The blog of journeys.

We set out towards Vientiene the capital and as it was a 12 hour journey decided to stop half way in a place called Tha Khaek. As it turns out this was a good choice as the buses in Lao are even more ridiculous than we've seen so far. Pretty standard.. everyone eating eggs as snacks (shudder), 6 hours turned into 11 etc The only difference is that when you buy your ticket your also buying the ability to take ANYTHING and as much as you want with you. You can move house by bus if you wish to. One man brought about 70 bags of charcoal which had to be laboriously loaded onto the roof one at a time. He would have brought more but it wouldn't fit. Oh and another person brought their moped. IF YOU HAVE A MOPED JUST DRIVE THERE YOURSELF. Plus if anyone wants a pitstop at any time thats ok too. I think we must have stopped at least 45 times!! Tha Khaek was pretty uneventful and when we finally got to Vientiene it was a pleasant surprise. Theres not much there but what is there is really nice. We spent most of out time eating Banofee pie in little French bakeries while learning Spanish (for South America).

After Vientiene we took the windiest bus journey of our lives to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng was pretty cool, it was a bit of a Koh Phangan in that it was built for tourists. Plenty of traveller cafes playing Friends, pancakes and shakes everywhere, a bunch of travellers who pretty much live there and of course a sea of people wearing Harem pants. Man I hate those trousers!! But the town was surrounded by beautiful limestone karsts. One dy we decided to go explore some caves which was really cool. The cave was pitch black with a little buddha figure right at the back and when you turned your torch on the whole walls were covered in mud handprints from the locals. It was pretty spooky!

After Vang Vieng we took an even windier bus trip for 7 hours to Luang Prabang for Christmas. We both agreed that it was the most scenic bus journeys we ever done. We basically drove through a mountain range. Stunning. Luang Prabang is a really pretty little town, quite the holiday destination. Its full of massage places, restaurants and bakeries. Christmas was a bit average because we missed being at home with the fam quite a lot and there were no presents! Sounds so ungrateful as we're so lucky being away but I do love a Christmas carol or two. Oh yeah and somehow I managed to get a bloody 24 hour sickness bug Christmas evening. I've never vomited during the queens speech before! So I spent Boxing day in bed watching films which isn't altogether dissimilar to a normal Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx