Green Climbers Home - Laos

After our escapades in Bangkok and with Sophie still only 36 hours into her food poisoning we were heading to Thakhek (Laos) via taxi, plane, taxi, bus and finally tuk tuk! Sophie was still not feeling great so she spent the rest of the day in bed! I spent the afternoon binging West World on the hammock before playing some volleyball.

- View from the balcony.

- Sophie topless! Only joking (or am I?)

- Our wee hut!

- View up the valley!

The next morning we got up and walked the 5 minutes to the crag. The area is so convenient to so much good rock that the furthest we ever walked was 15 minutes and doing so meant you had the place to yourself! The only thing I can compare it to is a ski holiday, with the atmosphere and everything being based so closely around the activity.

- Restaurant/bar at GCH.

The next few days followed like this without too much of note, we took it fairly easy on the climbs until the last day when we attempted a 6a, which Sophie completed all the moves on. The goal will be completing a 6a from the ground up before the end of the holiday!

- After a successful lead.

- Look, no hands!

- The aptly named 'tree lounge'.

We had a great few days at the Green Climbers Home, but it was time to head back to Bangkok. However, upon arriving for the bus (set penultimate step above) we found it completely full! It was the last bus of the day and we had to get across the border that night or else we wouldn't be able to catch our flight early the next morning! We scrambled and after a mix up with driver number 1 (don't even talk to me!) we found driver number 2... I won't tell you how much this cost, but it was 20x more expensive than the bus would have been!!! Arrrrrrggggggggg!!!!!!

Anyway, all is now well and we are back in Bangkok after a brief night in Nakhon Phanom, where we stayed at a lovely 'homtel' who made us complementary dinner after we rocked up at 10PM! They will be getting a good review on booking.com, cross-border buses on the other hand will definitely not! However there are now no more of those to contend with, hoorah!