The bus arrived, took us 50m then dropped us off to wait for the bus - strange, but it was lashing it down with rain as well which made matters worse, the big big bags were getting their first real shower!! With a small stop off for some extra strong Laos coffee we were in Vientiane in 4 hours - not bad! We checked into a very lovely place that Tel had booked for my birthday and settled down to a night of free wi fi and REAL CHEDDAR CHEESE sandwiches!! Perfect! I was woken on my 29th birthday with a [View Full Entry]

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We left Ponsavanh on a local bus and were very pleasantly relieved to find that the big bus was much better than the evil mini bus and before we knew it we were stopping for donuts and deep fried creepy crawlies half way to vang vieng. The journey was pretty comical, the guy sat behind us had his prize cockerel with him which was quite bizarre but I guess by Laos standards it was pretty uneventful. We got off the bus as the very miserable bus woman screamed vang vieng and literally as our feet touched the ground the bus hared [View Full Entry]

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We were the last to get on the minibus and ended up the weird foldy end of the row chairs which proved violently uncomfortable through the very windy and mountainous roads. We stopped off for food after a few hours but neither of us trusted our stomachs enough to consume food, while we were drinking the industrial strength Laos coffee the owner produced a dead flying squirrel for our lunch! Luckily we managed to get away with just taking a photo and got back on the bus for the rest of the vomit inducing journey! We arrived in Ponsavanh with our [View Full Entry]

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It was another early night and early start for the eight hour boat trip to Luang Prabang. When we got back on the boat it had shrunk, well our boat had gone back to the border and we got a new smaller boat for the second leg. The seating was pretty uncomfortable and not even our cushions could help, so I sat out the back of the boat in the crews kitchen on their log pile for most of the journey, no space for backgammon today! Again the journey passed pretty quickly and again the scenery was awesome. We got off [View Full Entry]

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We crossed the river in about two seconds and then filled out some long winded forms to enter Laos and paid our money and handed over our dreadful out of date mug shots. After this we were loaded into a van type thing and were driven up to the river and given the hard sell on why it was better to take a bus than get the boat (If there were more than 80 on the boat they would have to take two and it was nearing capacity!) Eventually after quite a few Beerlao’s (Which as an aside I must say [View Full Entry]

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This is a very brief entry but i thought our last day in Thailand deserved an entry! We left Chiang Mai early in the morning on a minibus that took us to Chiang khong on the Thai side of the Laos border. We stopped off in Chiang Rai for some lunch, turns out they have the best fried chicken ever!! It was an eight hour journey to Chiang Khong and we arrived about four in the afternoon in the small village of Chiang Khong - directly across the river from Laos. We had a very strange meal (where we were told [View Full Entry]

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The train was very impressive, nothing like the Indian ones and we were served a lovely dinner and then the beds were folded down for the night. It was pretty luxurious but the top bed was absolutely freezing! Serves me right for complaining about how hot it has been recently! We decided to stay only one night in Chiang Mai as we are returning after meeting mum so I can do the Thai massage course I have been banging on about! After a lot of walking and a dodgy tuk tuk man we checked into the Queen Vic for the [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately just as we were leaving Kanchanaburi Tel (or sick note as I will now refer to him now) got a sore throat so started yet another course of anti biotics and had a pretty rough minibus trip to Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok in the afternoon heat and proceeded to find somewhere to sleep. As you all know I have something of a penchant for hotels and it’s only just occurred to me that we have the best excuse to get to poke around and look at loads of hotels, it’s pretty gruelling with the worlds largest bags but fun [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately we never made it Tiger temple as on the way back from 7-11 Tel managed to have an incident with a piece of pipe sticking up from the pavement, and yes you guessed it, the same toe, all over again! We weren't allowed to go to the temple in case the tigers smelled blood!!! So we spent a day at the Thailand Burma Railway museum which was much more informative than the weird one by the bridge! The museum had archives of the pow's stories and some of their personal artefacts and was very moving. After this we walked across [View Full Entry]

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On our first day we walked down to the bridge and visited the most random museum I have ever been to, just stuff all over the place! The bridge itself was surrounded by jewellery shops and food vendors, a very bizarre scene considering the massive loss of life. There was a beautiful temple by the world's strangest museum with the most intricate paintings and statues I have ever seen - mind-blowing. From here we wandered back to our hotel and settled down in a bar for some food. Just as were leaving they put on a new film called The war [View Full Entry]

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