Lao-Lao.

So elusive were the monkeys however, that we never got to see them...two days before we were due to fly out, an email informed us that our trip was cancelled due to severe flooding and road damage in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Checking the local paper reports online, we discovered several villages had been airlifted to safety, with several more still cut off. It was clearly not meant to be. We had to come up with a plan and fast - it was too expensive to fly to Oz early, and with Malaysia well and truly explored, we considered several options, finally settling on Laos.

Having heard so many positives about this mystical country from fellow travellers in Thailand and Cambodia, amazed we hadn't included it in our original itinerary, we were excited to see what the 12 days we had to spend in the country would bring - and we weren't disappointed. Laos was more naturally beautiful than either Thailand or Cambodia, with stunning rivers, lush vegetation, misty, tree-topped, hills and mountains and windy roads revealing a multitude of lively, small villages filled with straw huts, populated with a huge range of ethnic groups, each with their own traditions and dress, and what seemed like hundreds of small children, often grubby, but nearly always smiling and playing happily, despite having almost nothing. The people we found to be very laidback and gentle, the language was similar with some words and phrases easy to pick up, the effort always rewarded by a positive reaction. They seemed to have accepted the relatively recent influx of tourists and backpackers with interest and lots of genuine warmth and hospitality in the vast majority of cases.

We explored as much of the country as we could in the short two weeks we had. We took in numerous memorable, but incredibly long and windy, bus journeys, accompanied by - amongst other things - a mixture of rabbits, chickens, sacks of rice and on one 3 hour journey, 35 stops! We opted mainly for the cheap public buses alongside the locals, who ate 'snacks' along the way which included whole roasted spiders, grilled frogs, and various 'mystery' meats and then proceeded to try desperately not to throw up, apparently suffering from motion sickness!

We explored the riverside and historic sights and temples of ancient Luang Prabang, the country's second city, and spent a day kayaking down the nearby beautiful Nam Ou river, braving some fun but fast rapids, frequently greeted by local children screaming 'Sabaidee! (Hello!)' from the riverbanks where they stood panning for tiny scraps of gold still present in the waters. Stopping by the riverside at a convenient point for our lunch of sticky rice, accompanied by a variety of scrummy concoctions of vegetable and meat dishes, all served on a huge banana leaf, we were watched from a safe distance by a group of children from a nearby village. Once we'd stuffed our faces, the guide asked whether we were happy for the kids to come and eat what was left. Once beckoned over, the beaming faces neatly and speedily finished every morsel, with no fuss but much enjoyment - it was a lovely sight.

We then headed north where we taught twenty 4 - 6 year old children in the village we stayed the night in, the lyrics to 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes', 'Old MacDonald', 'Hello' by Mr Lionel Richie, Wham's 'Last Christmas', Take That's 'Never Forget' and Guns and Roses' 'Paradise City' on one memorable afternoon during a trek deep into the protected forests of far northern Luang Nam Tha. B was in his element, responding to the constant demands of 'Sing a song!' with vigour and the finest pop songs he could muster. The smiling children also tried patiently to teach us an old song in their Khmu dialect, with varying degrees of success, but much hilarity. The warmth, intelligence and vivacity of these lovely kids is something we won't forget in a hurry. Neither are their cheeky faces and shared giggles when we turned up to see them in their village school the morning after, along with the fantastic group of trekkers we shared the two days with, from places as diverse as Amsterdam and Tel Aviv, via Walthamstow and Dublin - they made it a lot of fun.

So what else to say? Laos was a country not of 'must-see' sights at a hectic pace, but more a place to savour things at a Laos-style pace, to soak up the atmosphere over a cup of Laos coffee, some of the best we've tasted on our travels. It's best remembered in the hidden delights of small villages and beautiful scenery we came across walking on long dusty roads, warm welcoming smiles from villagers living a lifestyle little changed in over 100 years, browsing the beautiful silks and loom-woven materials in the colourful, buzzing nights markets and watching the world go by on one of the many rivers. There was much we didn't get the chance to see in our time there, but we were well and truly hooked and hope to re-visit this tranquil, alluring country in the near future. For now, it's back to bustling KL, followed by a bus ride to Singapore and the start of the next chapter of our travels.

Asia says 'goodbye' and Oz says 'hello'.

Truly Asia!

As we said a sad goodbye to Cambodia, it was time to move onto Malaysia. A short flight from Phnom Penh to KL, a bus ride up the west coast and we soon found ourselves in vibrant Georgetown - a bustling melting pot of a city in the heart of Penang Island. And what an introduction to Malaysia: a microcosm of the finest elements that make up this wonderful country: crumbling colonial buildings, lip-smackingly tasty food (the best south Indian banana-leaf curries outside of India, a myriad of inventive Cantonese dishes easily as good as those in HK or mainland China, and adrenaline-pumping spicy Malay cuisine - deep rendang curry, nasi lemak and kangkong belechan) and highly visible, distinctive religions practiced day-by-day, side-by-side (on one corner of downtown Georgetown stands a huge mosque whose golden tops shimmer in the searing afternoon sun, an impressive white-washed Catholic church, an elaborate Chinese buddhist temple and an amazingly intricate Hindu temple whose outside walls and rooftops are adorned with statues depicting a whole host of deities and fables). 'What a wonderfully tolerant society!' we thought.

This utopic thought was soon shattered in a brief encounter with a fierce looking Chinese lady in her mid-fifties. As we climbed up the hill in workaday Ayer Itam district to reach the Kek Lok Si temple, the Chinese lady struck up conversation:

'You're very adventurous!' she exclaimed.
'Why's that?' we replied.
'You don't get many tourist this far out of town.' she confirmed.
'OK' we responded non-plussed.
'How long you been in Penang?' she enquired.
'Two days.' we said.

Silence. She leant in.

'Too many muslims!' she barked.

Where the heck did that come from?! Out of nowhere! Nothing we had done or said vaguely suggested that we wanted such a discussion. Yet, she felt we could be trusted with, or perhaps that we needed to be informed of, this vital piece of survival info.

'They are all violent!' she continued. 'they will snatch your bag and run you over!. They not even care if you die!'.

Just as we were about to counter-argue this blatant display of religious intolerance, the weirdest thing happened...

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a spindly, dark, muslim man with crazed eyes and a raggedy demeanour walked right up behind us and started growling.

'Roar.' he whispered. 'Roar' he growled. 'Roar!' he shouted. 'I am a werewolf! I am a werewolf!' he motioned with his hands a pair of ferocious claws shredding his prey. 'I am a werewolf!' he shouted and ran off into the dense forest. I will never forget his eyes - steely, intense, maniacal - pure lunatic.

Well, that kind of destroyed any counter-argument we were about to fire back at the biggoted Chinese lady. Strangely enough, she was totally oblivious to all of this and I guess that sort of summed up her blinkered view of the world - completely unaware and bound by her own beliefs. Well, at least we can say we met a werewolf!

After several days in Penang, we embarked on a long bus journey to the Cameron Highlands - a cool hill-top station retreat created by British colonials eager to escape the tropical Malaysian climate. And what a retreat! - within one hour of arriving we were sat down sipping the best tea we had tasted since leaving London last year and gorging on dreamily soft scones filed with oozing cream and fresh strawberry jam. Heaven. During the next few days we explored the surrounding dramatic countryside landscape - endless lush-green rolling hills covered in immaculately preened tea plants tendered by expert Indian farmers shipped over on five year contracts. We toured the Boh Estate Tea Plantation, ventured into the magical mossy forest (it was straight out of Midsummer Night's Dream - we half expected to feel the shadows of Bottom, Puck and Titania floating past us) and embarked on some tough but rewarding countryside hikes. All this was rounded off by the wonderful guesthouse we stayed in. It felt like home.

Tired of long bus journeys, we treated ourselves to a minivan ride to Kuala Tahan - a small fishing village that nestles alongside the protected Malaysian jungle - Tamen Negara. The journey was made a lot more fun by a lovely English couple we met - they had a refeshingly open attitude to traveling and a great sense of humour. We chatted, debated and laughed all the way. Once we settled into our hut for the night, we were ready to tackle the next few days ahead. We explored as much of the jungle as we could on our own. We set off armed with Malaysian rice dishes wrapped in banana leaves, purchased from the foodstalls that lined the river and a very vague trail map. We walked for hours and hours without a single sole on sight. We came across monkeys, wild board, monitor lizards and loads of creepy crawlies: fat ones, thin ones, long ones, ugly ones, beautiful ones, tiny ones, huge ones, hairy ones - it was like nothing we had seen or heard before - like being in a wildlife documentary. Shame our camera couldn't capture the magic - it finally get crushed in my pocket as I crawled through a narrow cave full of bullfrogs, snakes and hundreds of bats flying straight past my head.

We left the jungle by motorized sampan and traveled two hours upstream to the town of Jeruntut where we caught a connecting bus to KL. As we arrived in this huge and hectic city, we got that same feeling we had in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Something so reassuringly familiar about the bustle, the noise, the volume of people, the sounds and sights of everyday life that made it feel instantly like home. We stayed a week.

After taking in the old Portuguese port of Melaka and the rather uninspiring Singapore, it was soon our last day in mainland Malaysia after a wonderfully varied four weeks. It was time to fly to Borneo. Our mission: to find the elusive probiscus and wild orang-utan. It's all about the monkeys.