… ‘and we’ve just passed somewhere’. These lines were quoted today by Bruce (uncle) and Colin who were navigating the LOOONNNG journey from Tha Phon to NongKhai. The trip to the Laos border took 7-8 hours squished in the 4WD but not lacking entertaiment.

Our challenges included:

The usual squat toilets

Dodging 100’s of chooks on the road at every village

Dodging dogs on the road everywhere… including in the middle of no-where

Dodging other drivers, Tuk Tuks, bikes and children

Our trip entertainment consisted of sad jokes and stories, interpersed with the odd elephant hunt. Some of us insisted they saw elephants in a river. Peter (uncle) took the trouble of turning back and crawling slowly along the river bank while we argued about whether they were rocks or elephants. Since they weren’t moving we decided they were either dead or, in fact, rocks.

On our arrival to NangKhai we discovered an enormous ‘Hilton’ like motel. In awe of it’s size, we thought we had better send Eiam in to find out how much it would cost to stay. $40Aus, including breakfast!

For tea we spent a hysterical evening in a restaurant which had run out of almost everything we ordered and charged us 10 Baht  per hour more for using the room with aircon. Luckily, they redeemed themselves by cooking a gorgeous meal. During our walk along the river afterwards, in the dark, guess what we discovered? An elephant (which wasn’t a rock)!

The photos are only my iphone ones for now as I have no way of uploading my camera ones and I suspect the internet wouldn’t cope with it anyhow! For $1 per hour I shouldn’t complain.

Today we leave for Laos for the day (I think). I can’t remember where we are going so I’m just going with the flow. My itinerary is back at Tha Phon (Peter’s house).