We arrived into Laos after about 3 hours of waiting at the border crossing and dealing with the corrupt officials that try and charge you $2 just to have your visa stamped. The thing I was most worried about in Laos was a little passage in my book that said that there were no public toiliets in Laos so passengers on buses relieve themselves by the side of the road during breaks on long journeys.... which linked to another passage in the book stating that Laos is the most bombed country in the world and there is still a lot of unexploded ordnance around so don't ever go wandering off in case you step on a landmine..

The place we were going was in the deep south of Laos - a place called the '4 thousand islands' which is an archipelago on the Mekong river, and the whole place has preserved southern lowland Lao culture from outside influences so you can stay amongst the traditional fishing and farming villages. Before we got to our first island we took a sawngthaew, a converted flat-bed truck, to see the Khon Phapheng falls which is technically the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia but is actually not all that impressive and the book describes it as "a low but wide cliff that just happens to have a huge volume of water running over it". The island we stayed on first was called Don Det and it only had electricity for 3 hours in the day in the evening and it was such a nice rustic charming little place, with loads of backpackers of the chilled out hippy type. We slept on the sunset side of the island in these wooden stilt bungalows that don't have a fan or light because of the fact that there's no electricity, so all you have is 4 walls, a v hard mattress and a mosquito net, and a hammock outside your door.

Then I went to the next island alone and rented a bike to cycle round on for the day which was so so lovely and relaxing. As I cycled through the rice fields, small children would call out "Sabaii deeeee!" (hello) from their huts and if any were by the roadside they would run along with me next to the bike before their parents called them back. So cute!