Blogs from Laos, Asia - page 521

Well it had been a pretty hectic time to date trying to squeeze all and sundry into each brief stop before jumping back onto tightly packed buses to do it all again. Si Phan Don was our chance to relax by the river - the toughest choices being where to eat dinner at night and whether to lie in the hammock or sit on the chair - no really. Day 1. After leaving Christophe in Pakse (he was off to Don Khong for a few days) we took a 'bus' ie. small truck with rows of seats in the back down to Nakasang - the departure point for Don Det. Luckily the driver took an instant shining to Nunny so we ended up in the cab rather than squashed into the back with the 40 or ... read more

After escaping Vientiene with our Cambodian visas in hand we took a night bus down to Pakse complete with Laos Karaoke at 400 decibels until the early hours of the morning and a dodgy film about a Crocodile man that seduced all the young ladies. Arriving in Pakse at 6am we were greeted by a torrential downpour that we thought would only write off the rest of the day. A quick breakfast and checked into a hotel we grabbed a few hours sleep before waking to find that the clouds had parted and indeed the sun shone. Tracking down a bike rental place we took some dodgy motorbikes out on the road with a view to visiting the Bolaven plateau - the coffee growing region of Laos with the highly sought after Arabica coffee exported to ... read more

Pete was feeling a bit rough last night, he came down with a bit of the stomach bug becca has had, but after some rehydration salts that the girl in Boots said would make him "Sparky" and some antibiotics, he's now feeling as sparky as ever. On a quick walk to the market later to buy Pete some more thongs as he'd broken his last pair a couple of days ago, we were aproached by a gang of thai schoolchildren, doing a questionaire on tourist attitudes to thailand. They then insisted they had a photo of us, so we got one too. The first part of the journey to Laos was the public bus from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong, this took about 2 and a half hours. We had imagined that this would be quite ... read more

Bonjour!!! And so... the propeller plane lands and I find myself in a country called Laos. If anyone has never heard of Laos, look on a map.. its bordered by Myanmar (Burma), China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Lots of borders yes... but I decided to enter from the sky in a man made flying machine. As I didn't have that long I decided to head to the main places starting with a town called Vientiane situated next to the Mekong river. Anyway, after leaving the plane I had to queue for ages to sort my visa out, then I got in the back of a pick up truck type thing and headed into town. I had kind of pre-booked a room at a guesthouse so was happy when they had a room for me. I decided ... read more

The bus ride from Vientiane to Vang Vieng was fairly uneventful, although there was some strange wired contraption at our feet that got suspiciously warm during the ride. It is really amazing that it took us 4 hours to travel the 160 km distance. The Laos countryside is just as beautiful as the Vietnamese. Bright green, hilly, wonderful twisty roads, small towns full of people waving to us as we drove by. Vang Vieng is a tiny town right on the banks of the Nam Song River. There's nothing Lao about it. It's a complete tourist spot with some of the worst "Western" food we've eaten in Asia but it has its charms. For example, most of the restaurants have sofa-type seating where you can lie back, drink beer and watch Simpsons and Friends reruns for ... read more