Arrived in Loung Namtha on Friday after travelling up from a place called Nong Khiaw. The boat journey there from Loung Pabang was spectacular, only stayed one night before moving here. I suppose I am now about ten hours by road from Loung Prabang, the nearest 'town.' This place is so rural once away from the main street - I hired a bike the last two days and toured around some pretty remote villages, seemed to be the only tourist too. I have never seen...

Has been a while since I last updated - have been enjoying Laos so much, a really amazing place. Someone was telling me that only five years ago you could only get 1 week visas for Laos - that sort of makes sense when compared to the other countries around it - Laos appears to be in the relatively early days of tourism. Therefore, at the moment, when you're sightseeing there are only usually a few others around and its all very low-key, people are friend...

Left vientiane yesterday and took a songthaew (a flat bed truck with two wooden seats at the side) for the three hour trip to a place called vang viang. You can see from the pictures that it is a really stunning place - most of the photos are from a bike ride I took to a cave - passed all these villages that seemed totally lost in time - hardly any other tourists around either, I had the cave to myself - there was this fantastic lagoon outside where you coul...

Left vientiane yesterday and took a songthaew (a flat bed truck with two wooden seats at the side) for the three hour trip to a place called vang viang. You can see from the pictures that it is a really stunning place - most of the photos are from a bike ride I took to a cave - passed all these villages that seemed totally lost in time - hardly any other tourists around either, I had the cave to myself - there was this fantastic lagoon outside where you coul...

Arrived in Laos following the worst imaginable bus journey from Hanoi - 20 hours all together. It was truly unbelievable and its only two days later that I can really laugh about it. The whole bus was filled with stuff being transported from Vietnam to Laos, including scaffolding, weights, fruit and veg, flowers and huge boxes of mysterious things. The luggage compartments were also full of 'stuff' so all of the passengers (just a by-product of the w...