Landed in Vientiane in Laos after a fairly uneventful flight from Hanoi.

The pace of life was a considerable shock after the rush of Vietnam - sort of like being transported from Central London on a Friday afternoon to somewhere in the middle of Lincolnshire on a Sunday afternoon (out of season) I guess. We wandered around muttering "and this is the capital!" - everyone (all 5 locals and a bunch of tourists) seemed to be going soooo slowly it was funny.

Soon settled in to the national beer (Bia Lao - 660ml bottles are 50p a go in restaraunts) and the default national dish seems to be Pizza - combined with the lack of excercise we might start to fatten up a tad! Wandered around a bit looking at temples and stuff but the highlight was a huge arch similar to the Arc de Triumph in Paris. The people of Laos were given lots of concrete free by the US in aid to build a new airport runway so they sort of built want they fancied - and then it called it their vertical runway!

Got a minibus to Vang Vieng about 100 miles and 6 hours away. Horrendous trip if the truth be known - we thought the piece of junk that collected us from the hotel was the local bus to the real bus (if you see what I mean). After half an hour it dawned we were on this thing forever in the rain over horrible roads, backpacks strapped to the roof etc etc

Van Vieng is a backpacker's favourite and has some of the weirdest bars we've come across. These TV bars stand shoulder to shoulder down the main street and screen episodes of Friends on and endless loop to the bored student backpackers slouching on weird raised beds. We snobbishly headed of town to a grown up bungalow-overlooking-the-river sort of affair which was excellent. Hired some mountain bikes and cycled off to the local limestone caves where we had to do some rock climbing to get in them - most fun / exciting / dangerous etc! After surviving that we thought a couple of beers might be a great idea and found the only TV bar that wasn't showing Friends and settled down to an hour of "Family Guy" cartoons - a surreal and excellent couple of hours!

Got on a much better mini-bus to Luang Prabang over some stunning scenery. Luang Prabang is a very pretty city that is actually the old capital and UNESCO listed for what that's worth. What it meant to us was more excellent restaraunts, pizzas and cheap beer (diet soon!). Went on an elephant Mahout course yesterday and it was phenomenal - driving, washing, feeding a 4 ton beastie. Went tubing afterwards down some gentle rapids which was great fun until you "bottomed out" - literally!

Maybe off kayaking tomorrow to find some bigger rapids before taking a 2 day trip further up the Mekong into Northern Thailand!