Four thousand islands

luck, grace, fate, destiny or whatever you want to call it intervened today. we were at the bus station, bags on the roof of a crowded songthaew, three of us decided to leave and take the bus, the driver said NO, we ended up taking the thing and had a pleasant albeit slightly ass numbing journey (only to find out the bus tipped over and killed 2 people).

arriving in nakasong we took a small longtail boat over to Don Det and settled in. no electricity but for a fan in the afternoon for 3 hours, nothing but beautiful nature, calm atmosphere, restaurants and limited supplies of cold beer to keep out attention for three days.

paradise.

met the most outrageously cool people, partied it up with some brits playing dice games, sweated to death in the rooms at night, then the time to head back for the FA cup came and we woke at 5.30 (should be illegal) took a calm boat over the river, got a songtheaw with 9 more people than the first one including 100 kilos of fish and a lizard hanging from a string (alive). made it. got back to the GH, ordered rooms, had showers, ate indian food, drank beers, 6 arsenal supporters joined us in a bizarre and tense game, we won, we headed out to celebrate only to stumble on a laos wedding where they invited us in (at 1am) and lavished food (delicious) and heaps of lao lao whisky (paint thinner) on us before sending us on our merry way hours later just standing there saying "where on earth would this happen". ended up back at some great english blokes room for beers and music and then hit the hay tired and merry.

next day consisted of leaving, eating, being sick, travelling to the border, getting across, being in a thunder storm, missing a train, getting a sleeper bus, sitting uncomfortably for 11 hours, slightly numb from zanax, arriving at bangkok early, hitting lee guest house and collapsing from tiredness and adrenaline well spent.