Putting our special forces skills behind us, we moved on down the mighty Mekong River on a two day boat cruise with the locals passing small mountains covered in dense jungle where hill tribe people still live in bamboo huts and subsist on the river before arriving at the old French colonial capitol of Laos, Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang still retains much of its architecture and French character from the 1800's, but the hill tribe cultures along with the Buddh...

After my bus and boat adventure through Laos, I was ready for the jungle, zip-lines (strapping yourself to a wire a sliding along the wire from one point to another), and gibbons (a type of monkey) that the "Gibbon Experience" in northern Laos seemed to promise. The first day was a mix of an extremely long hike down a dirt road to a trail, where the rain began to come down hard and we found ourselves slopping around in the mud and becoming more and more...

Leaving Koh Tao, Ian, Kelly, and I made a short stop again in Bangkok and Pattaya again before heading north to the Laos/Thai border at Nong Khai. Being pressed for time to make it to my microcredit convention in Hanoi, we only spent a couple days in this town searching out some of the famous Buddha parks and strolling through their extensive knick-knack market before crossing the border to Vientiane and looking for the next bus out to Hanoi. I was able to find a...