Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand Islands, is an archipelago of about 2 dozen islands and islets in the far South of Laos, at a bulge in the Mekong river. There are three main inhabited islands and we stayed on one of these, Don Dhet, which is not even hooked up to the national grid and so only enjoys 4 hours of generator-driven electricity per day. How quaint, we thought…

It would be fair to say we were a little disappointed with Si Phan Don. Admittedly we were both suffering from ailments and afflictions (we’ll spare you the grisly details!), and that can taint your opinion of a place. But it was far from the unspoilt elysian setting, lit by rosy candelight, that we were expecting. Instead we found a swelteringly hot town of identikit bungalows and Western-themed restaurants staffed by unusually sullen locals; the amount of bugs and insects was just Biblical, and the novelty of no electricity wears off as soon as you need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night!

Amy was feeling particularly queasy on the first night, so we splashed out on a deluxe room; with glazed windows and a tiled floor, and an amazing sunset view. The next day we moved into a cheap bungalow which we had to share with a lizard and a cockroach.

That said, when we hired out bikes and explored further afield, the scenery was as beautiful as we’d hoped. We found a huge waterfall (you might think we’d be bored of waterfalls by now but not so, each one is unique and they’re not exactly abundant back home are they?) and a beach with blisteringly hot sand.

We now leave Laos and head to Cambodia. We’ve had a wonderful fortnight here though. There can’t be many countries left in the world – at least that are safe to visit – which have no motorways, no high-rise buildings, no out-of-town industrial areas, no McDonald’s! It will of course all change, in the inevitable course of ‘progress’, but we were just glad we had the chance to visit it as it is now.