Day two, a long ride, and sufficiently so for us to almost run out of petrol before reaching Attapeu! Despite filling up in the morning, and our two-wheeled machines stretching to a pretty impressive forty-ish kilometres per litre, the limitation of our three litre tanks meant that the tiny, wavering hands on our fuel gauges were flirting with their red zones with over fifty kilometres still to go. We might have made it, who knows, only the unfortunate find out e...

Or maybe "Tat" Lo. One was the waterfall and one was the village, I think. Or I might be completely wrong and it's just one or the other, given that they sound the same in Lao anyway (a softly pronounced end consonant, for any linguists reading). What a terrible start to a blog entry. Sorry, I'll get on with it. Tad or Tat Lo was less than 100km from Pakse, and only took a couple of hours or so to get to. We arrived just after lunch, having also stoppe...

From Don Det, we took a boat then bus up to Pakse, somewhat of a capital of southern Laos, I think, and about four hours further up the Mekong. At this point, and covering about the next ten days of our travels, my blog entries will be short, in accordance with the amount of time we stopped anywhere! With Sara having less than two weeks left, and Matt also keen to press on, we moved quickly. Ironically, very much in contrast with the general pace of Laos! "L...

Our first impression of Laos: as our boat pulled up onto the small landing beach at the tip of Don Det, one of Si Phan Don (translation: four thousand islands), jostling for position to sell us food, transport and accommodation was... absolutely no-one! Incredible! For the first time since we were in central China, so including Yangshuo in southern China, seven weeks of Vietnam and three weeks of Cambodia, there wasn't a single person waiting to hassle us into bu...

Our last stop in Cambodia, Ratanakiri Province, up in the far north east of the country, and we were based in the capital, Ban Lung. Home of "Cambodian snow", our trekking guide, Yok, gleefully informed us! No, not the white stuff everyone back home was getting at the same time, but the red stuff that billows up from the road and hangs in the air for an eternity when a vehicle goes past, covering everything in sight with an orangey-red film. Other vehicles, trees...