I was in a-go-ny this morning with my tailbone. You honestly wouldn't believe how hard it is to do normal things like walking and sitting and getting into bed when that thing is sore. I can’t even pinpoint a reason for it. It’s a pain I’ve had a few times in my life before, but never this bad. I decided to ask Andy to point me to doctor today, which she agreed with, since the next four or so days are spent in buses travelling through the jungle. Hurraayyy...

After struggling downstairs, we got a tuk-tuk to the COPE foundation . Did you know that Laos is the most heavily bombed country on the face of the planet? More bombs fell on Laos during the "Vietnam" War than fell during all of WWII, and overall it was the equivalent of one bombing run every 8 minutes, for nine years. In Vietnam, there were rules of engagement, but since Laos was neutral, most people didn’t need to hear about it, and the USA got away with it. I’m generally a big fan of the US, as you know, but I can’t believe that I never knew this before, especially with the amount of Irish backpackers that travel through here. Laos is one of the poorest countries on the earth, and most people still live in hill villages and are without electricity, but you rarely see beggars and everyone is generally smiling and welcoming. They don’t have the luxuries we have, sure, but they also don’t have clocks or phone bills or the greed that we have in western nations. Neighbours help neighbours, people give food to poor people and tourist donations generally go to good causes. However, they still like to make a bit of money, and the scrap metal trade is huge. And where can you find scrap metal in the jungle? Why, along the Ho Chi Minh trail, that the US covered in bombs in the 70s. Thousands of bombs never exploded and are still just sitting there. People dig them up to sell them, or children (or adults) mistake “bombies” for fruit or a ball, and start collecting them or playing with them. It’s absolutely tragic.

There is a prosthetics workshop and hospital on the site, but for tourists there is a visitor’s centre where you can learn about all of this . They have excellent displays and samples of the bombs or scrap metal, as well as some home-made prosthetics from victims, and examples of the medical ones donated by foreign countries. We watched an excellent documentary about a Big Bomb Disposal Squad – Laotians trained by an Australian bomb expert – that travel around the country defusing and removing bombs. They focused on one that some children found beside a school (where one child was killed when playing with a bombie), another beside a jungle village where some of the old people still remembered the war and their families that were killed in it, and another back at the school, found in the road between two schools by some children who wanted to sell it for US$20.

It was very eye-opening, and very moving. It’s good – after all that disturbing news – to know that COPE is doing something about it, and the USA and other countries are continually donating money and objects (including metal detectors and prosthetics). Victims from poor areas can be treated for free, as they’re covered by the foundation’s funding, as long as you can convince them to come for treatment.

After buying half the shop, it was time for me to get some treatment, so Andy and I took a tuk-tuk to the Vientiane International Clinic, which was nothing like the Beijing International Clinic. Instead, it was like something out of 'A Nun’s Story’. Big windows with palm trees outside, and not a single piece of medical equipment inside, just some beds and some tables covered in kitchen table cloths, and the nurses strolling around in pretty dresses and little caps . The doctor hadn’t great English, but he gave me some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories in case it’s a cyst or abscess, which I know you were dying to hear. I would have preferred to have an x-ray too, to cover everything, but it’s too late now, and it only cost €12 for everything anyway. There’s a good hospital in Hanoi that I’ll go to if nothing improves in the next five days. Aren’t you excited?!

We had food in Joma’s (a semi chain coffee shop here, stands for “Joseph and Mary’s”), since I had missed breakfast and Andy was ravenous, where I got a divine bowl of fruit, granola and yoghurt for under €3. GODDAMN YOU IRELAND AND YOUR BAD FRUIT AND EXORBITANT PRICES! Then it was back to the hotel for a few minutes before meeting the others (minus Rhonda) to get a tuk-tuk to Buddha Park. It took an hour to get there, and since sitting down alone is an issue for me, you can imagine how much fun it was when we came to the long pothole-y section of road. But we arrived in one piece and got ice-creams to boot! Buddha Park is, in Jamie’s words, “a religious playground” . It’s full of Buddha Statues and Hindu gods and since it’s not a temple you can climb all over them and take photos and generally have a laugh. There were even monks there – lots of them – who were just as amused by the whole thing, and were taking tonnes of pictures on their digital cameras. I even had a China flashback where one asked me to stop going down some stairs so he could take a photo of me. Bizarre.

You’ll remember that monks here are not allowed touch women, so Jamie and I didn’t get in their way or anything, but they’re generally just normal guys who’re more than happy to chat with you, and use their Bluetooth headsets, or listen to their iPods. Do you know why? Because they can leave whenever they want. Isn’t that clever? Most men here do a stint as a monk, anything from a few days to a few years. If they like it, they can stay, and if they decided that it’s too much, or they want to cook their own food, or they want to get married, they can just leave .

So Buddha Park was entertaining, but I had to take painkillers again, and it was getting pretty bad in the tuk-tuk on the way home, so I’ve spent the rest of the evening taking it easy in my room, hanging out with BBC World News (which featured the National Museum in Taiwan where I was, and had dinner with the engineers!) and updating this as best as I can – dodgy internet.

You won’t hear from me for a few days now since I’ll literally be in the jungle. Andy couldn’t wrangle the homestay with the western toilet, so I’ll have to suffer a squat, as well as a few long bus journeys, but the good news is that there isn’t anything for me to spend my millions of Kip on anymore, so I can just convert them into millions of Dong at the border. Yay!