8 November: we hired bikes for the day and set off to explore. We went over to the next island (Don Khon) which is linked by an old railway bridge to Don Det. The railway (built by the French and abandoned after WWII) is the only one which was ever built in Laos, so given the amount of rail travel we have done tus far, it seemed appropriate to see it. After bathing at some crashing waterfalls across the Mekong, we decided to have an early lunch of red pumpkin cur...

Our overnight journey on the double decker 'King Of Bus' was notable only for the pink and yellow flourescent strip lighting, the tempestousness of the air conditioning and the unappreciated 'opportunity' to watch 'War Of The Worlds' (the Tom Cruise version). A tuk-tuk, a bus and a river taxi later and we had set foot on Don Det, one of the Four Thousand Islands which sprinkle across the Mekong at its widest point (14km). The number (and s...

Off we headed to be reunited with our passports (see Luang Prabang). Imagine our joy when we were told that they had not been received till Saturday, and that the Cambodian embassy woudl not be open till Wednesday to process our applications! We head off to the 'Four Thousand Islands' tonight much further south, so some passport pick up logistics have been arranged (fingers crossed) and we should be in possession of them by Thursday morning. We spent t...

We checked out of our VV hotel and took our bags into town. We were headinbg for the capital Vientiane but the idea was that we would still make it an activity based day by kayaking part of the way. So the van was loaded up with lots of big backpacks and off we drove. Almost 2 hours later it was time to start the kayaking (our 3rd time out in Laos, A-M still firmly in the 'steering seat' at the rear. The start of the dry season seems to have taken the sti...

Today we were on a combined trek and kayak day of activity. We hopped on to the van which took us and Lisa (USA), the 3 Crazy Belgains (Belgium) and John & Caroline (USA) off into the countryside surrounding VV. Our first stop was to explore some of the caves which surround VV. We had forgotton to bring our headtorches, so we were wired up with some 1950s style car battery type affairs which hung round our necks like cow bells, whilst a few watts of power was...