Luang Prebang

Well, my first and very happy piece of news, is that as of last night, I am an uncle... My sister gave birth to little Florence Penelope Mosely at around 10.15pm last night. She was a few weeks premature and is very small but mother and baby are fine, and I'm very proud of you Becky! I can't wait to see you both...

So, what's been a'happenin in Laos... I arrived in Luang Prebang after a lovely minibus journey. It is only about 100 miles but it took 7hrs, as the roads go through the mountains and are impossibly steep and winding. Drive told me that we'd done 3200 corners to get there, it felt more like 5000. Whatsmore, there are around 5 private services a day in addition to 3 local buses, and on my minibus where the bloody douchebags that I've been trying to rid myself of ever since I first met them a month ago in Saigon. They turn up everywhere! They are only 18 and they're essentially not bad people, they're just young and annoying kids who think that the most important aspect of their lives, which it may very well be, is their A Level results. One in particular feels the need to let the bus hear about his A in English on every fricking journey.

So I arrived in Prebang in the evening, and went searching for accomodation with a welsh girl, an American guy from the minbus - and we also met four english lads whiclst walking around looking for hostels (all of whom were Arsenal fans, so even though I was 11 years their senior, at least we had something in common...). It was quite a tiresome search after that journey, but eventually we found somewhere cheap and all checked into a dorm and went out for a few beers. The english lads were really nice, well raised lads from Hackney. There was also a hot german girl in our dorm, it was so funny watching them trying to flirt with her. The youngest looking of them was stood talking to her, whilst nervously tossing a bottle of water in the air and catching it. Just as she asked his name he missed the catch and the bottle exploded all over her legs, smooth!

Not been on a swing for a while

The following day we all caught a tuk tuk upto a waterfall. Now I've been to really quite a lot of waterfalls in SE Asia, and the majority have somewhat underwhelmed me. This one was fookin spectacular. The water was the most amazing turquoise colour that I've ever seen, it looked like a swimming pool.. And it has a bear too. We swam in the various pools and swang on the obligitory rope swing for a few hours before the day was somewhat marred by some theiving piece of shit nicking Nina's bag - which contained her camera, purse etc. There were only really westerners there, and it sickens me the amout of times that I have heard about this kind of thing. You'd have thought that there'd be a level of commorardery amongst travellers, none of us have a great deal of money, and the photo's are irreplaceable. Yet still theiving is common place. I am ridiculously secure with all of my belongings, unfortunately those who are not are suffering the consequences. For some reason every time something goes missing I feel some sort of guilt.  Guilt is a funny thing, especially when guilt arises from an event that you're in no way linked to. These theives make everyone feel bad and they need to sort their fucking lives out.

Anyway, after the waterfall me and the london boys watched arsenal roar to another scintilating defeat at the hands of the mighty Bolton Wanderers. The sooner this season is over the better, it's just ruddy depressing. Later in the day, as it started pounding, I realised that I'd left my ankle support at the bloody waterfall. I had bought two and now I have managed to lose them both within a few days. In additon, we had to climb 360 steps up a temple in the town the next day, which felt pretty tidy with no support. I'm convinced that I have done something sinister to my ankle, but I think I'll wait until I go back to Bangkok before I see anyone - Laos healthcare does not have a great reputation....

There is a strong possiblility that I'll need a full NHS MOT whilst back in the UK for a bit. I still have the same whooping cough that i've had for around a month. I suspect it's the replica cigarettes that are causing it. They cost about 30p a pack and most of them taste like cigars. The more expensive, and widely recognised brands are also fake, and most of them taste even worse than cigars (which I previously believed to be impossible). It has been raining quite a lot in Laos, so one day I was resigned to watching local television in the hostel, where I stumbled across the Laos equivalent of you've been framed, and man, that shit is funny. It's like you've been framed on steriods, i'm pretty sure that most of the people in the clips actually die. Comedy gold.

The english lads left a couple of days back and in their place has moved some more English young guns who are making me feel my age. They are young girls and lads from oxford. One of the girls called me boring for not coming out with them that night. I was a bit low as I was knackered and I am trying to keep things cheap for a few days. I'd normally have let this comment slide, but I let my frustrations get the better of me and snapped back. Needless to say I made her cry so ended up having to go out and buy her some drinks to apologise. Whilst out I met a really impressive Spanish guy called Miguel. He is only 21, but he has been in asia for 6 months and has never paid for transport in that time. He has hitch hiked everywhere he has been, and often ended up staying with the people that he has hitched with. For the last few days he's been washing cars with some bloke that picked him up in Vang Vieng. Pretty cool I thought, and may have to give it a try!

Yesterday I achieved a day old dream and went out to ride an elephant. Not only did we ride the elephant but we were given a course in how to communicte with the elephants. Now when i signed up for this course I naively thought that there would be some international language that the elephants could understand. In fact I'd already updated my CV to include my elephant handling ability, thinking I could tap into the lucrative international elephant training market. However, my dreams were crushed when I discovered that it is only Laos elephants that I can communicate with. Still, if anyone needs a domestic elephant to stop in Laos, then i'm yur man! The day was amazing, we rode the elephants into the Mekong river and the trainers took great pleasure in telling the elephants to spray water all over us with their trunks! We then went for a ride in the forest, and our elephant (I was sharing with an English lad named Ben) was a greedy little fucker. Everytime it grabbed the bamboo to strip it we got sprayed in a shower of ants. I was already uncomfortable as I was sat on the elphants spine, which was getting rammed right into my gritter, so the ants were not welcome additions to my comfort levels! After the elephants we went to the cave of a thousand bhudda's, and needless to say the haircut douchebags were inside the cave waiting for my arrival. The cave was cool, there were indeed 1,000 bhudda statues in there, or at least 990 by my count.

Cave of a thousand douches



In the drink



I was especially sore when I got home from a days riding, and contemplated a massage, but after being sexually assaulted during my first experience of a Laos massage I decided to give it a miss.



I'll crush you, like a worrrrrm



When I got back for a siesta a new person was just checking into our dorm. In appearance I could only liken this bloke to an anorexic version of Hamish from Braveheart. There is something quite disconcerting about sharing a room with a man like this. He must be in his 40's or 50's, and he's lay pretending to be asleep whilst I'm talking to the german girl on the bed beneath him from across the room. This bloke looks like he probably catches and eats a raw badger for breakfast. So tonight I catch a night bus to Chiang Mai, where I will mostly be hanging out with tigers. In the time it has taken me to write this the internet has crashed 3 times and i've had to switch computers twice, a very frustrating period that has left me with 33 minutes until my bus leaves, tidy on a friday

Tubing Vang Vieng - Didn't disappoint, but I need to get out of here before it consumes me

Tube'oooo

 

Well, tubing certainly lived up to its billing, absolute carnage... I'm relieved and a bit surprised to have made it out relatively unscathed, although, obviously, there was some drama involved! We arrived on the river for our first day of tubing at around 11.30am, and as it was so early, the barmen got us involved in a few rounds of beer pong and there were plenty of free shots of whiskey being dished out. Just for a change I had explosive diahrea, which was a treat in the circumstances (although, as Liz pointed out, a tube is quite a handy instrument for such an ailment).... On the toilet note, liz's first trip to the toilet ended in her shaking for about 20 minutes, after she came running out of the cubicle due to a huge spider on the toilet roll!

The silver fox

The actual setting was pretty stunning, with a backdrop of huge limestone carsts, although the river itself looked pretty skanky. The place started getting much busier after 1pm, by which time we were already pretty steaming and were ready to get in the tubes for the first time... The water was quite shallow in parts, so every now and again your ass would connect with a rock, which was nice. A short tube to the next bar and it was time to hit the buckets and start spray painting each other... I had my toenails sprayed red, and 5 days on and I still can't get the fookin stuff off!

Hows about nooo

At the next bar the big rope swings began, I was up there like a rat up a drainpipe, whilst the girls needed a little bit of gentle coaxing.... Liz cracked first and we went off there together, judging by the photo I was fairly close to landing on her! After a bit more bucket kicked in, we were all flying off various swings, and I wouldn't say that health and safety was their primary concern there...

Watch out below

I met my friend Noraly from diving along the way, and when the girls decided that they'd had enough punishment for one day, Noraly and myself carried on down river, where the tubes and bars became fewer and far between. We found an absolute beast of a rope swing a bit further down, which I labelled the slapper, as whatever part hit the water first (thigh for me) got an absolute slapping.

The slapper

By the time it got dark and cold (at about 8.30pm) there didn't seem to be any more tubers around, so me and noraly found a river bar that was full of locals drinking straight whiskey. They gave us about 7 shots each and by the time one of them offered to give us a lift back into town I was absolutely steaming. We walked up a steep dirt track and as I neared the top I must've lost my footing as the next thing I knew I was tumbling backwards at speed towards a bit of a rock face with a tidy drop! Luckily my arm managed to grab at something and a disaster was averted! When I got back to town I was a little disorientated but I managed to find the girls, who were all a bit concerned as my head was covered by 3 different lumps and bumps and a bit of a cut, so they got me to bed at around 10.30pm, oh dear!

Goon'ooo

Cave'ooo

So the next day we all felt a bit special and took it easy, before renting mopeds the following day for a bit of an explore. We had been told that there was a nice place called the blue lagoon which we opted to go in search of. The girls were all a tad unsure on the peds to begin with, but after a bit of a practice they were fine. What we didn't realise was that the 'road' wasn't so much of a road as a track, which was quite tricky at times. We reached a sign with some kids around it that said 'Blue Lagoon', which I noted looked like it had been painted by a 5 year old. Needless to say after driving down a sketchy track and paying 10,000 kip we got there and it was some stinking stagnant water hole, so we got back on the road. When we arrived at the lagoon it was very picturesque and the swimming was welcome after a sweaty, dusty ped journey.... Me and Lou went for a little explore in a cave too, but it was pretty pitch black and due to losing my teva sandals I only now have a pair of flip flops for footwear, so we decided not to go too much further!

The Snapper

That night we got steaming again (particularly the girls, like the wiseguy I am, I stuck to the mushrooms) in preparation for another days tubing. They had opened another 'ride' that day, which we called the snapper. It was a zipline that had a stopper at the end, so if you didn't let go then you got an absolute snapping! I can see how people knacker their backs here, it basically flips you and you have no control how you land, but it's good craic if you survive! Predictably I'd cut my toe open again the day before so I'm not sure how much good the river water did for it, but it seems okay to date! I was way more pissed way early on on this tubing session, and my last memory is of riding home on the roof of a tuk tuk, and I believe I was in bed by circa 7.30pm! I think the girls managed to actually make it out for dinner, but still, i think they were passed out by 10.30pm... None of us made it back with our tubes so we all lost our deposits, shock.

Just put clean bandage

So the girls all left yesterday, and I had the oh so familiar feeling of saying goodbye to people on the road. It does make you feel a tad low for 24hrs or so, such is the nature of the beast... I went for a final bit of tube'ooo yesterday, and now I need to get the hell out of here before it consumes me! So I head to Luang Prabang in an hour or so, and from there I'll either head further north or find my way to the Philippines...

Ho Lang Bay

After a mamouth 24hr solo journey from Hoian to Hanoi I arrived at 6am and got a motorbike ride to the hostel, which was big fun with my backpack still on my back. When I got there I started sounding out trips to Ho Lang Bay and found one for half the price of the one that our hostel ran, which at 60 bucks for three days and two nights seemed pretty good value. After a 3 hour minubus, during which I almost pissed my pants (drive kept telling me it would be 10 minutes until we stopped, 45 minutes later we still hadn't arrived) we got to Ho Lang, which was stunning. Our tour guide was pretty special, for some reason when I asked to go to the toilet the first time he spanked me on the ass! His english was absurdly poor, no one could understand a word he was saying. The weather wasn't on our side and it was very foggy, but the boat was pretty cool, it had sun loungers up top and the rooms were pretty comfortable...

The crowd on our boat weren't exactly party central, there were 3 dutch people around our age who went to bed at 7.30pm. On the first day we sailed to a huge cave which was pretty impressive. For some reason they seem to have a fascination with rocks that look like penises, I get it, but it was an unexpected treat.... After this we went sea kayaking which was pretty good until we noticed the big brown murky patches of sea around the boats, which I can only speculate was poo.

My personal favourite

Peel'oooooooo

We spent the next morning sailing to Cat Ba island, which was a fairly attractive place with a resort and fishing town there... Me and liz went to do a spot of Vietnamese fishing, which basically consisted of a bamboo cane with a loop on the end. You had to hold the reel in your hand! After some disastrous casts the 'captain' (some bloke who had a shit boat that looked like a pedalo with a motor) abandoned the rod so we just dangled a piece of wire into the water. We kept getting biters which felt pretty big, but we couldn't snare them. After about 30 minutes we lost the hook, and as prepared as the guy was, he didn't have any spares. He then fashioned a hook out of a rusty, blunt nail. Needless to say we didn't catch anything but the scenery was pretty amazing. My entire back skin also peeled off for some unknown reason, I think it had just had enough like.

Cat Ba island

Can't believe I didn't catch anything

The girls got absolutely steaming that night, and Laura visited the bathroom a few times during the night! Our ethos was to get smashed so that we could sleep on the 24hr night bus to Laos, which was due to depart from Ha Long Bay the following day. The minibus back to Hanoi was clearly made for Vietnamese midgets, I literally had my chin on my knees for a large period, with the added bonus of a 20 stone Israeli infront of me to crush his chair back a couple of more inches! The following 27.5hrs were interesting to say the least. We were due to catch the night bus at 5.15pm. When the bloke arrived and took us to the road the minubus to take us to the bus station was full. We also noticed a group of english gimps with ridiculous haircuts that we have literally seen everywhere we have been were on there, and I made a comment about the 'haircut douchebags' not realising that the window was open! So we were told that we'd be getting a taxi, which didn't turn up for about an hour, so we just stood on the side of the road panicking, which was nice.

When we got to the bus station everyone else got on a bus whilst we chased after a motorbike that had liz and lou's rucksacks! After the obligatory Vietnamese man trying to scam us out of more money we got on board the bus to find out that we were the only one's on the entire bus! Because we were all hungover and tired and had two seats to ourselves we got a good sleep in. When I woke up the first time there were about 8 locals that had been let on, including a baby that wouldn't stop crying for about 3 hours. The next time I woke up they were loading televisions, dvd players and oil drums on, and I sensed that this was probably beyond the realms of the drivers itinerary.

Slightly eerie

When we got to the border at around 7am no one told us anything, so we walked into the mist towards the border and waited around for about an hour for someone to come and sort our visas. We got back on the bus prepared for another 11hrs of travel. However, at around 4pm, 3hrs ahead of schedule, the bus pulled up and the driver told us that we'd arrived at vang vieng, happy days. Howver, when we got off we were all rather skeptical, as all there appeared to be was a quarry and a dodgy looking food market. We all asked several times if they were sure that it was vang vieng, and the driver even pointed to it on a map and assured us several times that it was the right place. They had already off loaded our packs on to the road and didn't give us an opportunity to check with a local before the bus just drove off. Needless to say the fucking asshole had just dumped us in a tiny little place in the middle of nowhere. Without making any sweeping generalisations, the Vietnamese people are just the worst. In two weeks I met two that I liked, one man that worked in a shop and actually smiled to me, and Vinh the moto driver. The rest were just swindling bastards, who claim to be communists but try and get money out of you at any given opportunity. From start (taxi driver conning us for 25 dollars for a 6km drive from the airport, which he claimed included a 15 dollar toll, likely) to finish (bus journey from hell) we were treated like dirt.

Hmmm, where's the tubing at drive?!

Don't let the smile fool you

So we were stuck there, no taxi's available and no westerners. We found a french family who were passing through in their hire car, and the lady had a cousin there who told us where we were,. It turns out that we were 100km away from vang vieng. Lovely stuff. Our options were limited, and we eventually found out that there was a local bus in a couple of hours which we could catch. The bus arrived and every seat was full, so the 4 of us had to sit on stools in the middle of the aisle, and let me tell you this, they were pretty, pretty, pretty comfortable. Even the Buddhist monks were laughing at us. After it went dark in half an hour we were sat in pitch black sat on those ruddy stools, and finally, after what seemed like an eternity (it had been around 35hrs since we'd left ha long bay), we arrived in Vang Vieng to get our tubing on. We tubed yesterday, I feel broken and almost died but I'll save that for the next post...

Cheeky scratch

I can't believe that tomorrow it will be five years. I can't put down any flowers personally, and you're probably not logging on to my blog, but I wanted to say that whilst I'm technically unemployed, of no fixed address, quite regularly soil my pants and am about to turn 30, I hope that you can still look down on me with an element of pride! Love always, biz xxx

Hanoi and Hue

We've had an excellent last few days in Hanoi, the place is really beautiful, very quaint, and also the cheapest tailors in the world. The girls have all bought an obscene amount of clothing which they now have to lug around asia for the next couple of weeks. Hanoi is a small riverside town that is a world heritage site and it also sells beer (home brewed that day) for 12p.

We went out yesterday on bicycles and cycled to the becah, 5km on a bike was pretty much the closest thing that has approached exercise for quite some time. After having an hour long battle with the women from the shoe shop who have made me a new pair of custom made Nike 'Fucking Bay's' and saving myself a whopping 5 bucks (if I could take back that process I'd pay 50 bucks for thge privilidge, words cannot do the frustration justice) we went for a beer and bumped into a couple of lads that I travelled Thailand with and arranged to meet them later.

I have discovered recently that I'm quite good/lucky at cards, until we put a drink on it. I lost 3 out of the first 4 games of chase the ace and had to drink a yummy local vodka every time Then we went on to another bar where things started getting interesting. At some point I tried to do a flip off my back onto my feet on top of the pool table, which was a pretty good idea considering I have fucked up ankle ligaments. The last point of the night had louise doing the splits and then everyone else dancing on top of the pool table. So I had to get up at 7am to cath the bus to Hue. The girls have decided to fly from Hue to Hanoi but richie richardson decided on the 24hr bus journey, with a 6hr stop in hue.

I had exceptionally low expectations for Hue, and when I was greeted off the bus by 20 men on mopeds I didn't think that I was going to be disappointed. I got hassled all of the way to the travel agents, one guy called Vinh was particularly persistent in his pursual of my business. When I got to the travel agents I discovered that my bottle of shampoo had leaked out of my bag and all over my stuff, which put me in a pretty good mood after a lovely 5hr journey, and Vinh was not helping the situation. (I spent the 5hr journey speaking to some fucking beanface called alex, who wouldn't shut up and had a face shaped like an actual bean, which was distracting on a hangover)

Vinh rolls some strange joints

So I had about 5hrs to kill and Vinh was still sat there making me awkward so I asked how much he'd charge to take me to the sights and I got him down to 5 bucks. So off we went on his motorbike, went to a temple and a tank museum, and by that point I had to stop Vinh and ask him if there was anything fun to do. His face lit up and within 10 minutes we were on our way to his uncles to buy a bag of weed. He drove us out to a beach about 15km out of town (pretty slow motorbike driver too) and we sat at a local bar drinking beers and smoking joints all afternoon with a bunch of local motorbike riders. The beach was beautiful and completely deserted. One thing still confusing me is that Vinh is 29 years old but was born in 1983. He was equally perplexed that I'm 29 and was born in 1981, but I hope not to give it too much thought.

Yeah, you can smile Vinh

The nice woman at the bar asked if I wanted some food, and Vinh said happy hour, don't worry. I thought for the first timein Vietnam that I was getting treated like a local and someone wasn't trying to rip me off. So the woman bought out an absurd amount of shrimp (I don't think there was even electricity there, let alone a fridge), boiled rice and some veg. Me and Vinh had had 4 lrge bootles of beer each and I had begun to think about how safe the drive back was going to be so I asked to go back into town and get the bill. Bearing in mind last night we got 3 jugs of beer, 4 shots of vodka, two meals each and desert for 100,000 dong, I was thinking that even if I pay for Vinhs beers it still won't cost me much. The nice lady approached me with what looked like an apologetic smirk on her face she landed me with a bill of 305,000 dong. For fuck sake. So then we had to go back into town after drive had consumed 4 large beers (paid for by me), a couple of joints (paid for by me) and some shrimp (paid for by me). I am currently sat at the computer hoping that some blood will drain back into my knuckles soon. I was holding onto the back of the motorbike and leaning so far towards Vinh that when he had to break hard to avoid a cow in the road I headbutted him with my helmet. I was so rigid that it took me about 5 minutes of stretching to get myself out of the motorbike position. It has been a really fun and interesting day, I managed to get my daily ripping off and it was topped of when one of vinh"s old timer boys got out the guitar.

So now I have a lovely 14hr bus ride and I'm fairly sure that I have the onset of shrimp aids, dengue fever or perhaps TB (I have had some sort of whooping cough for the past week). I get into Hanoi at 7am and the girls arrive later on that evening as they are flying in and can leave a day later, mother fuckers.

Today I didn't have to use my AK, I have to say it was a good day

We flew into Ho Chi Minh City on tuesday and met up with Laura. The city is absolutely manic, there are circa 11 million people living there and I'd say a large percentage of those drive around on scooters trying to run me over... Crossing the road was certainly an experience! The city itself is pretty commercial, and after shooting my own commercial I could finally afford to pay for a bus ticket out of there, but more about the bus later...

We booked a trip to the war tunnels and that was pretty impressive. The Viet Cong dug around 300km of these tunnels across 3 levels. For tourists they have made some of the tunnels a lot bigger than they were during the war, the ones which haven't been altered are around 40cm in height and 30cm in width, and some of the VC were down there for 10years, surfacing only at night to fight. On a typical night they would travel around 10km in these tunnels and pop out occasionally. We went into the 'tourist' tunnels which were a bit bigger, but still, if your claustrophobic then it's not your ideal scenario! After the tunnels I got to fire a couple of rounds with an AK47, which was pretty cool, it made me feel like a real man!

We have all payed 40 bucks for a country wide night bus service (paid for via my new acting career), which is impossibly cheap and impossibly grimey. The bus in the picture looked pretty tidy, the bus in reality was putrid. The beds are what could only be described as taboggans, if you're over 5ft 6" then you have to curl your toes into some twisted mess to fit yourself in. We caught the bus at 8pm and they pretty much turned of the lights straight away, the reading lights didn't work and I don't have a torch - so basically they forced me to go to bed at 8pm! Within about 10 minutes laura noticed that there was a shit stain on her blanket, which i'm fairly confident have never been washed, ever. We had one stop at a lovely little rest stop where the toilets were brimming with mosquito's and the ice cream was as delicious as it was fresh. My favourite aspect of travelling with the girls is that they seem to have taken all of the mosquito's away from me, especially Liz, who is currently sporting one bite that is the size of a plate! So the bus journey took a mere 10hrs and we arrived in Lah Trang at 6am, where we all felt like shite, smelled like shite and looked like shite - and then had a lovely time searching for a youth hostel that we could see but couldn't get in to. An hour later we abandoned our efforts and booked into a hotel.

Lah Trang is a really nice place. It's quite resorty, which is exactly what we wanted. The first day we all sunbathed and got burnt to a crisp and then went out on the piss. We all got pretty smashed and then had to get up at 8am to go on a booze cruise. I didn't have time for my beer poo and when we got on the boat there was no toilet roll. I was so desperate that I just went and patiently awaited the first opportunity we got to get into the water, where I could covertly get away with a bit of 'cleaning' (I only admitted to this later in the evening, Liz who was swimming next to me would've preferred some pre warning)... Linked to this, at the first stop, for some unexplained reason they took the contents of the toilet and poured it into the sea right off the side of the boat. We were all disgusted and then out of nowhere four douchebags jumped in off the top level right into ground zero! Everyone was screaming to get out, whilst my turd was floating perilously close to corey's chin. A man on a jet ski took care of things when he ploughed through and chopped it all up, mmm, yummy.

Another stinger

Winner

There was a competition to see who could drink the most cans of beer (330ml cans of Tiger). Corey the Canadian douche bag was boasting the night before that he drank 11 cans, so obviously I was determined to put him to shame. At lunchtime they prepared a quite impressive vietnamese spread for everyone, and then they launched a floating bar into the sea for some yummy free shots... Needless to say I won the beer drinking contest with 17 cans consumed. They guy in second was a fucking prick and everyone was glad to see him passed out, whilst the guy in third was spewing off the side of the boat. My 'prize' was to down 2 more cans and then I was allowed to sip the third, taking me to a nice round figure of 20 cans. Bay. Needless to say I also managed to injure my toe for a change, we got a bleeder!

In the evening we went for a curry (Bay) which none of us could eat. The meal also came with another lovely beer. Liz and Lou pussyed out and went to bed at about 10pm, and me and laura started on the buckets. Laura then went home after the first bucket so I tagged on to some swedish and american dudes (whom I told that Laura was a professional falcon trainer) and went onto a club. My memory stops after the third bucket. All I can remember was pulling some trout face and then some gay local bloke who would not fuck off and leave me alone (I assume it wasn't the gay bloke that I pulled by the way). I have no idea what time I got home but I managed to upset Lou somewhat! The next day I could not move and stayed in bed until 5pm... That was last night, so whilst I slowly died the girls went out and got smashed. I got woken up by Lou at around 4.30am and then Liz and Laura came in pretty sober at around 6.30am. I'm not sure what was going on in the bathroom but there are wet clothes everywhere in there this morning! I had to get up at 8am as the noise of liz's drunken snoring was driving me slowly insane! So tonight we have a lovely 12hr night bus, which departs at 6pm, so I presume they will be making me go to bed at 6pm by turning off the lights.... Hoian here we come!

When, will I, will I be famous

Busy couple of days... Liz and lou arrived yesterday in Bangkok so we hit khoa San rd and got on the bucket express... We were absolutely wrecked and Liz decided that we should get a street massage at circa 3am. After about 5 minutes she suddenly jumped out of the seat whilst some manly old Thai woman was rubbing her head as she felt worse for wear. I ha to then sir there on my own for a bloody hour whilst a woman rubbed oil into my disgusting feet, it would've been quite awkward if I wasn't so smashed. Liz has been suffering today and she looked meek at best, I think you need a few days to adjust to samsong whiskey... We flew in to ho chi Minh city in nam this afternoon and had a wander around. Sat outside a bar a woman approached us and asked if I want to be in a Lipton iced tea advert tomorrow morning. She had me at advert but then added that I'd ge paid 50 bucks, so tomorrow I'm up at 6.15am to go and film, absolute bonus! So the girls are going to head off and go to some shit museum whilst I get my second major television break (I think she probably recognised me from soccer am like)... Laura ha now also arrived but unfortunately due to work commitments I'm having an early one, then day after heading out to get amongst the foxholes and Vietnam war tunnels, claustrophobia ahoy.