Yaaaawn!... Vientiane has to be the most relaxed capital city of any country on the planet. Traffic is light, there's not much to see or do, and the evening curfew closes everything at 11pm except for one night club in one of the hotels. We spent a couple days here, however, eating top quality food that wasn't available before and regrouping before our next big adventure.... a motorcycle tour of the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos. This will be off the tourist t...

McDonald's Happy Meals have nothing on Vang Vieng. This place is famous for anything and everything that is "Happy". Walk into any restaurant and request the special menu and you will see offers for Happy Pizza, Happy Shakes, individual joints, or full bags of opium. It appears to be a drug users paradise except for one minor kink in the system. In the evening, the police run around trying to sniff out marijuana smokers so they can issue a fine, payable immedia...

Happy Laos New Year Everyone! It's now 2551 which is the date I am going to start using for everything just to keep things interesting. Welcome to one of the most bombed countries on Earth. Between 2507 and 2516 (that's 1964 to 1973 for you...see how interesting that is!) the US dropped over 2 million tons of bombs costing $2.2 million bucks a day! About 30% of them never actually exploded so the country is littered with UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) that occasiona...

After leaving Sapa, I arrived in the remote town of Dien Bien Phu where the French got their asses kicked by the Vietnamese some time ago. This is the northern most launching point to cross the border into Laos, however, I realized I had a major problem. This border crossing is brand new and very infrequently used. It's reported that some crossing points don't issue travel visas upon arrival at the border and this may be one of them. ****! This means I would hav...

Sapa...this is definitely my favorite place in Vietnam. Located in a spectacular fertile valley near the border of China, this is Vietnam's premier scenic destination in the northwest. The mountains are huge, the weather is great, and the valleys are covered with rice terraces and populated with small villages of ethnic minority hill tribes that are still relatively untouched by the outside world...but this is changing fast! After an overnight train from Hanoi, I...