The Englishman's Retreat Guesthouse & Resort Udon Thani

Oh yeah, our VIP bus - I feel really sorry for any Lao popstars or footballers who are transported in this fashion. Something tells me that the Lao bus companies might not really appreciate my VIP status. There was no butler service, no chilled champagne, no foot masseuse and no box set of Baz Luhrman films for me to enjoy. To be honest there wasn't any air-conditioning, seat covers or functioning engine capacity either so I wan't too bothered about ...

... then had to switch buses to a local bus (read roosters and pigs as seat mates) to go the last 100 kilometers. i actually ended up about 20km from the laos border so there you go, more adventure for neal. im's parents werent quite as down with the whole premarital thing under there roof so i resided in a pretty decent little resort down the road from their house. i was defiitely the only white guy for a lonnnnng way and ...

We got to Bangkok's regal and old fashioned train station with plenty of time to spare. I was busy thinking how little the place seemed to have changed since the 1940's when I realised that it was a bit too well lit, and those giant cigarette ads had Chinese writing rather than Thai. Turns out they were filming some local epic about the Japanese invasion during WWII . No idea what the film was or when it's out, but it was very surreal when they marched all the Japanese ...

... a couple of feet above the pool. Why do these guys fly around all day in circles anyways? Then there was the cook's dog, Kem. He would arrive with women and while they were cooking he would sneak into the living room to see us for a head scratch. He was some sort of terrier mutt, very cute. Lastly there was the villa's vermin. All day long on the second day we kept hearing some sort of mouse/rat fight going on somewhere in the vicinity of the bedroom ...

... famous for tubing !!!!!!! With the tubing cartels in action there is absolutely no bargaining the price for a tube and a ride up the top of the river. So, we paid our $4.....got our tube and headed off....not quite knowing what to expect. That day we heard the quotable quote for the century a 18 year-old-ish British girl with a fibreglass cast on her arm asks the guy at the tubing place "can I tube with a broken arm"....omigod!!!!!!! The river is much smaller ...

... Its a kind of rebalancing of the energy in your body. I was a bit skeptical about it, but thought I'd give it a go as it was cheap for an hour session. You lie on a massage table and the woman places her hands at different points on your body (the energy points). Staright away I could feel a like a warm current or pulse going through my body and as the session went on I got pins and needles all over too. I can ...

... we could get in and motioned for Lee to get in the back. The Thai people all made way for him and he reluctantly got in. The Tuk Tuk driver piled his rucksack on top of him, along with our two day sack bags, then said something in Thai to the lady sitting opposite Lee (now squidged by our bags) and (I think) asked her to help Lee hold my rucksack, which he piled on top. It was something out of Monty Pyton I'm sure! I was watching all of this thinking where ...

... people would just take the same chances that we did. Julian did his thing....he's a heck of a storyteller and we all got a few laughs out of his tales of yore. Unfortunately, since I want to go to Cambodia and see Ankor Wat, I have to leave behind this little slice of heaven, but I cannot say enough about how cool this place was. If anyone is going to be in or around Nong Khai, try to stay at Mut Mee, because, well, you won't have fun if you don't.

... at a few other hotels in a better location. Both were nice, and we settled for the Vayakorn, a really nice place with beautiful hardwood floors, teak furniture, and lots of windows. Unfortunately, all the walking took longer than we'd expected, so we were late to meet up with Marianne and Lina (Lina was taking the bus from Vang Vieng that morning, and we'd all planned to meet at a coffee shop at noon). We waited for about an hour, after which time we assumed ...

... booked (they're not sold online). But when I finally got my answer, I learned the trains were already full all the way until the end of February. So I had the option of spending a lot of time in south Vietnam, and then trying to rush from Hanoi to the place in China where I'm meeting up with my friend in only a few days. The problem was that even though I'd get to experience that great train journey through Vietnam, I'd have to take a long ...