VANG VIENG:

Re-unified and refreshed (my clothes had finally dried out from the storm), we made our tracks up to Vang Vieng, home of 'tubing', an ingenious activity boasting the world's only (probably) aquatic and aerobatic bar-crawl.

The simple concept is as follows: having been planted up-river in a tractor inner-tube, you gently drift downstream with the current, allowing yourself, at regular intervals, to be 'fished' from the river by grabbing hold of a bamboo rod and being tugged towards one of the bars lining the water.

'Tubing' with Meryl

Once you've had enough of one bar and its attached swings, you simply re-mount your tube and join the drunken migration down to the next river-side establishment. We went a few times, and on each occasion, ended up finding ourselves somewhere down river in the pitch dark, freezing cold, completely lost (hard to do on a river) and absolutely plastered, with the extremely satisfying feeling of a day very well spent.

Besides tubing, all there is to do in Vang Vieng (on a budget) is to sit in bars and restaurants and, entranced in front of multiple TVs showing endless episodes of 'Friends' and 'Simpsons'. This is probably not what you'd call 'real' Laos. Clearly bored with television, Meryl decided to make her own entertainment by offering to cut my hair. Having initially made an absolute disaster of it, she spent the next five days vainly trying to find ways of improving it, until, eventually, with little hair left to snip away, giving it up as a lost cause. Much appreciated.

Despite my incurred mutilations, it was with great sadness that Neil and I said our final good-byes to Meryl, who desperately had to get back to Bangkok early to watch 'Spiderman 3' in the cinema. That evening, Neil and I drank to the end of another era, wondering how on earth we were now going to keep up to date on celebrity gossip, who we were going to rely on for occasional little presents, and who was going to be worth hugging at our very sweatiest...

LUANGPRABANG:

The ride up to Luangprabang was one of verdant, sloping valleys, merging into rocky hair-pins as the road climbed into the mountains. The scenery was dream-like, dotted with villages so picturesquely placed it seemed they had been positioned for reasons of aesthetics rather than practicality. As I rode through these communities I was surprised to find such extraordinary friendliness from the villagers who would all stop what they were doing and wave - this was usually only the practice of children.

I was especially grateful for this ostentatious amiability as, in another anomaly of these highland villages, there were a prodigious number of uniformed young boys wandering along the road with machine guns slung over their shoulders - something I never discovered the reason for.

The ride was an absolute pleasure in such a landscape, although, as often happens on mountain roads, my back brake over-heated, rendering it useless until it had had time to cool off - my bike's foremost flaw.

Luangprabang is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites, boasting a good deal of beautifully preserved French colonial architecture, whilst retaining a serene, gentle atmosphere, uncommon in South-East Asia.

On first impressions however, I found it a touch unnaturally neat for a town in this part of the world. Impatient to gain the optimum cultural experience this UNESCO site had to
offer, Neil and I headed to 'Rock n' Bowl', the only place in town with a licence to serve alcohol after 11 o'clock. Building on this foundation, over the next few days we endeavoured to discover what gave Luangprabang its global recognition, other than as a first class bowling alley.

Sunset over the Mekong

Within an enclosing valley and bordered to the west by the wide River Mekong, the town has an extremely picturesque setting, best surveyed from its dominant central landmark, a hilltop Buddhist temple. We spent a while from this viewpoint, taking in the tropical landscape and listening to the cacophony of mingled birdsong, disturbed intermittently by a light aircraft appearing over the encircling hills to land in the aerodrome. On the other side of town, looking west over the Mekong, Neil and I shared a few utterly romantic sunsets, picking away, on the high river bank, at deliciously barbecued Mekong fish.

Venturing into the surrounding jungle, we sought out Tat Kuang Si waterfall, over the hilly ridges to the east. Leading up to the falls is a terraced staircase of white limestone pools, gently overflowing bright turquoise water into one another - a Laotian Pammukalle, standing like a cascading iceberg in the dense greenery all around.

SLOWBOAT TO PAT BENG:

With the torrential rain over the last few days and 250km of the looping northerly road described on my map as 'cart track', I decided to try something different and load my bike on a slowboat to join Neil for the two day journey up the Mekong to the Thai border at Huay Xai. After ardently refusing the Captain's original suggestion of simply balancing my bike on the boat's roof, we managed, with a team of helpers, to secure it inside the hold.

The valleys of Northern Laos

As we ploughed up river, drinking tea whilst listening to the rain, I imagined the impassable bog which I would otherwise now be trying to navigate through - taking another sip of tea, I officially decided that river travel was alright.

As evening drew in, we arrived at Pat Beng, our halfway point, where it was necessary to transfer cargo to another boat. At first noticing that our 'docking bay' was nothing but a steep rocky cliff, I was slightly alarmed as to how on earth I was expected to unload the bike and then ride it up to my hotel for the night. These worries were heightened by the Captain's peculiar choice of berth, sandwiching us so tightly between two other boats so as to make the impossible task of unloading, even more impossible.

Completely unsuspecting any degree of logic to be in play, I began berating the Captain for his nonsensical actions, only to find out that he'd specifically squeezed us in this spot because the next-door boat was ours for tomorrow. Gratefully surprised and energised by the avoidance of insurmountable problems, we soon had the bike transferred and were settling down to supper, satisfied that the following morning's loading hassles were already taken care of.

SLOWBOAT TO HUAY XAI:

The second leg to Huay Xai was in fact meant to be shorter, but, with a little engine trouble and stopping for an age to allow someone to load on their entire collection of household belongings, we found ourselves still on the river by sunset, with no destination in sight. Unfortunately, the Mekong slowboats don't seem to cater for delays and are therefore not fitted with any headlights of any kind, unless you count the light given off by the Captain's mobile phone.

On a river littered with rocky outcrops, this struck me as unsensible, and especially worrying when I thought about my precious cargo. Luckily, Neil was there to soothe my nerves on that count, reminding me of the potential insurance payout if my bike should end up on the riverbed, and how this would save me the costs of shipping to Japan where I could just get a new bike - suddenly the situation seemed a little more favourable.

In the hastily fading twilight, widening our eyes to catch the final glows of the sun buried deep under the horizon, a strangely shaped rock appeared up ahead, which upon closer observation, could be identified as a stranded slowboat, drifting to the whims of the current. We slowed down enough to discover its Captain had rather absent-mindedly allowed them to run out of fuel. Imagining the despondent passengers stranded aboard, I decided things could certainly be worse for us, and, with this comforting thought, we (rather heartlessly) left them to their fate.

Our own trials, however, were far from over. Just as we finally glimpsed the harbour lights of Huay Xai, we were suddenly ambushed by a dense plague of gigantic moths, seemingly desperate to get their wriggling wet bodies into my mouth and ears. Com- completely engulfed in a matter of seconds, Neil and I fell about each other, fighting frenziedly for the protection of his jacket. A minute later, as suddenly as it came, the onslaught had past, leaving thousands (of moths) writhing on the deck. I now know what it must have felt like to be in Egypt when they were on unfriendly terms with God.