Pak Beng

So we arrived in Pak Beng, (unknown to me the drug selling capital of Laos (possibly to be edged out by Vang Vieng later in the trip - but more on that later)) to be greeted by the usual scrum of about 15-20 guest house owners, and at least the same again of people crying "weed, marijuana, opium".

Turned out from a brief conversation one of these guys also had a discount, which when he discovered there were nine of us (our group had increased AGAIN) we were offered a 75% discount. This was nice but it did mean that I was paying (for a double room with a fan and a mosquito net) two thirds of what I'd paid for a packet of crisps on the boat earlier in the day. After a dinner of stir fried buffalo we all sat down for a post meal chill out. And it was about here that I began to wonder if perhaps some of the opium had made its way into my meal. The first piece of strange behaviour happened when the girls panicked at the appearance of - to give them some credit - a very large cricket. One of the children of the guesthouse dealt rather emphatically with this problem by swallowing the aforementioned cricket whole. The second strange incident was after almost everyone else had gone to bed. One of the locals came over, chewing on what appeared to be a tree branch, sat down next to me, gave me a nod and kept going. My curiosity overtook my confusion and I asked him what it was he was eating. At this point he pulled out his machete (as you do) and I wondered if "whats that" actually meant - 'you're mother is a whore" in Lao but to my relief he used the machete to cut the end off the branch and peel back the bark before handing it to me to try. He prompted me with the words 'sweet, sweet" and showed me that you chewed on the branch and spat out the pulp. Turns out he was chewing on a sugar cane. It was pretty nice but not that fulfilling, so I decided - in an attempt to avoid any more surreal episodes - to retire to bed to read for a while. A great plan til they turned the generator off five minutes later while I was sitting on toilet....