The bus left Vientiane at 6:30am. This obviously meant I had to leave my guesthouse even earlier - this did, however, have its advantages. I noticed, looking down into the damp quiet street, from the open landing outside my room, various lines of saffron-swathed monks stretching into the distance. They were patiently waiting while women, kneeling outside their homes, filled the monks' alms bowls, one by one, with what must have been either money or food. I noticed further groups of monks and benevolent women on the streets from the back of the tuk-tuk as it took me to the bus station.

The journey was 10 hours. Although the bus was fairly uncomfortable, and recent attacks on buses travelling Route 13 leaving both locals and tourists dead played slightly on my mind as I tried to ignore the mosquitos dancing up the inside of the windows, any inconveniences were forgotten once I looked at the surrounding countryside. For much of the journey the road wound around inspiring forest covered mountains, over which disparate cloud rolled lazily. The journey was a fitting prelude to Luang Prabang, on whose streets I strolled later in the afternoon. The place is beautiful, like one of Italo Calvino's more fantastical Invisible Cities. Walking through the streets seems to me to be like entering a dream - everywhere the quiet murmer of unhurried life forms a soundtrack to scenery of giant overhanging trees, countless wats, and streets of traditional rattan houses, fluttering butterflies, chickens, dogs, children and a monkey.

That night I wandered down a dark alleyway back to my guesthouse followed by the lone chanting of a monk from a nearby Wat. It would have been a sublime moment, had I not begun to realise that I couldn't remember where the guesthouse was, and that street-lighting is not yet de rigueur in these parts.

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I travelled into Laos with Gitte, a Danish girl I met on the bus up to Nong Khai. From the guesthouse we could see the Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge spanning the river. Hearing the name of the crossing point, I had imagined some kind of rickety rope bridge, appearing out of the Thai jungle, swaying across a deep ravine, and immediately disappearing into the foliage on the other side. Of course it is nothing of the kind - simply a plain concrete road bridge, efficiently crossing the Mekong.

The bridge didn't seem that far off, so we decided to walk, an ill-advised yomp in the increasing heat - and after a mile or more we gave in and hopped on a tuk-tuk. Resisting the tuk-tuk driver's insistence to take us to travel agents on the route, that would give him a commission if we agreed to their unnecessary visa services (as visas are available from Immigration on the bridge for a cheaper dollar price) we were soon over the border and in Vientiane, where we checked into separate guesthouse, Gitte's budget being much more prohibitive than mine. Not that the Mix-OK guesthouse was particularly hard on my wallet. I paid about 3 pounds for a little room, with a double bed (there were no singles left)and a ceiling fan that sounded like a helicopter perpetually landing.

I wandered around Vientiane for a while, first up to Wat Sisaket, a traditional Lao monastery, built in 1818, and, because it survived the Thai sacking of the city about a decade later, the oldest Wat in Vientiane - it is fairly small and I meandered around the Buddha filled cloisters, grounds and central sanctury hall for half an hour before heading back onto the streets. Vientiane has the air of an old colonial outpost, where, probably owing to reading too much Orwell and Greene, I imagine white-suited minor diplomats to sweat out the years, worrying that they have been forgotten by their governments. The place has a pleasant gentle pace, despite the constant rattle of motorbikes, tuk-tuks and trucks. On tree-lined avenues, old French colonial houses crumble away, surrounded by undergrowth and palm trees. They sit comfortably next to the more modern low-rise buildings and tangles of over-head power lines that run along the streets.

I had agreed to meet Gitte for a bottle or two of Beer-Lao and some food in the evening. I spent a few hours chatting and eating with my new friend in a restaurant where the guard at the gate checked Gitte's bag, as apparently some one had thrown a bomb into the place recently. I couldn't drink too much of the highly recommended beer however, as I planned to get up very early the next morning to catch the bus further north.

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Apologies for any typos and the like, but the connection here is slow and I have sleep I should be doing. Or something.

The reason for this sleep I blame on 2 things: Economy class (OK, I was spoilt with the whole long haul Hong Kong flights) and the family in front of me on today's (yesterday's?) flight. I thought my idea of hell would be the sound of a child crying for all eternity. And by crying I mean whining, screaming and probably making the odd retching sound too. But now I realise it is four children doing the above almost non-stop for over 11 hours. With the parents at either end of this maelstrom of agony doing nothing, except raising their voices in Arabic once, which only increased the volume.

As a result I stumbled into a damp early morning Bangkok with an icy pain slicing into my temple. Not the best start. But I managed to (eventually) find the ticket counter - and the North/NorthEastern bus station itself - after the very kindly intervention of a couple of Thais who wondered why I was deep in a local market at 7.00am. And then I sat on a bus for 9 hours (trying very hard to obey my own strict jet-lag rules and not nod off) until I got here, Nong Khai, a pleasantly laid back northern Thai border town. Tomorrow, all being well, I will head over the 'Friendship Bridge', which spans the Mekong and get a stamp in my passport that shows off I have been to Laos.

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Smug

On today's Evening Standard flysheets: ROONEY SIGNS RECORD DEAL

Personally I think he should stick to football.

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Bicycle Clip Time

As sometimes may be evident from the rolling list of films to the right, I often enjoy sitting down to watch the odd 'Horror' film, but the reason I haven't rambled on about this vast genre of film before is that I find it's difficult to accurately analyse it, define the various sub-categories within it, and single out the films within the genre that find me squirming in fear, where, in addition to the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, those on my face start prickling and a genuine chill runs through me.

A recent, a slightly peculiar study at King's College London seems a good place to start. It uses a mathematical formula to decide that The Shining is the perfect scary movie. The formula concentrates on three main areas: suspense, realism and gore. Although I think The Shining is a brilliantly creepy film, the inadequacy of those three 'key' elements highlights the fact that the genre of Horror gathers together three or four fairly diverse classes of film, meaning that unsettling and frightening films like Rosemary's Baby or The Wicker Man sit in the Horror section of Blockbuster next to vaguely boring novelty films like The Sixth Sense (or would if Blockbuster bothered to stock any films over 5 minutes old).

As far as I can make out there are four loose sub-categories of Horror film - please forgive the slightly random titles for them, as well as the extremely trivial and self-indulgent exercise of describing them.

1. Spooky: These are films which usually involve a supernatural element, and generally terrify through more subtle means than other types of Horror. Fleeting glimpses of things that should remain unseen and discomforting noises provide the fear, rather than gallons of blood/brains/blood and brains. The Shining is in this class. While a complete nutbar chasing his screaming wife and son around a maze with an axe isn't exactly subtle, and the tidal wave of blood that crashes out of the lift contradicts my definition of this type of film, the majority of The Shining, with its oppressive atmosphere of impending disaster, the child's rasping 'Redrum' and the various unexpected beings rattling around in the hotel, sits quite neatly in this sub-category.

A special mention has to go to the BBC's early '90s stab at this genre - the television play Ghostwatch, which scared the hell out of me at the time, provoked a rash of viewer complaints, prompted one suicide and has never been repeated.

2. Terror: It could be argued that this is a catch-all class, but I think it includes those films that, while not being Slasher or Shocker films are too explicit to be merely Spooky. I think most Zombie films, from Night of the Living Dead to 28 Days Later can be included here, as well as most films featuring odd homocidal creatures, such as Aliens (but not Alien, more of a Spooky film) along with the Hammer House of Horror productions and their like. I also think the more gruesome Horror films, often referred to as 'exploitation' films belong here, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left and Cannibal Holocaust - the last of these meriting a name check because it retains the title of The Most Disturbing Film I Have Ever Seen.

3. Slasher: Clearly, the slightly dodgy Jason, Freddie, and Halloween films and all their inferior imitators.

4. Shocker: The twattish little brother of Slasher films, these seem to trade on no more than simply shocking the audience - Final Destination, I Know What You Did Last Summer and so on.

So, after pompously defining the Horror genre, here's a list of, in my opinion, the best Horror films around. They seem to come from the Spooky or Terror categories, which I suppose are the ones I find the most 'shit-yer-pants-scary'. In no particular order:

1. Don't Look Now: Set mostly in gloomy decaying Venice, this film creates a constant understated menace that bubbles under the suface for much of the time and only manifests itself visually at the startling climax. Brilliantly subtle Horror film, with the added bonus of wondering whether Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie really did have sex.

2. The Ju-On films: I've only seen two of these (out of four) but I choose them rather than any of the other dazzlingly terrifying Japanese films because they seem to bring together all the elements of, for example, Ringu and Dark Water, and unremittingly assault the viewer with the result - a steady succession of eldritch images and deeply unnerving sound effects.

3. The Others: Although not as immediately scary as many other films, and despite its slightly gimmicky twist, the brooding mansion enveloped by perpetual fog, the constant unease and tension within that mansion and the vaguely threatening unseen presences make this an accomplished and stylish Horror film.

4. The Eye: Another one from the far east, this time Hong Kong. A blind woman gets a corneal transplant and as a result can see for almost the first time in her life - but naturally she can make out certain things other people, with their home-grown organs, can't. It's enough to make me think that, even if I was close to death on an operating table and the surgeon was about to perform a life-saving transplant operation, I would insist on seeing evidence that my new body part hadn't once belonged to a feared village outcast, or been dug up in a Native American burial ground, before I consented to the procedure.

5. The Omen: A big budget '70s studio film - and an effortlessly effective Horror film. I once knew someone who watched this when he was 13, and went to bed afterwards, almost paralysed with fear. Waking from a nightmare a few hours later he scrambled out of his bedroom into the long corridor outside, and saw the disembodied head of the impaled priest come floating towards him, prompting him to run screaming around the house. No, it wasn't me - I'd have just thought it was Dr. Who.

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