Our main destination this day was to be the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, the charity I raised the cash for when I did my Walk. We picked up a taxi to get there, though it turned out not to be so far out and closer to the old building than I’d thought.

The new premises are great. Much more spacious and professional and simply more convenient having all the facilities under one roof rather than spread over three buildings in a street. There are still some “annexes” such as a couple of houses for sleeping in which are close by.

Time whizzed by as we played with the kids and shared lunch with them. Mike showed off the new building and all the facilities and then they had a little presentation for me – a video they’d made followed by a gift of a cuddle blue dragon of my very own! Thanks to everyone, you didn’t have to but it was massively appreciated!

Sadly, we had other places to be later in the afternoon so flagged down two motorcycles and haggled them to a reasonable price to take us to the Sofitel Metropole for the chocolate buffet. We were meant to meet Kat here, but she never showed up and we splurged far too much money on posh chocs and lemon juice by ourselves. It’s gone up in price since my last visit to $15 plus service charge plus tax. Our $40+ bill was more than we paid per person for our 3-day Mekong trip… It’s every day from 15:00 to 17:50 if you have the stomach for it.

We found Kat back at the hostel where she’d been busy sorting things out as she had to catch her bus down south that evening. Fortunately we did get a chance to say our goodbyes as she and her new travelling companion (her original ones having to go on without her) were picked up.