Huay Xai 13/10/07 - 14/10/07 $6 The second day of our slowboat took us from Pakbeng to the border town of Huay Xai, it should have been a 7 hour journey, but we have come to learn that Lao time is a little different to realtime and due to their laid back approach everything takes that little bit longer. But as we seem to be travelling in the opposite direction to everyone else our boat was really quite and we got a bench seat each to stretch out on (doesn't ma...

SLOW BOAT TO PAKBENG 12/10/07 - 13/10/07 $3 Decided to take a slow boat up the Mekong River to make our way back to Thailand and get to see the north. The slow boat takes 2 days, whereas the speed boat alternative only takes a few hours and is around the same price. But forget the plush white fancy powerful speedboats that spring to mind... these speedboats are pretty much a wooden canoe with a massive engine strapped the back and there are fatalities on pret...

VIP BUS HELL!!! 09/10/07 - 12/10/07 Silichith Guest House $7 After our awesome experience of tubing, we decided to move on to Luang Prabang, which used to be the capital before it changed to Vientiane. As Vang Viang's suh a small town we weren't really sure what time the local buses would leave and didn't fancy a morning of waiting around on the gravel strip so we thought... what the hell, we'll splash out on a VIP bus... BIG MISTAKE!!! The VIP bus was 95000 k...

TUBING... woohoo! 07/10/07 - 09/10/07 Dok Boua $5 The bus station at Vang Viang is just pretty much a gravel strip in the middle of nowhere, it's actually an old airstrip, which might explain its random appearance and why we must have looked quite so lost when we arrived there. Luckily the bus driver took pity on us and actually let us jump back on so he could take us the short journey into the town and drop us by some cheap guesthouses. We decided to spend ou...

I MISS TUK-TUKS!!! 05/10/07 - 07/10/07 - 1 ngt Haysoke Gusethouse $15 p/rm, 1 ngt $6 p/room Our Vietnam > Lao bus dropped us off in the station, where we were delighted to once again see tuk-tuks! They're not as nice as the tuk-tuk's of Thailand and Cambodia, but nonetheless they still serve there purpose. Took a tuk-tuk with some aussie peeps to the centre where, because of the heat and how nackered we were we settled pretty early on an average hotel at a...