Day 233- The only reason we were in Sam Neua was to visit the caves in Vieng Xai where the communist party hid during the 'Secret War'. So really we wanted to get straight to Vieng Xai last night but by the time we arrived in Sam Neua there was no more buses. Then after some research last night we were led to believe that we could catch a bus direct from Vieng Xai town to Vietnam. So we thought we would stay in Sam Neua for a day and then get the first bus to ...

Day 231- We arrived in Phonsavan at 7:30am, it was really cold and we hadn't slept a wink on the awful bus. We got a tuk-tuk to the centre and had a walk round looking for hotels and tours of the plain of jars. We eventually found a place called 'Nice' hotel. We asked about buses and and tours and he explained that because it was low season there wasn't many tourists about so if we wanted to go we would have to pay a crazy amount of money to send a tour out jus...

Day 230- Finding breakfast proved quite difficult as everywhere was so expensive but we managed to find a decent deal at a hotel. We needed a hit of culture so walked around the city and found a small temple which was nice and spent some time admiring the many buddha sculptures and enjoying the peace and quiet. Back on the busy streets we continued our walk and then pulled up at a cafe for a nice cold fruit shake- we need our five a day after all! Then we walked...

Day 228- It was a constructive morning as I managed to wash a lot of clothes in the sink before heading to breakfast, some how this managed to flood the whole bathroom - typical. We decided to leave it and popped along the road for some egg and bacon sarnies - amazing and dead cheap, we could see straight away by the cheap prices and competition this was a backpacker place. Back at the hotel our bathroom was still flooded so after a bit of complaining we moved ...

Day 226- We checked out by 7 as the trip started at 8.30 and we needed to have breakfast and check into a new hotel. We even had time to check out the room we were staying in, the travel agency offered us a room for cheap since we booked a tour through him, it turned out to be really nice with a river view. We walked down to the river with the group and boarded our little boat that would take us upstream. There was a Dutch couple, an Estonian woman and a Czech. I...