jb/Big catchup from Laos to Hong Kong

* I know it's been a while, but we've not had the laptop with us for most of India and functioning cybercafes are few and far between. So here's a big splurge of catchup, as much for us to keep the sequence of events straight as anything else.

jb/playing catchup/Laos
Our time in Laos was constant monsoon. We were drenched almost every day and none of that 'it rains for a couple of hours in the afternoon' bollocks, either. Didn't matter though, we loved the place and its gorgeous, unspoilt (!) scenery, lazy vibe and unassuming, friendly locals.

Laos' been largely off the tourist radar because most of the country is still covered by unexploded ordinance the Yanks dropped just in case the Viet Cong were hiding there. After half a million carpet bombing missions the country is still so badly affected it won't be declared safe for another 100 years.

Of course, while this makes Laos an unspolit, uncommercialised paradise compared to neighbouring Thailand it does mean that (like Canadian weather warnings) when the Laos government says please don't stray from the paths, they really fucking mean it.

History aside, we nearly skipped the place because we couldn't find a route across from Northern Thailand that didn't involve a tedious three day Mekong slowboat from hell. In the end we threw money at the problem and magically turned it into a 1hr, $50 Laos airlines flight to the sleepy town of Luang Prabang. That may sound like a blindingly obvious solution, by the way, but then again Laos Airlines don't publish their safety records for good reason. Takeoffs that require a downhill runway should not be taken lightly.

Prabang turned out to be a charming town to kick back in for a few days; sleepy, pretty, and French influenced. It's a bit touristy-twee, but there was lots of wandering about the town to be done, browsing of temples and bazaars, splashing about in the local waterfalls, and a fun day playing mahout on an elephant safari (which, if you want an opinion, is much like riding a gigantic pair of inverted testicles). Great Knobbly Ball Sacks, Batman!

In Prabang we hooked up with two lovely Belgians, Jessica and Freek, for the long journey south, first with a five hour bus ride to Vang Vieng for the famed local 'tubing', which is much like the black water rafting in New Zealand only much, much stoopider.

Vang Vieng is a staggeringly beautiful natural setting for a little town being rapidly turned grotty by the influx of tubing tourists. Give or take what the monsoon mists and mud would let us see, it ranks as one of the most spectacular locations of our entire trip. Certainly the most 'Lost World' backdrop by far.

So, tubing. Right. Well, you've got this place of incredible natural beauty, and a bunch of sleepy, friendly and thoroughly bemused locals. What do you do?

You don a rubber tire, jump into the river several km upstream and float back to town getting thoroughly wankered along the way, that's what. The truly awful Laos whiskey and other rotgut is offered by dozens of impromptu riverside bars, manned by grinning rain-soaked locals armed with ropes and poles to haul you ashore.

Currently it's The Big Thing for the British pre-university gap year circuit, so you can be sure of an endless floundering procession of 18yr old Juleses, Ollies and Annabelles so drunk they can barely float let alone walk. They lose one or two every year, apparently. Whether that's good or bad depends on how you feel about being surrounded by marginally fewer gormless little twats, I guess. One more space in university clearing come September, anyway.

So, yes, it's eco-appalling in every way shape and form. It's also terrifying. In dry season it takes about 4hrs just to navigate your way to town. The monsoon season is a totally different kettle of fish. This is a river in full flood that has burst its banks and is hurtling entire trees and other debris downriver at a staggering rate of knots. Unfortunately I hadn't quite got the phrase 'fucking suicidal' out of my mouth before the other three idiots (Jess, Freek and Em) had already jumped in.

'Wow', as I said to Emily later, 'what a ride'.

From Vang Vieng we went to the capital, Vientiane, by kayak and bus. This also seemed like a good idea at the time. We certainly had a stunning riverside camp meal on the way. Unfortunately the tour operator's estimate of 'Class 2 and 3 rapids' eventually translated into a sequence of two metre waves for several hundred yards at a time, across a number of miles. Let's be kind and call it 'exhilarating'.

Ironically we made it through all the major rapids unscathed, but wiped out while arguing about back seat driving on the home stretch and were sucked under for quite a way. We spluttered back onboard a few hundred hards downstream, and my camera can now attest to the fact that those newfangled dry sacks really work.

In true Laos fashion, the truck getting us between kayak spots broke down. The driver of the replacement truck went through everyone's bags stealing cash, and Freek and I had to do the last three hours hanging off the back of a local pickup in the rain. All par for the course.

Didn't do much in Ventiane when we finally got there. It rained, we drank. Freek and Jess set off for Cambodia ahead of us, while we got the 10-12hr night 'sleeper' bus to Pakse in the south. It broke down of course. And 'sleeper' is only accurate if you're thinking in Asian pixie sizes. By the way, if you happen to book a 'single' on one of these night buses you get to share a tiny double (think UK single, cot length) with whatever total stranger the bus company allocates you. Cosy.

We hadn't intended to stay in Pakse at all, but because of time and geograpghical constraints we had to skip the 1000 Islands and instead spent a superb few days on scooters exploring the Bolaven plateau and the villages around Pakse. It was one of the best moves we made, too, unplanned or not. For the first time in ages we didn't feel like the next tourist dollar in town. Met some lovely and rather surprised-to-see-us people amid some great scenery.

Got rained on a lot, too.

* PS Curiously we met quite a lot of oblivious US tourists in Laos (they probably confused it with Ho Chi Minh or Miami), which seems like the height of bad taste. Then again we're going to India so I guess the Brits can't really cast the first stone.

jb/playing catchup/Cambodia
What can I say? We did what all the tourists do – headed straight for Siem Reap, found a guest house over a bar, and used that as a base for doing the whole Ankor temple thing. Our big mistake was doing the first day on bikes. A day long 27km cycle (ignoring time clambering amid ruins) on huge, clunky Cambodian boneshakers in 100+ degree heat is not fun. Second day we paid for a tuk tuk like every other sane person, while my body recovered from not having ridden a bike (in the two wheeled sense) in the past twenty years.

The Ankor complexes are an amazing sight, incredibly diverse and really quite well managed and so massively spread out that you don't trip over other camera-wielders too often. Still, it didn't have the impact on me that Tikal (Guatemala) did mostly I suppose because the latter takes so much more getting to, whereas Ankor is just a case of hailing a tuk-tuk and parking next to the tour buses. Bottom line is I think I'm templed-out.

The only other things I have to say about this bit of Cambodia is that it's a) very poor, and b) the boneshaking road to the border would make a Costa Rican proud.

jb/playing catchup/Ko Chang
Thought we'd try get some beach after weeks and weeks of temples, cultcha and monsoon rains. Bad idea – we didn't like Ko Chang at all. Ok beaches, but a tatty over-priced dump of an island cum tourist trap (the ten minute ride to the main strip cost more than the 6hr bus ride from the Cambodian border), heavy on the sex tourism, too. We were happy to leave after a couple of days.

jb/playing catchup/Bangkok
Back to Bangkok for 5(!) days to wait for Indian visas, catch up on stuff, and argue with the idiots at Qantas about this week's moment of staggering incompetence (Hong Kong re-instated, Amman deleted).

Have to admit by the end of this time I'm thoroughly sick of Thailand, or Thais to be more specific. We've met a handful of really, really nice locals but – generalising wildly, as the mood takes – if the King of Thailand is the embodiment of the best qualities of his people then I wish him well in his future career as a bookie or pimp. Unlike Laos or Cambodia, this is a relatively prosperous country that has had the absolute worst brought out of it by tourism. They've taken one screechy phrase, “you geeeve me maaaw”, and turned it into the national mantra.

jb/playing catchup/Tokyo
Mad place, absolutely loved our few days here despite the stupendous cost of accomodation (£30+ per night for a shared bathroom hostel shoe box with two bunk beds) and the complete incomprehensibility of, well, everything.

We did the temple thing in Asakusa (over-rated tourist tat), the Tokyo National Museum (bit titchy) and lots of shopping for clothes and toy robots round Shibuya and Shinjuku. We managed to find a great sushi place for Em's birthday meal where she ate her weight in raw fish, and got drunk to the dulcet tones of Iggy Pop in the tiniest bar ever in the back end of the redlight district with a couple of local office workers and the punk-rock obsessed bar owner.

Also on the plus side, the people were really friendly and helpful which is just as well because the train and subway system is the most incomprehensible jumble imaginable, even to the locals.

Although we didn't see as many mad gadgets as we'd hoped, we still got the full complement of neon, plus vending machinery, manga-porn and over-dressed-vampire-schoolgirl craziness. It's a bemusing place, but Japan definitely goes on my shortlist of Places I Really Want to go Back to.

jb/playing catchup/Hong Kong
More neon, high rise chaos and extremely expensive living. We decided to skip the joys of Kowloon (and good old Chunking mansions) to stay somewhere a bit posher in, er, the old red light district on the island.

Found a great hotel to hole up in for Em's birthday (yes, as I now know, it's an event that can span cities, days and timezones), the only unusual aspect was the glass walled bathroom. If you've ever had a the urge to crap in a goldfish bowl during a party, well you get the picture.

Hong Kong was all a bit pricey for us, but we still had fun taking the cable car to the peak and the ferry across to Kowloon to watch the harbour sound and light show. All in all, nice enough, but probably not somewhere I'd go back to unless I wanted to buy an Ipod.