‘We’re Baaaaaaaccccckkk’

Greetings Earth-dwellers, from the sweaty jellyfish of South-East Asia…yes, I have a new moniker to sum up the delicious state of overheatedness in which I found myself over the past couple of weeks in oh-so-sunny Laos, Cambodia & Thai-rand. All you have to do is imagine an overweight beast, with a shock of ginger/grey corkscrew locks, sweating like a water buffalo and wishing it was wet season after all… and there you have it, mm mm. Even Hawksey re-named me 'Mer-moose' as I frolicked (dodging harpoons) in the overwarm sea….

Yep – it all went off well which is a relief as these days nothing's quite as clear cut as we'd like it to be. The cough hasn't gone (just 3 months now), but it didn't escalate into anything more ominous so that was a bonus and we had a top two weeks.

Top highlight? Angkor Wat without doubt – bloody amazing complex of ancient stuff (do you like the technically accurate description there? Culture schmulture.)

Funniest moment: H getting caught short on a kayak trip and having a 'bathroom moment' in the river just as several well-meaning Laotians rushed towards him to help us at what they assumed was a different kind of a moment of need…

Scariest moment? The two MASSIVE spiders in our rooms – one in the jungle (fairy nuff) but one in the previously-considered impregnable fortress of our Ko Samet Hideaway – a whopper, didn't get a wink of sleep. Plus the funnel web spider trees… truly gross

Grimmest bit? The Killign Fields and Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, you even walk on bones in the fields

Factual learning? That Laos is after all pronounced 'Louse', not 'L-ow'… so much for trying to sound cool

Poshest cocktail? Roof of the Banyan Tree hotel in Bangkok (with H sporting a natty pair of hotel provided black linen monster pants as he hadn't clocked the dress code)

Biggest waste of time? Schlepping two hours in a bus and an hour uphil in weltering heat to see some amazing riverbedcarvings and an amazing waterfall to cool off in – only to discover the waterfall was a trickle of bilharzia-ridden pus and to be berated as we climbed down by some harridan of a french woman that I was only wearing flipflops (bovvered??!)

Ludicrous moment? Waiting for the Princess of Thailand to be sped off to the resort we'd just left, watching half the military saluting both her and the small handbag dog she was carrying to the beach..

Surreal moment? Watching the procession of the monks, hundreds of them, being given rice by kneeling local ladies in the early hours of a misty morning in sleepy francophile Luang Prabang

Creature-spotting result? A large toucan in a tree by our breakfast table – never knew they lived there..

Freaky experience? Having the dead skin eaten off my feet by 'Doctor Fish' – 20 minutes dipped in a pool, a hundred fish nibbling gently and feet as smooth as a baby's bum…. euucch

Language issue (Mikey, one for you): Having the sign to look for at the end of our kayak trip described as saying 'eleven' on it – getting louder to 'no, it say EE-LE-FEN!' – till we finally clocked the poor fella meant 'EE-LE-PHANTS!)

Photos to follow – not all 450 of them (lucky you) but some crackers – tune in soon! Sx