with love from laos

My short visit to Laos is drawing to a close. I've enjoyed it immensely and would recommend a trip to Luang Prabang to anyone.

I've had wonderful food here - mostly Western food. It's actually the first Western food I've eaten in Asia, apart from two meals at Mexican food places in Bangkok.

You really can't beat walking through the night market at dusk eating a baguette smeared with Nutella and peanut butter and filled with sliced bananas.

Or zooming around the twisting mountain roads in the back of a tuk-tuk, whizzing past plants with leaves twice the size of your head.

Or sitting in a tea shop, reclining on the floor while watching a movie and drinking vanilla hazelnut black tea.

Or sucking down a creamy mango smoothie and eating Lao soup on a riverside, lantern-lit terrace, looking out into the pitch black night sky.

Or taking a flying leap from a tree and plunging into an ice-cold pool of milky turquoise water... after a hot, sweaty, 20-minute hike up to the top of a waterfall in the jungle.

You just can't beat it.

The only thing that would make it better is if Michael were here to enjoy it with me.