It was early in the morning and I was tired when the bus arrived in Luang Prabang. We got to the hotel at around 6am which was too early for our room to be ready. Together with the guys I had been travelling with that night, we sat hugging mugs of tea, waiting, bleary-eyed. We had chosen that particular hostel, The Khounsavan Guesthouse, mainly because it had a swimming pool. As soon as the rooms were ready it was time for a quick nap and a long shower. We eventu...

Vang Vieng made a welcome change from the quiet streets of Vientiane. There's plenty going on and loads of things to do here, the laid back atmosphere creates a near horizontal way of life. I suppose that's one reason why so many tourists visit here, another is the tubing- floating down the Nam Song River on used lorry inner tubes and getting pulled in to bars, along the way, by ropes thrown by locals. Because of the 20+ backpackers dying in 2011, mostly from rop...

It's a new country, a new language and a new currency. Other than that, not a great deal has changed. Just like Vietnam, it's still communist, there's always something on fire and without fail, there's always a chicken knocking about. The bus ride was never ending, in total, it took us over 27 hours to get here. For 24 of those, it was raining and it didn't take long for the bus to start leaking; just when we thought things couldn't get any worse. But this is As...