It took 6 hours of hellish driving to get to Vang Vieng- we thought 6 hours was a blessing but we had to travel through, up and over some scary mountians with some even worse road surfaces. Luckily we didn't get travel sick like the two Irish guys we were with! We only stopped here for one night coz we wanted to move on before my b'day, so not much to report, but it was a nice liitle town.

When Dan told me we were visiting a place with 4000 islands, I was expecting it to be a bit like this picture.... sadly I was mistaken! Si Phon Don is on the southern tip of Laos and is where the Mekong River fans out to leave 4000 islands of which some are inhabited. We had to take a small boat over to the island as there are no roads!! It was back to basics for a couple of days- and I mean basic. All the accommodation is basically bungalows on st...

We spent 10 hours on an over night bus with a honking Lao woman to get to the worst place we have visited yet!! Pakse- one street, one guesthouse, one resturant.... so we stayed one night!!

Griff... I know Dan has told you about his 'experiance' but I think he may have exaggerated a little so i'll tell the truth! We had the option to go tubing in Vang Vieng but we decided to kayak to Vientiane instead. Better than any bus journey. We got picked up in a truck and driven for about an hour to a river with 4 Italians and 2 French guys (didn't like being the only girl!) but it was OK. One of the Italians looked just like you Nicky! We got ...

Well, we finally left Thailand for Laos after spending another 3 days in Pai coz we got food poisioning- it wasn't pretty. We crossed into Laos at Huay Xai and headed for Luang Prabang. There were no scheduled buses or trains you could only get there by slow boat (2 days slow) or speed boat (6 hours of speed) down the Mekong River. We took the speed boat- its quite hard to explain so have a look at the pics but its not your standard Roman Abramovich typ...