Hanoi: The Curse of Ho Chi Minh Hanoi is huge. It's loud and crowded; busy, dirty, incredibly hot and muggy. The people rarely smile and the heavy motorbike traffic doesn't stop. But it does have an industrious energy about it which is slightly redeeming. Everywhere you look there are women selling things out of baskets, people eating at pavement cafes and men asking if you need a motorbike-taxi. Though after peaceful little Laos, Hanoi still took some getting u...

Our first visit to Vientiane was for a day before we did the Tha Khek loop. Vientiane is the capital of Laos and it's certainly the smallest capital city I've visited. It's not particularly pretty or action packed, but it's got lots of nice little restaurants, a glorious view across the Mekong to Thailand and a relaxed pace which generally makes it a nice place to be. After we finished our loop, we came back again to look at the few touristy things that Vientian...

"If the world was run by teenagers, it might look like Vang Vieng." This is from an article I made the mistake of reading as we were on our way to the Laotian town. Vang Vieng is famous for being the place where you can float down a river in an inner tube and stop off at bars on the way. It's also infamous for being absolutely mental. The article I accidentally read was a piece in the Guardian on the negative socio-economic impacts that thousands of gap year tou...

Laos was once a French protectorate. It was warding off the Chinese and the Thai at the time and French protection kept these two huge predators at bay. It also provided Laos with - among many other vitally useful things - a taste for baguettes. Lots of huge changes have taken place since then (independence, a communist revolution, a thorough bombing from US...) but the taste for baguettes has endured. And nowhere more appropriately so than in Luang Prabang. Ye...

From Huoay Xai we went to Luang Prabang. There were a few different options available to us for this transit and we decided to take the slow boat option. This was partly to try something new and partly so that we could have "when I was on the Mekong..." in our conversation arsenals. Just in case you're wondering, there is also a "fast boat" which does the trip in half the time and we were overtaken by a few of them on our way. The reason we opted out of taking o...