Just what we needed after a day on the tubes, a very long journey down south to a place called Pakse. After a short bus journey to Vientiane from Vang Vieng we ended up in the bus station for about 3 hours before getting onto a sleeper bus - these have about 15 bays each with a small mattress to be shared between 2 people whether or not you know them.These are distinctly Asian sized making for an uncomfortable night for the two six foot tall lads across from us. ...

'A beautiful rural village', 'traditional Laos', 'the Ibiza of Laos' were all descriptions we had read or heard about for Vang Vieng and we wondered what to believe. It turns out they all have more than an element of truth. Vang Vieng is set along the Mekong River, where it is as a relatively narrow gauge. Traditionally a fishing village, Vang Vieng is surrounded by hundreds of massive limestone karsts that jut out of the ground often hiding large caves which ope...

We arrived into Laos from Kuala Lumpur armed with various jungle essentials and a comprehensive travel insurace package to survive this...a frontier of primary jungle calling itself Vientiane and the capital of Laos. On landing we were surprised that the government had cleared the immediate area around the airport and instead of the thick rainforest we expected there was what appeared to be a very clean, western style main road leading in to what they called 'tow...