Great name for a pub, don't you think? Says it all really. Hopefully keeps the punters fixed to a stool and continuously ordering.

Riiight, the last three posts, as you can tell, were written some time ago at various intervals on the good old laptop, in bus stations and on restaurant tables and a tiny bit of stupidly-timed editing last night in the hotel. It is now 6:20 local time in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Bugger me, but isn't laos nice and relaxed? Yes. Yes it is, I'll answer that one for you It must be the quietest popular city in the world.

Anyway can't stop and natter: I have stuff to do and time is running short - I'm just gonna share with you the details of my last few days travelling to try and get something across:

Friday - wake early after bad night's sleep, pack and take care of final stuff in India. Wait 4 hours for my final bill to be calculated so have a last-minute panic to get the right amount of money transfered online, then get to a cashpoint. I fucked up the maths anwyay as we have seen, but hey
Rickshaw to the train station, stand on platform for an hour waiting for train with heavy lugagge. On scale of one to ten, ten being the hightest, this was registering about Joy Factor 4.

Friday night - 11 hour train journey, about 1 hour's sleep. The trains in india are meant for Indians and not travellers, as the AC3 and AC2 compartments; the poshest and most expensive; allow no room for lugagge.
I'll just repeat that: there is no space for any of your bags, at all. None. Zip. Fuckeldey doo-dah. Not any. I had 2 rucksacks and a laptop briefcase to share my bunk with which is an inch too short of rme anyway, and just wide eough for my shoulders. So, I had to curl up painfully or raise my legs uncomfortably or rack my spine ont hem dangerously. Ergo, 10 hours of quiet bitching about the kind of arsehole who makes these things.

Saturday daytime - from Chennai train station at 7:20am or so I had a day of mooching about the city and walking a fair bit to see what I could while I was there. Taxis aplenty as well, including one to the airport at about 6pm then 3 hours of checking in, waiting, waiting a bit more then a 1.5-hour flight to Sri lanka. No sleep, obviously. Joy Factor 2-and-a-bit

Saturday night - flight from Sri lanka to Bangkok after waiting for 4 hours at Colombo airport, caught a half-hour catnap on some impressively unergonomic and painfully dished seats before waking up late thinking I might have missed my flight. Surrounded by staring people so I was probably snoring ourageously, but I was in the departure lounge so the presence of others meant I hadn't been left behind
In-flight: Food = reasonably dreadful but not overtly poisonous, seats = too small. I caught a half-hour catnap before snapping my neck into wakefullness as is so funny to watch, and painful to do Flight time of 3.5 hours and too many interupptions for any more sleep than that. Joy factor -1 rising to 2 again once the head snapping was over with

Sunday daytime - Wandering around Bangkok after leaving everything at the bus station and buying a ticket as early as possible (bonus 100 point to Thailand over India in allowing one to buy tickets at any time in advance, not only 15 minutes before and having the ensuing free-for-all at the counter) and walking around in a lovely, but hot & humid city. Very tired and constantly stopping for coffee. Repair to the bus station for another 5 hours of waiting around with heavy lugagge and intravenous coffee injections until 9:45pm. No sleep at all on Sunday. Joy Factor 1.5, Tiredness Level 85.00%

Sunday Night - Bus from bangkok through the main bulk of Thailand to Nong Khai. 10 hours long in a space designed for a Lilliputian contortionist with no legs. Sleep? Hah! I got about 4 hours at most, but probably more like 3, and it was fragmented and unhappy - I wandered in and out of distressing half-dreams and saw an awful lot of the seatback in front of me. The guy in that seat reclined fully to get some nice relaxing sleep, further reducing my available space.

The drink stuck through the hole in the little foldaway table and stuck into my legs even more, so as a result it had to be finished or it would spill everywhere, and I was rendered thirsty as well as tired and severely cramped. Joy factor 0.5, Tiredness Level about 95:00%

Monday Daytime - from about 8am until about 3pm I was taken from the bus depot and went in tuk-tuks (3) and coaches (2) to a Visa On Arrival shop, a changeover junction where left-handed traffic becomes right-handed traffic and I had to transfer from tuk-tuk to a waiting coach, then onto immigration booths, border control, and finally across the border into Vientiane.
There seems to be a strech of about 2 miles across the Mekong river which is neither Thailand or Laos by this reckoning, but I'm sure they work something out between them In any case, I was busy with forms and fiddling with passports and then left mooching about on a wonderful city street in laos, a whole new country in the mid-afternoon.
Joy Factor 8, Tiredeness Level 99:50%

Monday Evening - since Thursday morning I had had 5 to 6 hours of sleep out of a possible 84 hours. Conventional wisdom recommends about 24 hours for this period, so I was a little crazy and my vision was starting to fracture, as can only happen with sleep deprivation and the very finest psychoactive hallucinogenics

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And that is my point; yesterday I was really fucking tired. This seems to be a little belaboured, perhaps, but I like to get across just how much travelling can take out of you - and it is not just exciting but also pretty tiring just going about the place so much. Apart from the responsibilities (passports, Visa, not transgressing any international laws) which were hardly on my mind to be honest, there is an inertia you have to maintain in order to get where needed, and getting your luggage to and from all the places it needs to be, as well as yourself, is fairly tiring and occupies a reasonable amount of your mental space as well.

So it may be excused that last night I found the first hotel I could (after accosting some Americans for advice who were helfulness itself) and ordered some simple room service, whacked the Telly onto HBO, and settled down until early afternoon on Tuesday for a good, solid 16 hours.

Joy factor 10