Blogs from Muang Xai, West, Laos, Asia

This is definitely one of the highlights of our trip. 3 days of living in trees and zip-lining through the jungle? Does it get any better? It all begins with a trek up into the limestone mountains in Northern Laos. Once we reached a sufficient height we threw on our harnesses and zipped from tree canopy to tree canopy, whizzing through the trees only to suddenly emerge and fly across deep valleys, viewing the world from the eyes of a condor. These views were breath-taking. Most of the lines, start in the dense jungle, so you can’t see where you are zipping to, so when you suddenly emerge and see that you’re about to zip over a valley to the next peak, it steals your breath away. There are seven tree houses in total, and many ... read more

As we have been on the move recently we have included in this blog Udomxai (Laos), Muang Khau (Laos), and our entry into Vietnam at the border of Dien Bien Phu. We stepped of the bus into Udomxai with a smile on our face. After braving the cold for a couple of weeks it was nice to have the sun beating down for a change. As mentioned in the last blog, we had 12 days of our Laos visa to kill, and not wanting to head back on ourselves and go south we didn't have much choice but to stay in the town Udomxai. The place itself has nothing to offer tourist, its mainly a thoroughfare for Chinese truckers. It hosts one main road that leads through the town, and a couple of side streets with ... read more

At the Bus station with plenty of time to spare. Just as well as the bus is going to be very full, even when we arrived people are sitting waiting for it’s departure. As the time grows near people are still arriving, more people, more goods to carry. We end up crammed into our seats unable to move. Bales of goods are stacked into the aisle of the Mini Bus and we set off. Stops are frequent as people on the bus finish their shopping; Paw Paws here, some Mushrooms there, maybe some birds here. The list goes on and the bus continues to get fuller. More stops, people getting on and people getting off. Bales, buckets, shopping bags come and go. 5 hours latter after travelling through some beautiful country we arrive at Udomxai, not ... read more

After CM we drove to Chiang Khong in order to cross the border into Laos. CK is a small town with not much there but we found a nice place to eat and a hippie bar. The hotel overlooked the Mekong river and had fab sunrise views at 5.30am. It was soon time to pile into some Tuk Tuks and clear Thai immigration to cross the Mekong to Laos soil and join our boat crew for a 2 day journey down the Mekong. Clearing Laos immigration was pretty quick and then we changed some Thai Bahts into Laos Kip ( 20,000 kip to 1 dollar so you get lots of notes!!). The scenary along the Mekong was superb and we stopped off at Pak Beng for the night which is a nice sleepy town. On the ... read more

Two days on the road now and the scenery is beautiful! I love how up and close you can get on a bike. The dust, sweat and bugs in the eyes aside, it's great. I am also trying to zen out with the hills. Instead of asking myself, is this the last turn before it levels out, I am trying to appreciate "the moment". According, to the leader of an organized cycling tour I ran into yesterday. I will learn to love hills. I'm not sure I will go that far but so far the hills haven't been too steep. All I can say is I'm glad I'm going South because despite the uphills, the descents are longer : ) Yesterday, I put in 75kms from Luang Namtha to Na Mor. I stayed in a small ... read more