I love Laos

Hello from Vang Vieng! I can't tell you how happy I am to be here in Laos. First of all, it's beautiful:

Nam Song River at dusk, Vang Vieng, Laos

Second of all, it's been a much needed salve to the wounds acquired in our last few, ill-fated days in Vietnam. Anyone who has access to my Facebook profile will already know some of the proverbial 'shit' that 'went down' - and how my mood nosedived with it.

Where did it all go wrong, I wonder? The food certainly seemed to improve as we wended our way up north, but the weather didn't. Was it the onset of the endless grey and cold and drizzle once we left Hoi An for Hue, and then Hanoi? (We didn't come all this way, to Asia, to endure UK-standard rubbish weather!) Or was it the more recent, more palpable, and more importantly, inexplicable wall decoration we found waiting for us when we checked into our (tiny) room on our boat on Halong Bay?

Yes... it's a naked lady. Why? No but really....why??

Now if that's not an ill omen, I don't know what is.

Oh, Halong Bay. How many wonderful stories had I heard about you, about how delightful and awe-inspiring you are in the flesh (or should that be... in the rock?); how many photos of your splendour had I gazed upon lustily, eager to recreate them but by my own hand. By Jove, was I excited! But my own experience of Halong Bay was not to be quite what I had expected nor hoped...

First of all, the weather. Well. How do I put this? The weather … was not ideal. The entire bay was cloaked in a thick, dank, grey mist, pretty much the entire time we were there. Sailing through it was, actually, quite an unsettling experience. Skeletal silhouettes of fellow boats would push through the mist and glide past, their horns a sort of muffled, sorrowful wail cutting through the otherwordly silence. Then, dark shapes with jagged outlines would suddenly emerge through the mist, off in the distance – the limestone karsts of Halong Bay, the product of 500 million years of formation. Awe-inspiring, certainly. Relaxing? Not really. Tom and I came up with various words and phrases to describe the scenery, and our reactions to it...

"I can't see anything"

"A bit creepy"

"Menacing"

"Pervasive sense of dread"

You get the general idea. However, on the plus side, there was definitely something very humbling about being in the proximity of these mind-boggling creations of nature. Their sheer size, number and age made us feel very small and insignificant. But combined with the Mist of Doom, the general sensation was that we were not welcome here, and that the rocks might just decide to crush us in our sleep, for fun.

After spending a night of restless not-quite sleep worrying that we might crash into another boat and/or karst and sink and die (it's been known to happen), we made our way to Cat Ba island, where we were told we could do some trekking in the national park.

“The way up to the top is the same way back down, so if you feel tired or you don't want to go any further, you can come back. It might be a bit slippery – there are ladders. So be careful. It'll take about 45 mins to go up and 45 mins to come down.” That was the gist of the briefing from our guide. I was a bit hesitant about the slippery bits because my trainers have absolutely no grip on wet rock, but Tom and I were up for some hiking and some nice views, so off we went.

Unfortunately, due to toilet breaks, we fell behind the rest of our group from the outset, but we figured, hey, there's only one way up and one way down, how difficult could it be?

Oh man. Turns out there's not just one way up. There are two. The normal, slightly longer way, with steps and a gentle incline and a few rusty ladders; and the other, shorter, fiendishly difficult way, the culmination of which involves a vertical ascent clambering up a steep, sharp, rock face.

Guess who went the wrong way. Yes, us muppets, trudging through hundreds of metres of reddish brown mud sludge, very very slowly so as not to slip and fall and break our necks, hanging on to any available tree trunk, root or rock for dear life while praying to various deities for safe passage, and staring dumbfoundedly at people passing us with the aid of walking sticks to help manoeuvre through the trickier bits.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, enviously, as they marched on confidently whilst I hobbled, knees close the ground, with all the grace and panache of an arthritic, asthmatic OAP.

“Oh, they were giving them out for free at the restaurant! Didn't your guide tell you?”

No, no he did not. And he also neglected to mention that there were TWO WAYS TO GET TO THE TOP.

To cut a long story short, Tom and I eventually made it to the peak, but not without one close shave (he saved me from falling over and possibly cracking my head open on a nearby rock), and several headshakes of amazement at the shocking 'safety' provisions (or lack thereof) along the way.

However. In getting there, I got absolutely CAKED head to toe in mud and sludge. Seriously, it's the muddiest I've ever been in my life. Secondly, when we got to the top, our visibility was seriously impaired by – yes, you've guessed it – the Mist of Doom.

Worth the coatings of mud and the near-death experiences? Not too sure...

Thirdly, because of our little navigation mishap, whereby we masqueraded as thrill-seeking, lithe, dextrous adrenaline junkies whilst muttering a litany of “I don't wanna die” under our breaths, we were 25 minutes late getting back to the bus, i.e. the last people to get back to the bus. And man, I hate those people. So we had to do the walk of shame looking like we were Arnie's coolies having just taken on the Predator in the Guatemalan jungle. Not ideal.

Unfortunately, things just got worse from here. After I changed into my jeans, which I had thankfully brought with me as a pair of spare trousers and which were mud-free, we headed out on our excursion to “Monkey Island”, so-called because, unsurprisingly, it's inhabited by cheeky, opportunistic, thieving little monkeys. Sounds awesome, right? I was all set to pretend that my name was Guybrush Threepwood and I was a mighty pirate!

We boarded the boat that would take us to the island, but the groundfloor, with its seats, was already full, so we had to go onto the top deck and sit... well, on the deck, as there were no seats there. No matter, we thought, it wouldn't be for long. Then the boat did a turn to the right and we all went sliding to the left as the whole boat listed alarmingly. “Hahaha, isn't it funny that our boat is a bit shit?” went the comments and camaraderie between our fellow passengers up on the top deck.

But you know what they say. It's all fun and games until someone gets it in the eye.

The next hilarious turn of events was that the tide was too low for the boat to take us directly to shore so we had to wait for a man with a tiny bamboo drink-selling raft to come ferry us to the beach in groups of ten.

This little raft thing was a sorry excuse for a boat. The man rowing it had a really perplexing and ineffectual-looking rowing technique and getting into it looked precarious at best. I made myself comfortable up top seeing that we could potentially be waiting for a while before our turn came.

It did. I managed to get in without incident. The raft-boat-thing wobbled threateningly but no-one fell in or out.

I looked around. There were a few anxious looking faces. So, to make light of the situation I suggested we all sing a song, and started up a chorus of “Row, row, row your boat”. A few, agonising minutes later, the shore was in sight. Huzzah.

Now getting off... getting off was the problem. The boat was still not quite on the beach, so the couple in front of me had to hitch their pants up and take off their flip flops and wade into the water from the tip of the raft. I went next. The raft started to wobble again. No-one seemed to be making any moves to steady the boat, nor was anyone offering to help me off, but I went for it anyway. Big mistake. As I stepped down, a wave came crashing into the boat which then knocked me right in the back and I fell down onto my knees, face-first into the water.

My shoes, jeans and half my top were completely submerged, and soaked by the seawater. And so was my Canon D-SLR which was hanging across my body on its strap.

I got up as quickly as I could, in shock, shouting expletives. No-one offered to help me up either, and neither the man rowing the boat nor our guide seemed to take any notice or interest whatsoever.

I was devastated. I'd already lost my Panasonic Lumix to sand in Sihanoukville, and now my beloved Canon had just been given a saltwater baptism of death. No way was it going to survive this. It was definitely a Romeo and Juliet-style “I DEFY YOU STARS!” / “OH, I AM FORTUNE'S FOOL!” moment.

The Final Photo, minutes before The Incident

I spent the rest of the hour on this godforsaken island trying to look on the bright side and using the salty seawater to exfoliate the mud off my trainers. And also watching on as the monkeys stole Coke cans out of the hands of unsuspecting tourists and tried to empty the last droplets of beer from beer cans lying around on the beach into their tiny mouths. That was pretty funny.

There were other things too. Like how my clothes were now either covered in mud and stinking or soaking wet and stinking, meaning I had to resort to wearing my pyjamas and the hotel slippers back to Hanoi. Or how, after spending the night being cold and damp and miserable, there just happened to be no hot water left in the shower the next morning. And the final piece de resistance, the taxi driver, whom we had asked the hotel to book for us to take us to the airport, scamming us and basically stealing $15 from us, providing us with a final, bitter parting gift with which to remember our time in Vietnam.

Needless to say, by this point, I had had enough and wanted to get the hell out of Hanoi and Vietnam before I punched someone in the face, or cried at them.

And that brings me to Laos. God bless you, Laos. You have given me succour, and rest, and hot weather again. You have given me respite from manic motorbike drivers, pushy vendors and scam artists. You have washed away the mud, sweat and tears (literally - the laundry folks in Luang Prabang worked miracles!). And you have given me limestone karsts of the sunkissed, benevolent nature. You rock.

<3