly (but mosquito-riddled) Ben Guesthouse. Miracle of miracles, they even let guests help themselves to beers from the fridge at any time of day or night, on condition we noted it down on the tab at reception! Heaven on earth indeed.

Every day at breakfast the crazy old guy whose job it was to hands out flyers to travellers at the bus station would walk into the reception/restaurant room and cheerfully announce to us, "I'm off to the moon, to hunt for the mafia!" Maybe he is some form of crazy genius who only converses in abstract metaphors. Or maybe there's just something in the water round here.

On Saturday (8th March) a group of us went trekking to a remote waterfall on our day off. That was one intense day of hill-climbing. I decided to wade into the waterfall fully-clothed, rather than let the others see my nipples. Physical exertion in the day was followed by much drinking in the night, as we treated the weekend as an excuse to go and sample the Chiang Rai night market and get uproariously drunk. We ended up in a western-style rock bar called the Teepee Bar, run by a young Thai guy who seemed to have created the bar as much as for a place to get drunk as to make a living! The next evening I went for a Thai foot massage in one of the town's many massage shops. The sign on the door proudly proclaimed 'no hill tribe workers - and no ladyboys!'

This week we've stayed in another remote village (sometimes it's hard to ascertain the names of these little places but I think it's called Heel Kaulag), visited our project leader Miti's grandparents in her home village, and done more sightseeing. This project has involved lots of sight-seeing and being the tribes' guest - there's hardly been any work to do! I've found this a bit frustrating, but there's been lots of happy times and interesting experiences to be fair. The people at AFECT are brilliant and have looked after us really well, especially compared to the shambles of the Delhi project I was on.

After the camp finishes we all go our separate ways, which is sad. I am off to Laos. Maybe I will find the origin of the humble bong?

Thailand part 2 - life in the year 2551...

Hello again readers. How's the family? I am still in northern Thailand, and the weeks are starting to fly past so incredibly quickly. I'm now halfway through my hill tribe volunteer project, on a rather warm and muggy Sunday afternoon in the sleepy northern city of Chiang Rai.

I'm staying in the city for the weekend with the rest of my new volunteer group, who seem like a quite spiffing bunch of people. As with the Delhi group we are a mix of nationalities: American, Canadian, Italian, Norwegian, Austrian, and we have another large contingent of South Koreans. International volunteer work seems to be a favourite passtime of South Koreans!

At the moment I'm in an internet cafe full of Thai kids playing shoot-em-up computer games - a typical sight in Thailand, even in rural areas! (Internet addiction is a common problem in many places in Asia - in South Korea they even have 'internet boot camps' where children are forced to spend time away from computers as rehabilitation!)

It is the year 2551 here in Thailand. Thais use the Buddhist calendar, which started over 500 years before the Christian one, so 2008 is 2551. Crazy! Despite being a huge tourist destination, with internet cafes chock-full of kids, Thailand still has its roots grounded in tradition. I've seen glimpses of the fascinating culture and the tourist brochure cliches about the 'land of smiles' are true - the people are really bloody friendly! The day-to-day living is very cheap and you start to realise there is a lot of financial inequality in the world.

Heck, if I can pick up a beautiful wife for the price of a Mars Bar I ain't complaining! No, that's not funny. Take it from me - Bondy cares about the troubles in the world.

The last few weeks have been a hectic whirl of travelling and sight-seeing, and it's high time I spent a day on my own slowly unwinding. And filling you in on my adventures of course dear reader! So much has happened... I'd got up to Bangkok last time I wrote this 'ere blog.

I didn't see much of the city in the three or four days I spent there. The city traffic is so bad it is very hard to travel round, and the taxi drivers have a love of ripping tourists off, so I was limited to journeying round on foot round the Grand Palace and the major temples. They were stunning though - check out Google pictures here, here and here. I've fallen into this daily routine when I'm travelling on my own of sightseeing in the morning and afternoon, going to an internet cafe in the evening, then at night I get food and try to perfect the art of "looking cool while sat on my own nursing a beer". And the damage to my wallet is light!

Thailand seems to be in something of a state of flux right now. The popular former PM Thaksin Shinawatra is back in the country to face corruption charges, and the country is in a 100-day mourning period for the king's sister, who died in January at the age of 84. (The royal family is highly revered, particularly the king, who is worshipped as if he was the Pope.) Also there have been elections, resulting in a 3-day ban on the sale of alcohol for fear of rioting. Despite the tough government sanctions, there is not even the merest sniff of trouble on the country's streets - it's a really relaxed place.

I saw a royal procession while I was in Bangkok. I was walking towards the Grand Palace when a burly man in uniform ushered me over the street to where a big crowd of people had gathered. "Okay," I thought, "the street's closing... this makes sense."

All the streets around the palace had suddenly become lined with crowds, waiting to see the king leave his palace by limousine. A phalanx of futuristically-uniformed motorbike cops were followed by a succession of security guards in an endless convoy of souped up Mercs. By now the moment when we would see the king was approaching, as the crowds began excitedly shouting 'song phra charoen' (long live your majesty). Then a stretched limo with a few shadowy figures sat inside sped by, and that was that. Off he went on his important state business. That was half an hour of my life I would never get back!

After Bangkok I spent a week in Chiang Mai, which is Thailand's second city. It is actually a lot smaller than Bangkok - it's more like a town. It's got a square moat, inside which is the kilometre of so of the old town. I travelled up there on the night train and woke up in the morning as the train was slowly winding its way through the stunning tropical scenery of the Thai countryside.

I'd booked to go on a three-day Thai cookery course and the package included four nights at a top hotel, the Chiang Mai Plaza! I swear I have never stayed in anywhere so ridiculously posh in all my life. It's the sort of place politicians and movie stars would go to get up to all sorts of seedy pursuits away from the public eye. The lobby is the size of an aircraft hangar, decked out in gilded mirrors and marble, and there are bell boys following you round everywhere if you look like you're carrying something heavy. It was kinda cool to be pampered after roughing it for several weeks but I just don't need that much luxury. The free breakfast buffet was amazing though, it had poached eggs and bacon! Mmm... bacon.

The cookery course was a fascinating learning experience that left me bamboozled under a tidal wave of knowledge. One of several such schools in Chiang Mai, it is run by a legendary Thai chef called Sompon Nabnian who has done TV work around the world. He actually taught most of the classes himself, demonstrating how to cook the dishes while dispensing James Bond-style wisecracks. I learnt about basic ingredients in Thai cooking, such as lemongrass, fish sauce and kaffir lime, and cooked over a dozen dishes (such as hot and sour prawn soup, Thai green curry and spicy glass noodle salad) in a class of around 25 people. The ingredients you need are easily available in the west, so I guess I'll be opening a Thai restaurant when I get home (if I can remember the recipes that is)! After you cook your food you get to eat it, and after a day of cooking and eating six or seven dishes you are bloody full!

I liked Chiang Mai, it's a very green and pleasant place - a nice change from the wall-to-wall noise of Bangkok. I also saw Doi Suthep, a stunning golden hilltop temple which you have to climb 306 steps to get to, and I stayed in a homely wooden guesthouse in the old town, nicely titled 'VIP House'!

The next day I did a day safari, which is a popular tourist package trip where you get to ride on an elephant and travel down a river on a bamboo raft. It featured a free lunch buffet with fried chicken drumsticks, and a snake show where three Thai guys prodded snakes in a miniature ampitheatre. I had a few good adventures and met plenty of fellow travellers while propping up the bar every night. Life was good.

Last Saturday (1st March) I came to Chiang Rai to start my volunteer group. Chiang Rai is a different city to Chiang Mai, but it's confusingly similar in name. It lies in the far north of the country, close to the border with Burma and Laos; a small town with a bustling night market.

I met up with the other volunteers at the bus station, and our Thai project leaders came to greet us with two pick-up trucks. We crowded on to the back of the trucks with our bags, and sped away into the countryside to spend the weekend in a basic wooden hut on the grounds of a rural children's home. After two days of team bonding and basic cultural orientation, we left the fringes of civilisation to head out into the wilderness, and live for a few days with a hill-tribe!

But I'll have to leave it there for now - it's been good fun but it will take another whole day to explain! Tata for now, again.