Laos

So Laos anyway. Really not a very stressed out place. I had two itineraries planned for this country. One was going to be a bit of a mad dash, but would mean that I could take in the mysterious Plain of Jars. More used to less mysterious but equally tempting Jars of Plain, I decided that I would take the slow route. The decision was really made for me, since I'm finding it hard to get up the motivation to do anything. In the afternoon, the people here lie down in their places of business and just point to whatever you want. It's bit like a siesta, and it is pretty warm here, though it's not as humid as Vietnam, so a fan works wonders and I don't have air conditioning for only the second time since leaving Dublin.

I flew from Hanoi to the capital Vientiane, but boarded a connecting flight from the domestic terminal, which looked more like a bus station than most bus staions, to Luang Prabang, and it's here I have been. An interesting thing happened on the way here though. Perhaps because I was in transit no one got the opportunity to tell me, but the plane first flies 200 kilometres north of here, to a place that looked like the end of the world, called Udomxai. So, upon arriving in Udomxai, I got out, wandered around and figured that I was in the wrong place. Now, I could say that my heart sank, but that would be a very mediocre sort of metaphor, so let me get something clear. I know, as a student of the human body, that the heart can not feasibly escape the chest and end up somewhere around one's kdneys, but, I swear, my heart sank at the prospect of being 200 km from my rucksack and the 12 hour bus journey I would have to take to get it back. But then a Japanese man who was in an identical situation asked someone where he was and I overheard the helpful air hostess telling him to get back on the aircraft and that it would be departing for Luang Prabang shortly. So I grabbed my passport back from the guard who was taking my details down in a large ledger and ran back to the plane.

Luang Prabang is the laziest little town I have ever had the good fortune to come across. I've been here a while, but I don't remember much of what I've done. I started off realising what it was that was amiss from my trip from the airport. The minivan, upon coming across a slow motorboke simply followed at that speed. No honking of horns or radical overtaking manoeuvres, commonly involving hairpin bends and large trucks coming the other way, that was the specialty in Vietnam. Nope. We were getting where we were going and were bound to get there eventually and in one piece - a guarantee often missing from the Vietnamese equivalents.

The second thing to realise is that there are loads of Wats (Buddhist temples) about, and so there are loads of novices around - teenagers with shaven heads dressed in garish orange. A bit like parts of Dublin really. The are two next to me right now, checking their email. It's quite a sight.

I get a bus in the morning to Vang Vieng, which has a reputation as being a backpacker stopover between Luang Prabang and Vientiane and little else, but if I'm going to stop over somewhere, it may as well be there.

And if it's anything like here, it'll be hard to leave there too.