Up early on Monday to find our tuk tuk waiting to take us to the bus station where we piled into the minvan that would take us to Vang Vieng. It was an uncomfortable 5 hours with Leanna and Nikki up front with the driver and zak packed in behind on a small fold down seat, but the scenery was beautiful as we passed through hillside villages and the mountains in Laos. When we arrived we found ourselves a riverside bungalow for a bargain price of 6 dollars a night a...

After another gruelling 6 hours on the longboat we finally arrived at Luang Prabang and this time we wasn't greeted by dozens of crazy Laos people trying to drag us into their guesthouses!! First impressions of Luang Prabang are good ones, it's a quaint town with a slight french feel, home to many bakeries and coffee shops. We first walked along the river front looking for hostels and wasn't very successful, we headed to the main strip and discovered hostel price...

Pakbeng, our first overnight stop-off, halfway through our 2 day slow boat trip (when booking they neglected to tell us that it would take this long!), was one of the most curious of places that we'd been to so far. Its very small, and is mainly comprised of guesthouses. As soon as we jumped off the boat, all the locals had surrounded us, and hostel staff walked among us touting prices. It was all a bit manic, and not helped by the fact that there were little kid...