Laos has not been kind to us.

We have had a run of bad luck since arriving in Laos that shows no signs of abating. I want to put Will's post into a little more perspective.

We arrived in Laos over a week ago, on a rocky minibus journey over from Thailand, to the party tubing town of Vang Vieng. Known as a place where people go, get drunk, and inevitably hurt themselves, I had braced myself for perhaps a broken finger, or a few bruises from drunken zipwiring. On our first day, I was mauled by a puppy. Now I say mauled, the playful little Andrex thing nipped my finger. No blood was drawn. In my drunken haze, I saw myself as some sort of Dr Dolittle, wandering around in my bikini clutching a puppy to my breast. In hindsight, it was a brush with a rabid death- Will accompanied me to the hospital the next day to get a shot, a hungover paranoid wreck, muttering gibberish about how you can get rabies from saliva. Will went into detail about the way that Rabies attacks the nervous system, ending in an unimaginably painful death. So that was comforting.

The next day we had been tubing for the afternoon, and were making our way home in a tuk tuk. A few enterprising people thought that going on the roof meant more people in the tuk tuk carriage. Well it knocked us off balance a few miles up the road, and we had an unremarkable, slow, yet intensely scary crash into a ditch. People on the roof were whooping- In my very sober state (still worrying about the impending rabies, and unable to even bear the smell of more whisky) all I wanted to do was jump out of the vehicle, which was now at a 45 degree angle laid on a bush. Tried to push it upright again, but failed. We didn't get a refund, sadly.

So that was two bad things that happened. They say bad things happen in threes. So it stands to reason that me and Will got chronic conjunctivitus from the river water, and spent three days with pussing, bloodshot, mole like eyes. I took the mickey out of Will, he did look quite sweet, but little did I know how painful it was. Moving your head and eyes makes you want to vomit, and you constantly feel like you have a migraine. And tissues are a necessity, lest your eyes crust over. Am only just getting over that. Apparently you can catch it from water contaminated with faecal matter.

Now, on the scale of bad things happening, things seemed to be getting worse. On a bumpy bus ride to Luang Prabang, we narrowly missed running over a toddler by inches. And our engine cut out for a bit. But Luang Prabang took the biscuit for overall crapness and bad luck. Last time I came here, it was my favourite place in Laos, small, quaint, and French inspired. This time around, it was tarnished by the pinkeye, the curfew (dont be out past midnight!) and oh yes, our robbery.

I was asleep, not wearing many clothes as it was so hot, next to the window. I had been up and down all night with an imagined fever and my eyes were sore and infected. Will was laying next to me, facing the window. He woke up, glanced over at the floor, and noticed something moving. Thinking it was me moving my stuff around, he was about to berate me... but realised, no, in actual fact thats a man's arm rooting through his bag. "F**k Carmel, theres someone in here" he shouted, disorientated. Me with my crusty eyes and no glasses leapt against the wall wailing. Will realised whilst I was feeling around for my glasses that in fact, someone was using a 2 metre long stick with a hook on, to navigate our posessions through the bars. Will leapt up, shouted, and the man fled. We switched the lights on, and straight away I noticed my handbag had gone, along with my drybag containing all my valuable electricals. Alerted the owners, ran outside, and found my handbag tossed on the floor, along with my passport and bank cards. My cash had gone, along with my older camera and my ipod. Lost some good pics and videos, which I was most upset about, but me and Will were more spooked by someone watching us sleep, going through our stuff. Will was very macho, 'Ooh if I had got up and twisted his arm', that sort of thing. I was just glad he was there.

Went to the police the next day, who are an absolute joke. After some sort of weird Quincy style investigation involving footprints, and some Vietnamese homeless people next door, they made a 'police report'. And also made me write my own contract, saying I wouldnt sue the guesthouse, who I later found out had been robbed in a similar manner before.

So all in all, Laos didn't hold a spark for me anymore. I was dying to get out and go to Vietnam, but flights were expensive, and we needed to apply for a visa, so we chose to get a bus out the next evening. Our 'VIP' bus (note- normal bus, but with pink pleated curtains and doilys over the headrests) left at seven thirty, and made it no more than about fifty miles before breaking down. For five hours. Will and Glynn were well on their way at this point, having drunk a fair amount of BeerLao, so they tried to get morale up by making a campfire. We laid down on the tarmac road, some hippy wearing pyjama bottoms had brought a bongo with him, and looked up to see shooting stars.