On my first full day in Luang Namtha I pretty much did very little. In the afternoon I hired a bicycle and rode 4 km to the Lanten village of Ban Nam Di. I came across quite a few older women in traditional clothes making garments but felt a little awkward about taking their photo, so I didn't. I rode back to Luang Namtha along the same bumpy dusty road and stopped to take a couple of shots of the ricefields in the evening sunlight. Next morning Nina and myself hired a motorbike and rode the 60 km to Muang Sing. The ride passed by quite a few small villages and Nam Ha National Park. We didn't have a lot of time to explore Muang Sing so we pretty much had a late lunch and then ... read more

A minibus picked me up at the guesthouse and then drove around picking up a few more passengers before dropping us off at the minibus station where I found the vehicle that was headed to Nong Khiaw. It was a very nice 3 and a half hour trip and surprisingly we didn't stop at a restaurant for lunch, which seems to be the norm in this part of the world. Once at Nong Khiaw we had just enough time to have lunch before hopping in a boat bound for Muang Ngoi Neua up the Nam Ou river. This trip took just over an hour and had some very nice scenery along the way. Muang Ngoi Neua is more or less a village on the banks of the Nam Ou river that is set up for foreign ... read more

Before coming to Vang Vieng I was unsure if I would like the place or not, due to its reputation for young backpackers getting drunk and stoned. I was surprised to find a fairly chilled out place with the odd group of backpackers off their faces ( this changed on New Years Eve of course). The town offers plenty of activities including tubing, kayaking, rock climbing, hot air ballooning, as well as some caving. I liked the town so much that I ended up staying a week. The first couple of days I just wandered around town, climbed to the top of a nearby hill to take a few shots of Vang Vieng, and relaxed in a couple of riverside restaurants. One of my highlights was a balloon trip over the town and north along the ... read more

After waking up very early monday morning Baz and I hopped on the minibus bound for the Thai border and then Had Yai. The trip and border crossing went very smoothly and we arrived in the Thai city about 9am where we had half an hour to kill before hopping on the next bus to Krabi. In a way we were a little lucky considering Baz had lost our tickets the night before but they let us on anyway. It was probably another 4 hour trip to Krabi of which I spent most of my time talking to a nice couple from KL which made the time fly by. Once in town we found a cheap guesthouse for $5 a night, had a quick walk around and then went to the food stalls along the riverbank ... read more

Well it had to happen sooner or later, my first mishap on this trip. The morning I was leaving Siquijor it was low tide so we had to take a very small traditional boat out to the diveboat which was anchored about 70 meters offshore. There was me, another tourist, and a 14 year old boatman, and as we were pulling up to the dive boat somehow we capsized and I went under the water with my daypack on my back which contained my camera, phone, wallet, and a few other things. Thank god that my backpack was already delivered to the dive boat earlier. To their credit the crew of the boat reacted very quickly when I passed my soaked daypack up to them they quickly took the contents out, took the batteries out of ... read more