Without bothering to make the trip out to the White Temple, we didn't find much to see or do in Chiang Rai as we are well and truly templed out. On our way to Chiang Rai we passed areas that had been so badly hit by the recent storms that stobie poles had been ripped from the ground making the main road unpassable. We also travelled through an a very eerie neighbourhood that was filled with low laying smoke and the ground was covered in hail stones, all the loca...

Luang Nam Tha is a town in the north of Laos visited by tourists looking for trekking and opportunities to see some ethnic minorities. When we got there we found all the tours to the national park seemed like manufactured "experiences" where the ethnic minorities were treated like zoo exhibits made to perform their "traditional" handicrafts, weapon making, food preparation and whatever else would please the tourists. On top of this, the weather made a turn for th...

We had a fantastic time in beautiful, chilled out Luang Prabang from breakfasts overlooking the Mekong River to post midnight ten pin bowling. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and celebrated our five year anniversary with a trip to a waterfall where we climbed through a deserted area to find our own little rock pools, followed by some great value cocktails and a night out on the town. In the evenings the place to go is Utopia Bar which is full of hippy style mats...

We found Vientiane to be a bit of a shock after the places we've been to, it's a very sleepy town with almost nothing to see or do besides visiting a night market that sets up along the river. While we were there the temperatures were absolutely stifling so it was very hard to enjoy walking around the town. We were told the trip to Vientiane was supposed to be only 12 hours from Hanoi, Vietnam, but it took about 20 hours and we were the only suckers to be misin...

Attempting to get to Cat Ba Island without a packaged tour was near on impossible. Cat Ba island is close to the Vietnam mainland, next to the world renowned Halong Bay. We originally wanted to get a bus to Halong Bay where we would find our own way to the island, but the tour guide on our bus convinced us that it would be too hard and that we should go with his group for a day tour of the bay which would drop us on the island at the end of the day. It turned ou...