NIKKI ARRIVES

Matt had met a girl on this travel buddy website called Nikki. He'd met up with her a couple of times in London, and she was joining us today to travel in Laos with us, which was great as we needed a bit of a pick up, and with an extra person comes more things to talk about.

She arrived at about 2pm after being stuck between the borders of Laos and Thailand with no money, no one took cards and she couldn't cross into Laos without paying for her visa.

I was half way through my course of pills now, which gave me a good feeling, I sat in the internet cafe thinking about what to do next and started watching videos about tubing in Vang Vieng. Tubing was the main reason we'd come to Laos, and we were always going to go there, but watching those videos reignited my passion for it. I felt much better. we booked our bus tickets to take us to Vang Vieng the next morning. I was entrusted to look after the tickets, somehow I had become the responsible one, I guess traveling was changing me more than I realised.

Vietaine is nice, there's just nothing to do there, we walked around the town for a while, saw the Victory Monument (it's a monument to celebrate the independence gained from France, like beating the french is anything to shout about), we tried to go to the night market, but the tuk tuk driver didn't have a clue and just drove round until he saw a supermarket. We got off and paid him about $2 which wasn't bad considering he hadn't actually taken us where we wanted to go. He wasn't happy though and followed us for about 10 minutes until we gave him the slip.

we went to a jazz bar, Matt when home early and Nikki and I stayed for a few more drinks, cokes obviously.