Hey guys,
Back in Thailand now.. Phuket to be exact. Should be meeting up with Shortie tonight or tomorrow.. WA HEY! That's right welsh one, blonde one and Bromley wiggle.. house wave reunion minus Ol of the wyn.. Bek of the blonde, BooBoo and Hannah (where is she?!)
Yeah so just me and Short one then...

Vietnam and Laos were fantastic.. in different ways.
Vietnam was crazy busy in Saigon.. traffic everywhere.. but after Cambodia it was quite welcome. People were much friendlier, and although by the end of Cambodia we'd learned to love it, Vietnam was much preferred by all.
From Saigon we ventured out to the coast.. Mui Ne, still with our Swedish buddies, Anna and Olof.. who - for the record - are NOT from Switzerland! (lol)
The beach in Mui Ne was pretty crazy.. the waves were really high right up to the shore, and it was quite mental trying to swim in it! Mostly we stuck to the pool in our hotel.. less crabs and sharks!
While we were there, we took a trip to the yellow sand dunes.. amazing! As you can see, it's like the middle of the desert! The sand is SO hot it burns your feet.. but braved it ;) and had fun sliding down the dunes. Still, it was too hot to stay long!

From Mui Ne, we headed to Hue on a sleeper train. This was NOT as nice as the Thai trains..
Firstly there wasn't enough room to swing a cat (not that ANYONE would EVER try this.. sickos..) and secondly we shared a 6 bed cabin with about 9 other people! Add to this that for some reason the train was playing the most awful squealing Vietnam 'music' till late and from 5 in the morning! It actually nearly killed me. I don't think it could have been called music.. on second thoughts.. maybe I was wrong about the cats...

Got off the train and on to a Cyclo (Ali is modelling one above - how lovely) He calls them shitlos.. he's an idiot. I owe him a coke if they're actually called that apparantly :p ooh and apparantly it's spelt Chit Lo (he's being pedantic today - and a git). They're actually quite fun to ride around in, although you can't help but feel bad for the guys riding us around.. oh yeah that sounds wrong.. lol. Hung about in Hue for the day then hopped on a bus to Laos.

The minibus to the Laos border was a little odd..

... basically we were the first on it. And as we drove around in what was essentially a big circle.. the driver and his companions jumped off the bus and dragged random Vietnam locals onto it!
Not all of these passengers came aboard willingly.. infact one man tried to get off at least 3 times only to be dragged back on! Eventually he managed to escape but it was a close one.
We felt uncomfortable to say the least.. especially since there were at least 25 people squeezed onto this 10 seater bus for quite a long time! I think we somehow got involved in a kidnapping ring, but once at the border we quickly forgot about the victims we'd left behind ;)

Laos was amazing. We stayed in Savannakhet and didn't have time to move around, which was a shame. We would have liked to have gone to Vietienne and Luang Prabang. Anyway, Savannakhet was lovely and not remotely touristy, which gave us a real taster of true village life in Laos. We don't have many photos which is a shame, but it's not really about walking around taking photos of people living their everyday lives! Still the photo above is of a typical house that we saw in this area.
The people were really friendly, and the place was incredibly cheap. The food was FANTASTIC! Went twice to a restaurant that did fondue.. such a novelty getting to cook our own food, having eaten out every day for the last 2 and a half months! We stayed a day longer than planned, and both of us would like to go back and spend more time in Laos at some point. The only reason we didn't was a malaria tablet shortage.. shame...

From Laos, we headed through Bangkok to Phuket. It took 2 days of pretty much constant travelling.. exhausting! So we're having a chill for a few days :)

Oh.. Bean.. that's for Hannah and Johanna.. I couldn't resist it when I saw in in Bangkok! Got some pretty wierd looks for taking photos of a shop sign tho! lol...

Missing you all, email us or leave comments cuz we wanna know what YOU'RE doing too!
Much love
Tara and Ali xxx