The darkness before dawn is pierced by a couple of fires burning on the riverbank below our guesthouse. The Nam Ou flows silently and Muang Khua is quiet except for the subdued conversations of the early risers huddled around the fires.
It's a little more than ten kilometres as the crow flies from Dien Bien Phu to Muong Phang but it's almost thirty by road, which gives you some idea of the tortuous route a road must take through the mountains of north-west Vietnam.
A warning: We'd suggest that you do not read this post if you are eating, are squeamish about matters eliminatory, or are convalescing from any condition involving biliousness. There's also a bit of vulgar colloquial language...
We've just completed a week's trekking and kayaking in the remote, mountainous regions of Phongsali province in northern Laos. As I'm sure most of you know, travelling in Asia for any length of time is usually accompanied by occasional episodes demanding the close proximity of a toilet. Or bathroom as our American friends would have it. I've always thought that a little strange by the way. I'd expect to find a bath in a bathroom, not a... Sorry - I digress...
Fear not. This isn't a tale of bouts of explosive diarrhoea, typhoid or dysentery. Nope. We were lucky there. Despite running out of anti-bacterial wipes, despite Amber's compulsion to pat every cat and mangy dog that we encountered, despite my realising - as I squeezed sticky rice into balls to dip in the chilli - that I hadn't washed my hands in about nine hours, we suffered no ill effects. Which was lucky, because there wasn't a toilet within a weeks' walk of any of the villages we were welcomed into.
We're barely an hour out of Vangvieng when the bus blows an inside rear tyre. The trip to Luang Prabang is around six hours, we're only carrying one spare and we haven't even begun the climb into the hills of northern Vientiane province...
