To get from the beautiful 4,000 islands to Cambodia we'd booked a package that would take us over the border and the remaining 50odd kilometres to the town of Stung Treng. The crossing was fine, little huts either side of no mans land, but we did get ripped off in the usual border fee manner because that day the Cambodian border police had decided that they needed some extra money and decided to charge $21 instead of the usual $20.. a fact reinforced when the visa sticker clearly had $20 printed on it! Sophie did her best to argue but as usual with these things she was on a losing battle! Things were made worse still when we were then charged another $1 for the stamp.. bloody cheek! The bus journey was fine once we got ... read more

After leaving Vientiene we decided to miss out on the elephant salt lick because we just felt we weren't up to the mission to get there so headed straight for Ban Nah Hin which is the jumping off point to the 7km cave of Tham Kong Lo. Well when we say we headed straight there we actually had to get off the bus at Vieng Kham and hitch hiked the remaining 30km there as there were no buses at that time of day. Ban Nah Hin & Tham Kong Lo On arrival in Ban Nah Hin we thought we'd made a terrible mistake when most of the guesthouses we tried were full up, thankfully the last one was free and the cheapest too so we unpacked in our bamboo hut and enjoyed a meal in their ... read more

We got the bus ok to Udomaxi but had decided on the way that the place we all really wanted to go to was the little known town of Muang Vieng Tong in the far east of the country. Our bus didn't arrive in Udomaxi until 5pm and we really didn't want to stay there a night so were a bit disappointed to learn that there was only one bus a day at 9am to Nong Khiaw, which was where we needed to get to in order to get yet another bus to Muang Vieng Tong. We hadn't eaten all day so found a local restaurant to fill us up then Max suggested trying to hitch hike our way there as the road seemed pretty busy so we thought we had nothing to lose... We made ... read more

We were all quite surprised by Luang Prabang when we pulled up to the centre in our tuk tuk from the bus station. Perhaps naively we had all expected the second largest city in Laos to be a little more built up than it was. Not that this came as a disappointment as it was lovely not to see a highrise in sight and it was literally all made up of small rows of colonial houses scattered with ornate Wats here and there.. just beautiful and so relaxed. Our first afternoon was spent in the usual way of filling ourselves with food and seeing what there was to see. Luang Prabang really isn't very big so it's very easy to walk around and see lots it in a very short space of time. Back to the ... read more

We had our first proper sleeper train experience from Hanoi to Lao Cai and a very good one it was at that. We'd booked the hard sleeper beds which are second most expensive option but still only $11 each so good value (note to other travellers doing this route... never book the train though an agency or hotel as they charge up to double the price of getting it direct from the train station). The hard sleepers have 6 bunks per cabin and we'd bagged top bunks which worked out perfectly after we'd managed to climb up there with Sophie giving the lady & gentleman below a flash of her knickers by mistake.. bloody loose trousers! We were glad we had the top bunks as the other people in our carriage seemed to sit on the ... read more