At the Vietnam/Laos boarder, at 6am, waiting to be illegally charged a stamping fee, I was stood behind two handsome twins. They certainly were not from my bus (I would have noticed) and they certainly were not Asian of any variety. Too tall, see. A bit of banter passed between us but soon I was back on my hell bus wondering a) what it must be like to be a twin, b) what it must be like to be a twin and travel with them and c) what it must be like to be a twin and travel with them and both be so fit.
I arrived in Vientiane in the dark and was not blown away immediately. The Mekong River looked a bit dirty, the place I found to stay was a bit spooky and expensive and I was still a bit pissed off at the bus for generally being so rubbish. I bucked myself up with my first ever BeerLao and went to furnish my stomach.
Walking down a street which seemed to be full of Herbal Massage parlours and musing over whether they give you a ‘happy finish’ with a branch of Rosemary, I heard a familiar voice. Was it those twins?! No. Not unless they had become Aussie. It was Tony and his tiny but feisty Lao wife Mimi (yes, he’d been a sexy tourist) who I’d met at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. They invited me to join them for dinner at the Italian where they were sat and we caught up, drank more BeerLao and I generally got to grips with how a 4ft tiny Lao girl can completely control a rich, 6ft5 stocky man from Adelaide. She got some slapping skills that girl, let me tell you. When he wasn’t being beaten up, he tried to tell me how he was in Vientane looking for land to start his own Elephant Park. Looks like it might be a distinct possibility too. Tony has being travelling for 6 years in Asia and has successful wine businesses in Australia that keep him in cash to stay away. He also admitted that he is scared to go home with Mimi because his mates will take the mickey out of him for marrying a minute Hitler. Ain’t love grand…

After a good sleep I found a less expensive and less spooky guesthouse and hired a bicycle to explore Laos’ capital city. Not as bad as I’d first thought. I rode around for ages getting my bearings, found a few nice Wats (Temples) and a nice local place for noodle soup with pork. I love noodle soup, notably because it is essentially good audience participation food. You get the bowl of noodle soup and then you get a plate of garden stuffs to dump into it, the amazing peanut chilli dipping thing that you can stir in or dunk the garden stuff into, then you get the cool sauces to add, limes to squeeze in and crispy onions to sprinkle. Then you have to decide how you are going to eat it- chopsticks for the noodles, or are you going to slurp the soup first? It’s jolly good fun. I also have never seen so many old-but-in-good-nick VW Beetles. They were trundling everywhere. Little Poppets.

I thought I’d probably move up north after my noodle extravaganza so I set out to find somewhere to book a bus. Cycling down a road I got a funny feeling. Something made me go round the block one more time and as I did I saw the twins. There is a God.

Turns out, Olly and Tom are not twins. They are triplets. The 3rd one, Dom, is much more responsible and grown up than these two and was holding down a job and wife and kids in the UK.
Olly and Tom were walking along the street with Billy Zeik, 19 from Melbourne. They had spent time together in Cambodia and Vietnam and had randomly bumped into each other again the night before.

I invited myself out for dinner with them obviously and the evening involved eating ridiculous amounts of duck at a duck restaurant (served on a fabulous big lazy susan), watching a BeerLao fuelled Liverpool v Manchester United match, whooping the Lao arses of the locals at table football and getting caught by a security guard whilst trying to have a sneaky spliff down by the Mekong.

The next day we found a local swimming baths with green water that made your teeth furry and gave me an intsa-cold but the Frisbee with the kids was fun and the sun was baking.

We tried to rent a car to drive us all north but Billy’s presence at the car-hire place meant they said no. He just looks like trouble. So we booked the ‘V.I.P’ night bus to Luang Prabang for the next day and went to the river for a curry with some Israeli’s the boys knew from Cambodia and more BeerLao. It’s too easy to drink this BeerLao. It’s also Laos’ only export. Apart from mosquito bites.

The hilarious taxi we went into the bus station I think tops all other modes of transportation on my trip thus far. It was an old junk filled car that looked massive on the outside but had virtually no interior space whatsoever. With 3 big blokes, one big girl and all our bags on our laps, we crawled to the bus station- the car making noises like it was in the throes of death. I couldn’t actually see for the entire journey and I think Tom nearly cut his foot off in the door. We had felt a bit sorry for the crazy taxi man who parked outside our guesthouse and never seemed to get any business. Now we know why. Bus time: 10 hours up through crazy hillside roads. ‘V.I.P’ it weren’t but fun it certainly was. Next stop Luang Prabang.

Facebook me!