Nong Khiew - proper travellers

150K upriver from Luang Prabang spent an interesting evening with two proper travellers. One- a young Norwegian bloke - had sailed from Norway to New Zealnd in a 22ft boat, across both the Atlantic and Pacific. He had sold his boat in NZ and was making his way home overland. The other, a german in his sixties, was taking six months to cycle from Germany to Bangkok. He had cycled all the way across Russia and China - Siberia vas borink, nothing but birch trees - until the heat forced him to take a bus in Vietnam. After several beers the german got very quite drunk, but the Norwegian remained as perky as ever, showing the kind of stamina it takes to sail around the world single-handedly.

Back to LP on the slow boatthe next day. Five hours of fantastic landscapes and very hard seats.

Tourists in Luang Prabang

LP is a mixture of french colonial and traditional wooden houses. It's a UNESCO world heritage site and the centre almost completely given over to tourism. Very beautiful, but maybe a bit too perfect. All the streets are swept, the pavements (there are pavements!) neatly made out of herringbone brick. However, not far away life carries on as normal.

Did a couple of touristy things, including a trip to the waterfalls where we met the American nurse who had travelled up from Vientiane on the bus (14 hours!). She joined a group of twenty-something Japanese tourists in plunging 8' into the water from an overhanging tree, and received an admiring round of applause.

Vientiane

Laos is very very quiet and a bit bumbly after Thailand. There are only 5m people here in a country the size of GB. Vientiane is tiny! Stayed in grande luxe in a crumbling colonial villa with a wonderful garden (although I did wish they would pick up the empty beer cans).

Laos seems to attract some interesting people. Met a 70 year-old nurse from New York who has spent the last eight months working for Medecins sans Frontieres in Cambodia with HIV patients. She leaves her husband at home and goes volunteering abroad to remote places.

Everyone very keen to practise their English. Got talking to some monks at one of the Wats and ended up giving an impromptu English lesson. We were invited into their room where they had set up a classroom - complete with whiteboard - where they practise English conversation among themselves. Becoming a monk is one way for boys to receive an education. They explained that while they had been monks for four years, they did not expect to be monks forever, and English was necessary to get a good job. Being inside the temple was a bit like being in a boys boarding school. They had boxes of little cellophane wrapped snacks under their beds to keep them going between their one meal a day. So on the whiteboard went: 'Guests eat snacks' - except of course we only ate one tiny packet of Chinese crackers to be polite, as they had so little.

Off to Laos

Caught the night train to Nong Khai - quite rackety. It poured down in the night and the train went very slowly. A group of railway police had a party in the dining car and drank all night. They were still pouring bottles of beer when the train finally got to NK two hours late at ten o'clock in the morning. A big fat cook had to steer them out of the door.

In NK took a tuktuk to the border where we went through a series of checkpoints each designed to extract a different sum of cash: $35 for a visa, plus an extra $1 - because it was Friday? 100 Bt for completing the paperwork, 10 Bt for permission to cross, 15 Bt for the bus ride across the bridge. Then finally through and into Laos.

State of emergency

Seems like the protests turned nasty overnight when govt supporters laid into the anti govt crowds at govt house. One person killed and quite a lot wounded. We are apparently now under a state of emergency but no one seems to know what that means. Melissa from downstairs came up to say that they had all been told not to go into work as UN is right next to govt house. A general strike is threatened for tomorrow of all public workers. Hannah v worried that they will stop her flight to Australia on Thursday morning and is trying to change her ticket but all flights booked solid.
Sat on the balcony and wondered what to do about going to Laos. In the end decided to buy tickets anyway. Will be on the train if it goes and if not will get money back and take a bus to the beach. At the station no one seemed to know what was hapening so they were just carrying on as usual.
Everyone seems a bit tense and bad tempered, apart from those who are just enjoying the excitement. Extra security in all public buildings and at the stations. However, otherwise everything seems the same.