No place for a point 'n' shoot

Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos, is a city that makes you wish you were a better photographer. It would be easy to spend weeks here wandering around the sights, and getting to grips with the varying light and haze. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site though, and the locals are now adept at finding ways of parting travellers on the grand tour (with Angkor Wat) from their cash. When the first price you hear on getting off the bus is in dollars, you know you're going to have to a time finding a bargain. It is unbelivably beautiful though. If only I could do it justice.

Heading north

My first long bus journey of the trip today. 7 hours to Luang Prabang, stopping for a rest break at a place called Kasi, appropriately enough. A 200km road like a corkscrew, ascending high over mountain passes and back down to the Mekong valley just in time for the mad dash for a cheap room, cold beer and, in my case, a Chicken Jalfrazi. The Israeli on the seat next to me immediately fell asleep on me, but after a few hours my instinctive Anglo-indignation subsided, and the ebb and flow of the road lulled my senses, and settled me into numbed observation of village after village perched on 15 ft strips between the road and ravines. Children, chicken, pigs and dogs all live at the edge of the road, inches from traffic, but seem to possess an innate understanding of the swept path of the trucks that pass them.

It is the middle of the dry season, and it seems now is time for roof repairs. Almost every villager was squatted by the side of the road bashing the hell out of bamboo stems which, I think, they'll rethatch their roofs with. After the bustle of the Capital and Vang Vieng, the Khao San Road of Laos, it was a glimpse of the subsistence life of most of the population.

Vang Vieng

The day after I arrived at my guest house in Vang Vieng, a note appeared on my door saying the room was required for a long-standing booking in 6 days. At the time, I thought the manager was giving rather more notice than I would have expected. After 6 days here, I now understand. The town exists to keep Westerners drunk or high for as long as possible while providing a myriad of opportunities for them to seriously hurt themselves. Wobbly bridges, complete with live electricity cables as hand rails, take you across the river to the best and most raucous bars; "Tubing" hurls you off huge slides and zip wires into the river; huge kilometre-long caves are available to swim in with little or no instruction. The local crutch-maker does a roaring trade for falang with twisted ankles and bruises like dinner plates.

But it's great, and easy to meet people while you're sitting quietly by the river and then spend the next 5 days together, totally inseparable. Nothing Lao about this in any way, but a proper traveller's experience. Next stop Luang Prabang.

Dancing queens

It is a truth universally acknowledged that male dancers are generally gay. This I have on good authority - from a female dancer friend of mine whose love life would probably have been more fruitful had she made different career choices.

This rule would seem to hold true, even in Laos, a land where homosexuality is still illegal. The lure of the Lao Traditional Show next door proved too strong to endure, and precisely one other falang and I gathered in an enormous hall for an hour's performance of folk dance and song. The series of dances depicted wooings of beautiful, serene women by utterly implausible and hugely camp male protagonists, more made-up and posing than their lovers. Come the compulsory audience participation section at the end, the female dancers giggled in excrutiating embarrassment, but the beaming gentlemen were more than happy to show me precisely what to do with my hands.

Nevertheless, the show was great fun, and I should probably be grateful it exists at all given Laos' Communist Party's fondness for marginalising pre-1975 history.

Sampling Lao culture

Sabadee.

Twas ever going to be the way. The Laos Traditional Show, right next to my guest house in Vientiane, was putting on an entirely authentic and noisy evening of Karaoke, featuring such celebrated Laotian artists as Celine Dion and INXS. Still, the racket kept me awake long enough to see President Obama take office and drink too much Beerlao. This, followed by a first breakfast of bagel with egg, bacon and cheese from a chain coffee shop, and I think I'm well on the way to truly understanding the unique cultural mix this country has to offer.

Still, it's 90 degrees, Vientiane is calm and beautiful, my body is slowly thawing from the bitter month we've had in London, and my guest house is on the banks of the mighty Mekong. Can't ask for more than that. Well I could. You can't actually see the Mekong very easily as there's no water, but my map says it should be there. One of the highlights of Laos is to take a trip down the river, but memories of my last boat journey in South East Asia (also in the dry season - 12 hours, no toilet, lots of getting out and pushing the canoe off river banks) might steer me away from this option.

Leaving London

After a month of fairly frantic packing and planning when nothing about the trip seems real, two things are guaranteed to bring it all home: waving a teary parent off at airport security, and the smell of exotic currency. My Baht procured at Heathrow are not quite as fragrant as (Sierra) Leones, but there's a definite hint of humid oriental evenings about them. Or is it warm Play-Doh? It's evocative of something, anyhow.

In a sign of the deepening economic doom facing the UK, Terminal 4's Champagne and Oyster Bar seems to be no more :-( Weatherspoons is doing a roaring trade...

Thanks for all your messages wishing me bon voyage. Keep well in Bankrupt Blighty folks.